Environmental Sustainability: Reality, Fantasy or Fallacy? Edmore Kori 1 and Tendayi Gondo 2 1 Department of Geography and Geo-information Sciences 2 Department of Urban and regional Planning, University of Venda, Private Bag X5050, Thohoyandou, 0950, South Africa Abstract. The concept of environmental sustainability originates from the sustainability movement. A major breakthrough for sustainability came in 1992 at the UN WCED Summit in Rio de Janeiro. However, there are differences pertaining to sustainability in general and environmental sustainability in particular.The differences range from the components of sustainability to evaluation of environmental sustainability. There is no universally agreed definition of sustainability as there is a diversity of environmental sustainability evaluation approaches. Different fields have different opinions about the important components to be included in any environmental sustainability evaluation. All this has culminated in more questions than answers flowing from the environmental sustainability concept. At the end questions about whether environmental sustainability is a genuine cause, a gravy train for activists or exists only in theory. Keywords: Environment; Sustainability; Components 1. Introduction The concept of environmental sustainability was born by the sustainability movement. Sustainability is not a new phenomenon. Writers, such as Mill and Malthus (18 th century) included notions about economic sustainability in their works (Goodland, 1995; Goodland and Daly, 1996) and this culminated in the modern day neo-Malthusian understanding of the effect of exponential population growth on resources. However, the major breakthrough for sustainability came in 1992 at the UN WCED Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Since then, the subject of sustainability has taken centre stage in the world. However, there is a plethora of differences pertaining to sustainability in general and environmental sustainability in particular. The differences range from the components of sustainability (Peattie, 1995; Mebratu, 1998; Hart, 2000; Lozano, 2008a) to evaluation of environmental sustainability. There is no universally agreed definition of sustainability (Lozano, 2008a). To stoke the gridlock is the diversity of environmental sustainability evaluation approaches. Every field – social sciences, economics, and environmentalists – have different opinions about the important ingredients to be included in any environmental sustainability evaluation. All this has culminated in more questions than answers flowing from the environmental sustainability concept. The purpose of this paper is to conceptualise the environmental sustainability challenges the world is facing. It aims to expose why achieving environmental sustainability is and will remain elusive in the foreseeable future. Following this introduction is an examination of the sustainability quandary. The following sections dwells on the environmental sustainability dilemma and environmental sustainability evaluation before closing with concluding remarks. 2. The Sustainability Quandary Sustainability is a cross cutting subject. It includes environmental, economic and social sustainability (Goodland, 1995, Goodland and Daly, 1996). Social sustainability is concerned with poverty reduction. Economic sustainability focuses on the provision of physical inputs, both renewable and non-renewable, into the production system (Goodland, 1995). Environmental sustainability is concerned with the preservation 2012 2nd International Conference on Environment and BioScience IPCBEE vol.44 (2012) © (2012) IACSIT Press, Singapore DOI: 10.7763/IPCBEE. 2012. V44. 22 105