ABSTRACT
Both ‘sustainable development’ and ‘environmental management’ have become buzz-words in development policy circles, but the discussion surrounding these terms pays scant attention to the way in which people in developing countries participate in the management of their resource base and, through their participation, help to transform the practice of environmental management. This chapter, in addressing these issues, seeks to correct two kinds of bias which exist in much of the sustainable development debate. First, there is a bias towards ‘managerialism’ rather than resource management, stemming from a top-down approach to local-level development. Second, there is a tendency to treat ‘sustainable development’ as merely a variation of the prevailing Northern, economic-centred world view of development problems, and to see sustainability as a goal which can be attained through making adjustments to the standard development models.
