During the last century, many radical changes and innovations have taken place. In particular, during the last five decades, there have been unprecedented advances in development and industrialisation with dramatic economic and technological changes. Such changes have resulted in positive impacts (increase of economic activities, improvements in agriculture, access to energy, and rise of individual average income) but also negative ones (fast population growth, overconsumption, loss of biodiversity, greenhouse gas emissions, and climate change). A number of milestones have been reached since the first definition of sustainability appeared in 1713 by Hans Carl von Carlowitz to reach the current state of sustainable development (SD), e.g. Our Common Future, the Rio Conference, the Johannesburg Conference, and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As we trace this journey, a number of sustainability perspectives can be found: (1) central focus, (2) substitutability of natural capital, (3) constituency, (4) trends, and (5) scope. These perspectives show that SD is a broad, complex, controversial, open-ended, and challenging notion that is open to different, and in many cases mutually exclusive, definitions and interpretations. This has created much controversy, especially since such characteristics makes sustainability difficult to implement or be of practical value. In many cases, SD is considered to address only the environmental dimension. In other cases, it focuses on the three “pillars” (economic, environmental, and social). For the purposes of this book, SD encompasses four dimensions (economic, environmental, social, and time), as well as their interrelations. SD and sustainability have been used interchangeably, but they are inherently different. SD is the process by which we achieve sustainability, and sustainability is an ideal dynamic state. The terms are also contextual; at the institutional and governmental levels SD is preferred, whereas in the organisational level, sustainability is more widely used.