For more than three decades, and with particular intensity in the 80’s, starts a process with no precedent on the global reflection driven by United Nations, and followed by the European Union, to address the issue of the planet’s sustainability and sustainable development as one of the great challenges that the XXI century face. The publication of the Brundtland Report (WCED, 1987) represents a milestone in the process offering a definition of sustainable development until today reference in the debate. In this article we review the positions and arguments for and those that are critical of this definition, to shed light on a concept in continuous state of definition at the same time pose the questions to be resolved in a debate no at all concluded.