Abstract

After more than a decade of intensive discussion, the concept of »sustainable development still remains rather vague. However, a broad consent exists that sustainability implies intragenerational as well as intergenerational equity. Therefore, a policy for sustainability has to go beyond pareto-superiority and to face both queastions of distribution and of scale. This reveals that at the core of sustainability ethical problems are involved. Although the notion of sustainability cannot be used as a concrete recipe, as Karl Homann correctly observes, it has tobe clarified in ordertobe a useful regulative idea.