Definition of Sustainable Development

Sustainable development is a process of human adaptation to a planetary environment that incorporates the following boundary conditions:

Biogeophysical

1. Substances and materials from the planetary crust are not removed at a rate greater than planetary processes replace them, or the rate of substitution of a renewable alternative.

2. That substances produced by humans are, when no longer used by humans, not accumulating in the environment. That any substances or materials released into the environment can breakdown into non-toxic components. Non-toxic means that a plant or animal cell can metabolize it, without disruption of its nominal functions.

3. The productive capacity of biotic systems are not degraded by human processes. Harvesting of living materials is at a rate no greater than their rate of regeneration.

4. Delegation of human production and infrastructure functions that can be performed by other living things, to other living things when possible.

5. That any material or substance produced by manufacturing that is not part of a product be a feedstock for another human process.

6. The design of all products and services uses life cycle analysis and full cost accounting. No externalization to society and the environment of any costs.

7. Birth control.

Governance

8. Governance structures designed to:

a. maximize diversity in thought
b. Reduce pseudospeciation*
c. Decouple status competition from material objects

9. That economic processes be equitable for the people involved.

10. Allenby Principles

a. A system of problem solving with increasing or stable returns, or diminishing returns that can be financed with energy subsidies of assured supply, cost, and quality.
b. The solution space for design is not bounded by simplification or ideology.
c. Evaluation of design solutions considers scale, scaling, and emergent events across foreseeable time-lines.
d. Technological implementation is evaluated across categories and foreseeable time-lines, prior to roll-out.
e. Design objectives are defined, and metrics created to measure success and early identification of feedback in the system.
f. Solutions are resilient and incorporate redundancies, and are not irreversible.

* pseudospeciation.
The tendency of social phenotypes to behave towards other phenotypes of their specie, that are not of the same variant or otherwise differ in tags (as in contingent altruism) as if those that differ are not the same specie. Examples in Humans include nationality, ethnic identity, ethnic hatred, "race", racism, religious group, etc.

Sources

The definition I am using is in some part mine, but primarily from other sources: The Hanover Principles, The Natural Step, Herman Daly's Rules, The Bellagio Principles, Joseph Tainter, Braden Allenby, and basic science.
Numbers 1,2,3 & 9 are based primarily on The Natural Step.
Number 4 & 7 are from me.
The "Allenby Principles" are from the work of Branden Allenby.
Number 8 (a ,b &c) are from me, (the Creative Instability section of Air Water Ground )

Assumption(s)

"Boundary Condition" is a concept borrowed from mathematics. In this use of the term, a condition imposed on a solution so as to obtain the desired outcome. It could also be viewed as what bounds a solution space, so as to derive a range of possible solutions to further analyze and choose from. In this case, the desired outcome, is that humans survive as a species (or daughter species) for as long as possible.
" It is also assumed that space/time, and all environments are in a state of constant change.

Jay Moynihan