ABSTRACT
This chapter presents some key aspects of discourse on sustainable development documents prepared by national as well as regional agencies. It argues that governance seems to be a pre-condition for sustainable development. Higgins and Lawrence claim that the idea of governance has been based on the rejection of the conceptual trinity of market-state-civil society' that has been dominant in sociological analysis. The concept of governance has been brought into public discourse in Poland along with the consecutive steps in the process of integration into the European Union (EU). The CORASON project focused on analysing the significance of various types of knowledge used by different actors in the process of formulating and implementing policies that might contribute to the sustainable development of particular rural communities. The idea of sustainable resource management seems to be quite openly present in the scientific knowledge and in administrative/managerial knowledge carried out by regional authorities.
