Sustainable development became a ne

Sustainable development became a new rhetorical orthodoxy for those interested in conservation and development at the UN Earth Summit in Rio in 1992.
Since this time it has become increasingly acceptable to restrict the debates on
rural development in the Third World to that which is ‘sustainable’ in the eyes of
a milieu of NGOs, environmentalists and ecocentric academics. The Rio process
also promised increased development aid for the Third World, increases that
have not been forthcoming – aid budgets have in almost all cases fallen as a
percentage of GDP (Jordan & Voisey, 1998). Surely a demand for a substantial
increase in development aid to the Third World should be seen as logically and
morally prior to a debate about sustainable living? Surely what the Third World
needs is a massive transfer of resources – development on a massive scale