ABSTRACT
Since the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992, national governments throughout the world have struggled to live up to the commitments made. Instead of implementing policies and programmes aimed at fostering processes of sustainable development, they treat the ‘Rio process’ as a burden to be avoided by waiting for the results of international negotiations. Numerous obstacles and much resistance have been encountered, not simply from external interest groups but from within administrations themselves, in many cases hindered by a lack of political will and bureaucratic inertia.
