The sustainable development concept has crystallized in time, over several decades as part of international elaborated scientific debates and has gained political valency in the context of globalization.
In recent history, the first signal of the fact that the economic and social evolutions of the states of the world and of mankind as a whole can no longer be separated from the consequences of human activity on the natural environment was made in the 1972 Report of the Club of Rome, which states that "If current world population growth, industrialization, environmental contamination, food production and resource depletion are maintained, this planet will reach the limits of growth over the next 100 years. The most likely result would be a sudden uncontrollable drop in both population and industrial capacity.‖
The European Union Strategy for Sustainable Development aims to be a catalyst for policy-makers and public opinion in order to change behavior in European society, to actively involve decision-makers, public and private, as well as citizens in the implementation and monitoring sustainable development tasks.