Introduction

The term sustainable development was popularized in the 1987 report of the World Commission on Environment and Development (Brundtland Commission), Our Common Future, although its first general use was in 1980 by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature in World Strategy: Living Resource Conservation for Sustainable Development. Since then sustainability has become a principal benchmark against which economic development policies are assessed by national governments, development assistance agencies, and NGOs. Although the adoption of sustainability as a benchmark for development has been hampered because of ambiguities in definition and interpretation, there is a consensus that sustainable development implies an active role for government in efficient and equitable management of natural and environmental resources. This is not a totally new idea. Pigou, writing in 1932, states, “It is the clear duty of Government, which is the trustee for unborn generations as well as for its present citizens, to watch over, and if need be, by legislative enactment, to defend the exhaustible natural resources of this country from rash and reckless spoilation.” At one level, this active role fits uneasily with another major trend in the past two decades – deregulation and privatization – in which the driving force for development is an increased role for the private sector and decreased government involvement. At a more basic level, however, both sustainability and the freeing up of private markets seek greater efficiency, although sustainable development stresses intertemporal efficiency and tempers this with a strong dose of equity concerns.