Environment, growth and development

Is sustainable development the answer to environmental decline and development failure? In 1987 the Brundtland Commission concluded that sustainable development would integrate environmental concerns into mainstream policies, shifting focus from weak and peripheral environmental management to the socio-economic policy sources of environmental impacts. The 1992 Earth Summit confirmed this approach, endorsing integrated environmental and economic accounting by policy makers. `Green accounting' is now being implemented to formulate national policies for sustainable development. Environment,…