The global community is coming togetherunder the auspices of the CBD, after delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, to address the “silent catastrophe” of biodiversity decline (CBD, 2018). It is anticipated that the COP 15 to the CBD will meet in Montreal, Canada from 7-19 December 2022 to finalise and adopt a new global biodiversity deal– the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF). As part of a series of briefings by the African Centre for Biodiversity leading up to the Convention on Biological Diversity's (CBD) Fifteenth Conference of the Parties (COP 15), this briefing looks at how the sustainability discourse has changed over the years in response to multiple and overlapping social and ecological crises, such as the climate crisis, and how sustainable development, in particular, has changed. The briefing argues that sustainable development has become more and more embedded in neoliberal market rationality and biased toward economic development. This has stopped the fundamental search for systemic alternatives to our current, completely unsustainable production and consumption patterns and their structural causes.