ABSTRACT
The goal of sustainability has remained prominent and yet elusive since the start of the international development era. This elusiveness has a few reasons. One is a tendency to view sustainability as a “product” of project activities. In addition, too many projects wait until their final phases to begin planning for sustainability. The present essay explores the literature on sustainability and draws on the author’s decades of experience to explore these two issues. It argues that sustainability (as well as scalability—the extension of project activities to new geographical areas) is much more about process than product.
