ABSTRACT
The 1992 'Earth Summit' in Rio de Janeiro was undoubtedly a major watershed in the development of environmental policy - globally, nationally and locally, and during the five years since Rio, environmental policy, or at least the vocabulary of environmental policy has been transformed. The rhetoric of Rio, and in particular the notion of sustainable development inherited from Brundtland has been widely promulgated and enthusiastically adopted, particularly in some countries of the North. The concepts of capacity building, empowerment, partnership and participation which are central to the rhetoric of Rio, have made little impact on local environmental policy in Britain to date, and the likelihood is that, for the foreseeable future they will continue to remain ideals rather than reality. As the Town and Country Planning Association has so rightly argued, Britain desperately needs a system of environmental planning - an interlinked series of national, regional and local plans which are aimed at securing environmental sustainability.
