ABSTRACT
The completion and launch of the World Conservation strategy did 'more to put conservation on the world's agenda than any other event'. 1 Whether they acknowledged it as the source of their inspiration or not, the world environmental movement from 1980 right up to 1992, when the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development met in Rio de Janeiro, was debating the central message of the WCS. The message? That development to ease human poverty and deprivation and give all people a decent quality oflife is a dominant imperative, but that unless development cares for the renewable natural resources of the planet it will not endure.
