The operational designing of Environmentally Sustainable Economic Development (ESED) emerges as an urgent and demanding task. Even though ESED has paved the way for thought-provoking and constructive scientific dialogue, appeal for designing an operational ESED is still lagging behind the needs of contemporary societies, leaving much to be desired. With this in mind, the present paper will aim at delineating principles for the operational application of ESED. First, the preservation of crucial properties of environmental functions and ecosystems, emerges as a prime condition of ESED. The second condition concerns the provision of the economic process with sufficient natural inputs; in this context, the paper intends to trace certain operational tenets governing the use of natural resources. Finally, the appropriate institutional settings for the operational design of ESED are traced.