There have always been concerns about the development process and degradation of the environment throughout the history of humankind.  Although natural resources were considered infinite by many "development drivers", a number of scholars perceived the conflict between progress and environment. In Brazil, between 1786 and 1898 "various scholars thought deeply and consistently about the problem of environmental destruction", as stated in the broad study by José Augusto Padua (Um Sopro de Destruição. Pensamento Político e Crítica Ambiental no Brasil Escravagista (1786-1888); Zahar pub. 2002.).

The stance taken by José Bonifacio de Andrada e Silva, patriarch of independence, is emblematic in his denouncing Southern Right whale hunting off the Brazilian coast.  In 1779 he published through the Lisbon Royal Academy of Sciences a report on the cruelty and destruction against that species.  Joaquim Nabuco, Euclides da Cunha, Manoel de Araújo Porto Alegre were also very much aware of the environmental issue. Other distinguished but lesser known Brazilian scholars, such as: Alexandre Rodrigues Ferreira (1756-1815), the Amazon; Manoel Arruda da Camara (1752-1811), Pernambuco; Baltazar da Silva, Lisbon (1761-1849); Manuel Ferreira da Camara Bittencourt e Sá (1761-1835), Bahia, and José Gregorio de Morais Navarro and José Vieira Couto (1752-1827), Minas Gerais.  Not only those scholars but also farmers, judges, senators and journalists have left records about their concern for what today we call environmental depletion and, consequently, sustainability.  Nevertheless, only in the last third of the 20th century the doctrine of sustainable development and its definition were created. The term is now formally used in the Brundtland Report - Our Common Future, the result of long hard work by the World Committee on Environment and Development in the 1980s.