Next Steps

People who are sceptical of the Mauritius modelling exercises have pointed out rightly that the specific case may have little relevance for sustainable development planning in general. The problem lies in the simplicity of Mauritius. It is a small island state, with a relatively simple set of conditions. Air pollution is no problem, the full economy can be captured quite well with 15 sectors, and the entire country can be treated as one region. Even land use is sufficiently simple to be captured by merely five categories. Less often recognized by sceptics, but probably of great importance, is the lack of an indigenous population, which precludes the conflict between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples that we see in so many areas. ¹² Another type of simplicity arises from the open, shared character of political leadership on the island. That the new popularly elected leaders chose to share power with the wealthy sugar interests greatly reduced the potential for class conflicts that would have complicated the situation. For all these reasons, sceptics have argued that the Mauritian experience is not really relevant to other cases, where there are far greater complexities.