Introduction

As world leaders prepared to gather in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 on the eve of the United Nations (UN) Conference on Environment and Development (also known as the “Earth Summit”), the complexities of unsustainable development were just beginning to dawn on them in uncomfortable ways. Until then, in the “Global North”, the widely held view was that population growth and poverty were the main unaddressed drivers of environmental harm. Following this framing, negotiations at the Summit would need to focus on the “Global South”, given its high rates of fertility and poverty.