ABSTRACT
The well-being of humanity depends upon the wealth of goods and services that natural resources provide. Yet, as the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation (JPOI) acknowledges, ‘human activities are having an increasing impact on the integrity of ecosystems’ [24]. We continue to overuse the natural resource base rather than work in balance with it. The United Nations Environment Programme's (UNEP's) well-respected Global Environment Outlook 3 (UNEP, 2002), published in the run-up to the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), noted that ‘[p]overty and excessive consumption … continue to put enormous pressure on the environment. The unfortunate result is that sustainable development remains largely theoretical for the majority of the world's population’ (UNEP, 2002).
