ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the relationship between conservation and sustainable development, revisiting issues relating to population, resource use and human beings’ impact on what is often termed the natural world. More specifically, efforts to preserve the natural landscape and, more latterly, a wide range of wildlife habitats brings into focus a range of policies and practices that have seen conflicts, controversies and a considerable degree of debate. The friction induced by the imposition of Western notions of conservation and stewardship on other lands has invariably led many to address and readdress both the rights of indigenous peoples and the very nature of economic development, urbanization and sustainability. This friction is practical and political in nature and although it seems that dialogue is leading to progress and accommodation, we are witnessing, indeed causing, a sixth massive extinction of many of the species with whom we supposedly share the planet.
