ABSTRACT
There are important questions as to whether it is necessary or desirable to think that every country or region should be strictly sustainable, or whether every country is potentially sustainable. The concept of the nation state has real and important social, political and economic consequences. It has, for example, very significant effects for the way in which resources are allocated and used. The biological and geological processes that shape the Earth and which result in the distribution of both renewable and nonrenewable natural resources, however, do not observe political frontiers. Given the very varied size and location of countries, the uneven distribution of resources and population, the disparate stages of development of the various nations and the various historical events that have resulted in current borders, it is inherently unlikely that all countries could be equally sustainable.
