ABSTRACT
Questions regarding the fostering of sustainable development will also be seen to lie in both the natural and the human environment. For example, many countries of what can be termed the developing world are in the tropics. The tropical ecosystem is a fragile environment that is easily disturbed (see Gupta, 1998) and sets boundary conditions on development, particularly in agriculture, which are often quite different to those of temperate regions. Large sections of the populations of these countries live in physical environments in which securing basic needs is extremely problematic and which may even be detrimental to human health. Indeed, premature deaths and rising numbers of people in poverty are characteristics of the human environment in many areas of the developing world (to an extent not seen outside the region), which further combine to create particular challenges and opportunities of sustainable development.
