ABSTRACT
The notion of environmental sustainability as a fundamental aspect of development policy continues to be marked by tensions and ambiguities that reflect the fraught relationship between two of the most seductive concepts (and rhetorical tools) of our time. Can real development ever allow for real environmental sustainability? How do you pin down slippery concepts such as "development" and "sustainability"? And how do these definitions inform policy? Perhaps inherent in these questions and tensions is the realization that any conception of fundamental connections between environmental protection and the developmental process is potentially oxymoronic; at the least, it implies a hierarchy where the former has lexical priority over the latter. Yet, realizations of contradictions in policy goals have rarely stood in the way of policy makers or institutions. Indeed, it is this fuzziness-the shades of gray that soften the sharp contours between these two intersecting ideologies-that allows organizations such as the World Bank to pay homage to both.
