Broadly speaking 'sustainable development' (in its radical endeavour - to address inequality/poverty) became torn apart, diluted and re-interpreted during the rise of neoliberalism during the 1980s. That is, when the Brundtland Commission published Our Common Future.
Even the latest Dictionary of Human Geography (5th Ed) there are two very different entries for 'sustainable development' and 'sustainability', both of which remain critical and nevertheless reflecting the inconclusive nature of both terms.
However, there is a call for re-radicalising the wider and deeper ideas initially drawn-up during the 1980s. This was when global society started to come to terms with the idea of several very serious international environmental problems.
Nick

See, e.g.
P. Sarre (2009) Governing the international economy: growth, inequality and environment. pp 363-402 in W.Brown, C.Aradau and J.Budds (eds) Earth in crisis: environmental issues and responses. The Open University, Milton Keynes

"Both changes in housing finance and the changing context for national and international environmental politics owed a great deal to the major reorganisation of international finance over the last thirty years, so my most recent interest has been trying to understand how the new system has come about, how it works and what its consequences have been. This led me to be very critical of the system, something that proved easy to talk about at conferences (including a paper called 'Neoliberalism, an experiment that failed' at the April 2008 AAAG), but harder to get published, though I have succeeded with Geography Compass. The change in what can be said since the 'credit crunch' has been truly revelatory, but the $64 trillion question is how the system will be reconstructed over the coming months and years."

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From: Jonathan Cloke <[log in to unmask]>
To: CRIT-GEOG-FORUM <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sun, 18 Sep 2011 21:18
Subject: Re: New proposals for school geography