Success Quote by Maurice Strong

Maurice Strong’s line reads like a tautology, but it’s really a power move: a bid to redefine the scoreboard. In one sentence, “development” stops being shorthand for GDP spikes, ribbon cuttings, and megaprojects and becomes contingent on durability. If it collapses ecosystems, exhausts water tables, or locks in dirty infrastructure, it doesn’t merely have “side effects” - it forfeits the name.

The strategic brilliance is in the borrowed authority. Strong isn’t just making the claim himself; he’s ventriloquizing it through the Prime Minister of India, a leader of a country long pressured to “catch up” via the same carbon-intensive playbook used by richer nations. That matters. It reframes sustainability from a luxury preference of affluent environmentalists into a sovereignty argument for the Global South: we can’t call it progress if it makes us more vulnerable, more import-dependent, more disaster-prone.

Co-chairing the meeting signals another layer of subtext: Strong is operating inside elite convening spaces where language becomes policy. The phrase is engineered to travel - it’s succinct enough for communiques, elastic enough for diplomats, and morally loaded enough to shame opponents without naming them. It also smuggles in a demand for accountability across time. By insisting on “sustainable” as the entry ticket, Strong is trying to close the escape hatch where leaders can claim success today and outsource the bill to future citizens.