Sustainable regional development the squaring of the circle or a gimmick?

In 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, 179 countries agreed on three declarations including Agenda 21. The concept of Sustainable Development (SD) became a triumph in both speeches and potential concepts. The various meanings of ‘sustainable development’ led to a confusion of Babylonian proportions. The obvious overloading of the term to meet high expectations makes it much more difficult to set into practice. The clever construction of the Rio Declaration allows for opportunities that must not be squandered. The strength of SD as a concept lies in the complexity of the problem and its high degree of commitment among signing members. In this study, SD will be investigated for its applicability; the authors consider the quality of the concept of SD and the handling of the complexity of SD. A two-strategy approach is developed: the difference between the global project ‘SD’ and the short-run mastery of the SD problem. Such statements need to be investigated and measured against the global context of SD. SD can then be integrated into the concept of regional ‘sustainable development’.