Sustainable Development: National Aspirations, Local Implementation

Following on from the 'Earth Summit' held in Rio in 1992 and the resulting Agenda 21, the key to successful implementation was believed to be that each country would choose its own solutions to the problems that needed to be overcome in order to move to a more sustainable path of development. This book examines the discontinuities that exist between national aspirations and local implementation of sustainable development strategies. It compares what is happening on the ground with formal national environmental action plans, sectoral plans and less formalized policies. It examines whether local knowledge, aspirations and actions are undermining national aspirations or whether they are being ignored at the national level with detrimental consequences to sustainable development. Using case studies from Zimbabwe, Botswana, Peru, South Africa, Burma, Namibia, the Caribbean, Indonesia, Tunisia and Brazil, the book compares progress, or lack of progress, between different sectors, cultures, regions and resources throughout the developing world, situating these within a global context. In doing so, it draws lessons from those cases which appear to be experiencing positive moves towards sustainability and sees whether common frameworks exist which point to the possibility that good practice may be transferable from one milieu to another.