On the edge of sustainable development: A forestry understanding of the ideas of ‘sustainability’ and ‘posterity’[A la lisière du développement durable : Une lecture forestière des idées de « soutenabilité » et de « postérité »]

This paper presented preliminary investigations into the origins of the idea of ‘sustainability', and its connotations before the famous meaning we have come to know it by since the publication of the Brundltland Report in 1987, as ‘the satisfaction of the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs' (Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987, p. 26). Many authors agree that the conceptual origins of sustainability can be traced back to the field of forest management in Europe (see Bartenstein, 2005; Du Pisani, 2006; Grober, 2007; Radkau, 2008, Schmithüsen, 2013; Brüeggemeier, 2019). While the idea of conserving wood resources in order to maintain the benefits for ‘posterity' or ‘future generations' may seem forward-looking, the teleological temptation to read into it the premises of sustainable development is to be questioned. The main conclusion of this re-reading is that the theorisation of sustainability as a balance between deforestation and reforestation in the history of European forestry is above all linked to the economisation of forests rather than to the ecologisation of these areas.