ABSTRACT
This chapter examines a wide range of academic and policy writing on sustainable development, attempting in the process to offer a critical evaluation of the significance and implications of the many worldviews, values and perspectives on offer. Consequently, a number of philosophical and ideological contributions to understanding the
concepts of sustainability and sustainable development as constituting elements of a global dialogue will be explored. Each worldview or perspective has its own attendant literatures and an array of subtle, and not so subtle, implications for practice. Many offer an array of action-orientated normative prescriptions and proscriptions.
