Sustainable development has been almost universally accepted as a desirable development goal, despite many complex problems involved in its operationalisation. Its major achievement so far has been to serve as a questioning framework about the long-term environmental and socioeconomic viability of our present-day lifestyles and activities. It has raised significant questions and doubts about present-day conditions - the technologies, production systems, material priorities, myopic development vision, etc - touching upon both our day-to-day activities and development framework. Never before has humanity been engaged in sw:ha comprehensive self examination as is being currently demonstrated through various types of gfobal, regional, national, and even local exercises related to the promotion of sustainable development. Humanity has come to recognise that the unbridled continuation and expansion of our present day activities will soon threaten our own futures and, indeed, those of our children. In response to these problems, changes are already being introduced, albeit slowly, in some areas. In other areas, questions and debates have been initiated to find appropriate answers. The advocacy for sustainable lifestyles will go down as a historic landmark, probably as significant as the first industrial revolution, because current debates are highlighting the urgent need for a new environmentally-friendly indush·ial revolution. Every generation must build on the shoulders of its predecessors, but, in doing so, the wisdom lies in discarding the unsustainable, decaying, and static and holding on to the sustainable, enduring, and dynamic. Probably no other generation has been as lucky, in this respect, as the present one. The capacity, in terms of education and research, that exists for examining these questions and finding the answers has never been so extensive. The problem, as always, is with the will to deal adequately with sustainable development priorities and not to dilute them with other preferences, of which there are many.