ABSTRACT
What is most striking about the concept of ‘sustainable development’ today is how ubiquitous it has become and consequently how various and potentially contestable its meanings have proved to be. Certainly there is no shortage of critics of the concept. Michael redclift’s (2005) review article carries the revealing title: ‘Sustainable Development (1987–2005): An Oxymoron Comes of Age’. What impresses Timothy Luke (2005, p. 228) is how ‘the intellectual emptiness of sustainable development has clung to it from the moment of its official articulation by the World Commission on the Environment and Development’.
