ABSTRACT
Questions related to environment and development remain topical more than two decades after the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. 1 Both national and international actors in governmental and non-governmental fi elds, as well as in academia, are searching for insights into how to advance and effectively incorporate sustainable development and environmental concerns into development agendas. Exacerbating these challenges, climate change has emerged as a pre-eminent challenge to sustainable development and people’s livelihoods. Environmental phenomena are complex and change is often non-linear. The ‘tipping points’ that may result in dramatic irreversible change lead to the application of the ‘precautionary principle’. When scientifi c knowledge or consensus is lacking, the burden of proof that an action is not harmful shifts to its proponents.
