The current situation calls for wider intellectual understanding, deeper moral commitments and more effective policy measures. Without them, a half century of considerable progress could be undermined. Worse, all people of the world will live on a deteriorating planet, and will increasingly lose the ability to shape their destiny in a coherent way. The charter of UN makes possible a maturing elaboration of the crucial idea of sustainable development, but it has been left to us in the last decades to the twentieth century to try to bring the concept of development of fulfilment.
