Page 1TitlesI The dilemma of sustainability Sustainable development Page 2Page 3TitlesPower without meaning? Page 4TitlesThe discourse of development Page 5TitlesThe challenge of poverty Page 6Page 7TitlesII The challenge of environmental change Page 8TitlesThe dilemma of sustainability 15 Page 9TitlesOutline of the book Page 10TitlesI The dilemma of sustainability Sustainable development Page 11Page 12TitlesPower without meaning? Page 13TitlesThe discourse of development Page 14TitlesThe challenge of poverty Page 15Page 16TitlesII The challenge of environmental change Page 17TitlesThe dilemma of sustainability 15 Page 18TitlesOutline of the book Page 19Page 20TitlesFurther reading Web sources . , i Page 21Titles13 Green development: Claiming sustainability Page 22TitlesAdapting for sustainability Page 23TitlesResistance to development Page 24Page 25Page 26Titles~ Sustainability and civil society Page 27TitlesGreen development: reformism or radicalism? Page 28Page 29TitlesTo my father H.C. Adams, 1917-1987 COLORADO STATE Page 30Page 31TitlesFurther reading Web sources . , i/1xxvi Abbreviations and acronymsWMOWRIWWFWorld Meteorological OrganisationWorld Resources InstituteWorld Wide Fund for Nature (formerly World Wildlife Fund)IThe dilemma of sustainability'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make a word mean so manydifferent things.' 'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master- that's all.'(Lewis Carroll 1872)Sustainable developmentIt is a familiar cliche that actions speak louder than words, but this denies thepower of words, and the ideas of those who make and spread them.AsJonathanCrush (1995) notes in Power of Development, the words written and spokenabout development, the 'discourse of development', have enormous power.Development action is driven forwards by texts ranging from humanitariantracts to national development plans. These portray the world in particularways, often in crisis of some kind, and almost always as requiring managementand intervention by the development planner (ibid.). These texts also deter-mine who has the authority to act and establish the basis of knowledge thatframes such action. The words we use. to talk about development, and theway our arguments construct the world, are usually seen as 'self-evident andunworthy of attention' (ibid., p. 3), but they are not: in development nothingis self-evident, evenifmany choices or options remain hidden from view.Poverty, hunger, disease and debt have been familiar words within the lexiconof development ever since formal development planning began, following theSecond World War. In the past decade they have been joined by another,sustainability. 'Sustainable development' has become one of the most promi-nent phrases in development discourse - indeed,Ulesuggested it was 'poisedto become the development paradigm of the 1990s' (1991, p. 607), and inmany ways it did. The capacity of the phrase to restructure developmentdiscourse and to reorganise development practice, a sure reflection of its power,will be discussed below.Where did the new phrase come from? Its usage grew from small and atfirst unpromising roots, as will be explored in Chapter 3. Suffice it to say herethat the concept began to be widely adopted following the 1972 United NationsConference on the Human Environment in Stockholm (see Chapter 3).2 Green DevelopmentSubsequently, under the label 'ecodevelopment', the concept was taken up bya number of authors (e.g. Riddell 1981, Sachs 1979, 1980, Glaeser 1984b).Sustainable development became the central concept in the World ConservationStrategy published in 1980 (IUCN 1980), and the foundation of the reportof the World Commission on Environment and Development seven years later(Brundtland 1987). When it was launched in April 1988, the World Commissionon Environment and Development claimed that its report set out a 'globalagenda for change'.Itwas an agenda that now began to command attentionin the core of the development universe: in a major shift of culture and policy,the President of the World Bank spoke in May 1988 of the links betweenecology and sound economics in a major statement of the Bank's policyon the environment (Hopper 1988). Such 'greening' of development thinkingwas a characteristic feature of the 1980s (e.g. Harrison 1987, Conroy andLitvinoff 1988).Sustainable development's place in the discourse of development was assuredin the early 1990s when it became the driving concept behind the UnitedNations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio in 1992(UNCED, or the 'Earth Summit'). This was attended by representatives ofover 170 governments, most of whom made some kind of public proclama-tion of support for environmentally sensitive economic development. UNCEDwas also a forum for a vast range of non-governmental organisations, many ofthem from the First World, that strove both to capture media headlines andto influence intergovernmental debate through the parallel Global Forum(Holmberg et at. 1993, Chatterjee and Finger 1994). A vast media circusdanced attendance, and the conference was thus promoted as a global event,although there were as many column inches decrying the glaring contradic-tion of privileged delegates and the urban poor of Rio de Janeiro's favelas asthere were discussing sustainability, or analysing the political economy of inter-national environmental diplomacy. The media had built up hopes that UNCEDwould bring about a new environmental world order, and once the razzmatazzhad died down, many commentators reported that the chance had been blown.But what was going on behind the endlessdrydiplomatic debates about textsin conference rooms and the windy rhetoric of politicians pursuing the evanes-cent Green vote, and how realistic were hopes that the conference would bringabout a change in business as usual? What was this 'sustainable development'that was on the table at Rio? What kind of environmentalist critique of devel-opment did ideas of sustainalmity represent?Concern about environment and· development in the Third World has beenan important feature of debate about development studies since the late 1970s,and even then awareness of the environmental aspects of development was notnew, whether among scholars, practitioners or participants in development.What was new in the last decade of the twentieth century was the scope andsophistication of critiques of the environmental dimensions of development inpractice, and the high profile