Introduction

1. Introduction

2. • The last few years have seen a dramatic
• transformation in the environment-development
• debate.

3. • The question being asked is no longer
• "Do development and environmental concerns
• contradict each other?" but " H o w can sustain-
• able development be achieved?" All of a sudden
• the phrase Sustainable Development (SD) has
• become pervasive.

4. • SD has become the watch-
• word for international aid agencies, the jargon of
• development planners, the theme of conferences
• and learned papers, and the slogan of develop-
• mental and environmental activists.

5. • It appears to
• have gained the broad-based support that earlier
• development concepts such as "ecodevelopment"
• lacked, and is poised to become the developmen-
• tal paradigm of the 1990s.