If we are prepared to overlook the lack of semantic clarity and confusion of competing terms, it can be argued that the ‘three-pillar’ conception of ‘sustainability’ (or ‘sustainable development’ Footnote 1) is a dominant interpretation within the literature.
Whilst attractive for their simplicity, the meaning conveyed by these diagrams and the wider ‘pillar’ conception itself is often unclear, hampering its ability to be coherently operationalised. Alternative manifestations include the three depicted visually as nested concentric circles or literal ‘pillars’, or independent of visual aids as distinct categories for sustainability goals or indicators. This graphic is found in various forms as a descriptor of ‘sustainability’ within academic literature, policy documentation, business literature, and online, and whilst often described as a ‘Venn diagram’, it commonly lacks the strict logical properties associated with such a construction. This tripartite description is often, but not always, presented in the form of three intersecting circles of society, environment, and economy, with sustainability being placed at the intersection, as shown in Fig. It should be noted here that these competing terms are primarily used interchangeably, and our preference for ‘pillars’ is largely arbitrary.
encompassing economic, social, and environmental (or ecological) factors or ‘goals’. 2015), ‘stool legs’ (Dawe and Ryan 20), ‘aspects’ (Goodland 1995 Lozano 2008 Tanguay et al. 2016), ‘dimensions’ (Stirling 1999 Lehtonen 2004 Carter and Moir 2012 Mori and Christodoulou 2012), ‘components’ (Du Pisani 2006 Zijp et al. One particularly prevalent description of ‘sustainability’ employs three interconnected ‘pillars’ (Basiago 1999 Pope et al. Yet despite this, ‘sustainability’ remains an open concept with myriad interpretations and context-specific understanding. 2001 Komiyama and Takeuchi 2006 Schoolman et al. The last 20 years have witnessed a surge in publications on ‘sustainability’, to the extent where ‘sustainability science’ is often seen as a distinct field (Kates et al. The absence of such a theoretically solid conception frustrates approaches towards a theoretically rigorous operationalisation of ‘sustainability’. This is thought to be in part due to the nature of the sustainability discourse arising from broadly different schools of thought historically. Nowhere have we found a theoretically rigorous description of the three pillars. The conceptualisation of three pillars seems to predate this, however. The popular three circles diagram appears to have been first presented by Barbier (Environ Conserv 14:101, doi: 10.1017/s0376892900011449, 1987), albeit purposed towards developing nations with foci which differ from modern interpretations. From this we find that there is no single point of origin of this three-pillar conception, but rather a gradual emergence from various critiques in the early academic literature of the economic status quo from both social and ecological perspectives on the one hand, and the quest to reconcile economic growth as a solution to social and ecological problems on the part of the United Nations on the other.
With a view of identifying the genesis and theoretical foundations of this conception, this paper reviews and discusses relevant historical sustainability literature. The three-pillar conception of (social, economic and environmental) sustainability, commonly represented by three intersecting circles with overall sustainability at the centre, has become ubiquitous.
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