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Abstract
This article is for the special issue ‘Multidisciplinary perspectives on sustainable development’ in the International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology and presents an introduction to the topics and summarizes nine accepted contributions in the special issue. Although the concept of sustainable development (SD) has a short history, hundreds of definitions of SD have been proposed, representing multidisciplinary understandings of approaches to SD. We use a chart in the form of pyramid to illustrate a four-dimensional concept of SD that involves environment, economy, society and institutions. This chart also shows an SD evolution process that ranges from principles, to approaches and to applications. Each contribution in the special issue has a unique position in the four-dimensional, three-level SD scheme.