ITHACA, N.Y. -- When Gro Harlem Brundtland talks about sustainability, people listen. As head of the World Commission on Environment and Development, she helped coin the term "sustainable development" in the organization's landmark 1987 report, "Our Common Future." For Brundtland, sustainable development is not simply about environment, but is interrelated with poverty, gender inequality and disease, which are barriers to lasting global equity. The report helped define sustainable development as satisfying present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. 

"There is no common future unless we invest in people, and that means all people," she said on April 28, addressing a packed house in Call Alumni Auditorium in Kennedy Hall on the Cornell University campus. She spoke on "The Global Significance of Sustainable Development," presenting the 2005 Jill and Ken Iscol Distinguished Environmental Lectureship. Brundtland was the first woman prime minister of Norway and its youngest ever when she took office at age 41 in the mid-1980s, serving until the mid-1990s. A medical doctor with a master's degree in public health, she also served as director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO) from 1998 to 2003. 

Looking back on her powerhouse career, Brundtland pointed to 2003 as a monumental year. While she was at WHO, the battle against Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epitomized the kind of integrated and collaborative response that she thinks will be required to battle issues such as poverty and AIDS. When SARS first struck, it was undiagnosable, untreatable and fatal to one in six who became infected. She described how scientists around the world put aside differences, rolled up their sleeves and got to work. The collaboration of governments and their resources, researchers and health workers led to identifying and containing the disease in four short months. 

"There was global mobilization to fight a global threat," Brundtland said. "We acted, and we acted together." This type of multilateralism, she said, will be necessary to address issues such as the poverty and population growth that limit options for future generations. 

She observed that the human race faces one of its most difficult challenges with population growth and its links to poverty and gender inequalities. World population reached 6.1 billion in 2000 and is expected to reach 9 billion by 2050. Most of this rise will occur in poor, developing countries where population pressures will impact the environment. Poverty forces people to cut down trees for wood and to create fields and overuse farmlands to reap greater yields. Educating women, Brundtland said, stands out as the most valuable measure to limit extreme rates of population growth. 

"Our Common Future" cited research that showed fertility rates fall when women's employment, education and involvement outside of the home or farm rise. Educated women tend to marry later and have fewer children. In 1987 these were radical notions, while today they are widely accepted, Brundtland said. Still, while global literacy rates went up overall in the 1990s, among the illiterate, women outnumber men 2-to-1. Brundtland spoke of religious and cultural beliefs and attitudes in many countries that give boys preferences, especially in regard to education. "The interaction of gender inequality and poverty is the greatest limiting factor to human development," she said, pointing out that 70 percent of the world's poor are women.

Women also account for 58 percent of those with HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. She said rape, coercion and abuse resulting from gender inequality play a big role in the high AIDS rates among women. 

She said research agendas in richer countries must focus more on diseases of the poor, such as AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. While northern countries have made progress in transferring technology, providing AIDS drugs at lower prices and increasing AIDS spending, the efforts need to continue, she said. 

At the end of her talk, Brundtland spoke about the relevance of threats. She said AIDS was as serious a problem as terrorism, that small arms were as dangerous as weapons of mass destruction. 

"There are no sanctuaries in the rich countries," she said. She commented that everyone suffers equally if ultraviolet radiation increases due to a damaged ozone layer or if sea levels rise and climate changes. "We cannot pick and choose threats," she said. "In this country, you can't just focus on terrorism and not poverty, because the rest of the world will not listen."

In pointing out the interconnectedness of all things, she said it was in everyone's best interest for richer countries in the north to work with the poorer countries of the south. 

"All are entitled to freedom from fear, and what threatens one threatens all," she said.