"Folk knowledge” as an expression of “folk wisdom” will be the focus of our research presentation. This will be related to our exploration of how “sustainable development” is a central and potentially bottom-up value which can be re-defined by supposedly unsophisticated masses communicating their values “upwards” to ascending levels of societal power systems. We are here continuing our research about sustainable development that has been published, e.g., in the co-authored book, Some Problems and Possibilities for Sustainable Development, Sankowski-Harris-Hernik, Agricultural University in Krakow Press, 2016; and in the multi-author, multi-country research volume co-edited by us (Sankowski and Harris), with two Polish colleagues, Jozef Hernik and Maria Walczycka, Cultural Heritage-Possibilities for Land-Centered Societal Development, Springer, 2022. In these volumes, a concept and value of folk knowledge plays a major role. Some virtues of traditional agricultural practices are identified, in different areas around the world, including locales in Central and Eastern Europe, and in Southern Africa. The idea of folk knowledge and associated ideas about cultural heritage can function as correctives to thoughtless veneration of a supposedly more technologically sophisticated future. This approach can be extended by returning to one key document in the history of global statements about sustainable development, the Brundtland Report, Our Common Future, 1987. Without our objecting to the idea of the present generation’s obligations in justice to future generations, and the Brundtland Report emphasis on new technology in development, we want also to re-emphasize and amplify aspects of sustainable development that focus on folk knowledge/wisdom, heritage, traditions. This re-working of Brundtland will have important implications for much more recent accounts of sustainable development.