Conclusion

Abstract

There is broad consensus that sustainable development represents the search for convergence of environmental, social, cultural and political values in development strategies. Furthermore, it is generally agreed that this search involves such considerations as achieving equity within and between generations, and involving people as directly as possible. However, as the contributions in this book demonstrate, sustainable development is a process and there is no absolute state at which we can aim, although there may be some absolute imperatives related to the biophysical environment. This is because all of the human components of sustainability are dynamic, subject to change and necessarily involve many uncertainties. Sustainable development has been presented, therefore, as a social construction that vanes both temporally and geographically.