Tourism, Development and the Environment - Tourism and Development: Concepts and Issues - page 261

economic growth per se, but to external economic forces, such as world
recession, high interest rates and declining terms of trade. Thus, North-South
proposed a new philosophy of economic growth based on multilateralism,
international cooperation and increased resources flows from North to
South, a theme more forcibly pursued in the commission's second report.
Despite its innovative ideas, few were implemented and the Brandt
Commission was disbanded shortly after its second report to the UN General
Assembly. In particular, the concept of mutuality of interests (northern eco-
nomic growth is dependent upon growth in the south) failed to win wide-
spread support, the commission's proposals again being widely regarded as
naïvely failing to take into account the political obstacles to economic and
structural reform. The commission also failed to support explicitly a more
participatory form of development. 'The Brandt Commission . . . was com-
posed of top people, thinking top down, as such people normally do. The
problem with their top-down recommendations was that other top people
. . . who would have had to implement them, were and are doing very well
out of the status quo' (Ekins, quoted in Reid, 1995: 52).
By the 1980s, the promotion of economic growth in the South, initiated
by a reformed global economic system and based upon a perceived mutuality
of economic interest, was seen to hold the key to sustainable development.
This was certainly the focus of the widely cited Brundtland (World
Commission on Environment and Development) report Our Common Future ,
the purpose of which was to 'propose long-term environmental strategies for
achieving sustainable development by the year 2000 and beyond' (WCED,
1987: ix). The commission set out to address a problem which previous strat-
egies clearly failed to solve: '. . . many development trends leave increasing
numbers of people poor and vulnerable, while at the same time degrading
the environment. How can such development serve next century's world of
twice as many people relying on the same environment ? ' (WCED, 1987: 4).
The report placed much emphasis on sustaining development on a global
basis, reiterating the environmentalist message vociferously expressed over
a decade earlier that 'the various global crises . . . are not separate crises. They
are all one' (WCED, 1987: 4). Poverty was seen as the underlying cause of
environmental degradation: 'it is therefore futile to attempt to deal with
environmental problems without a broader perspective that encompasses
the factors underlying world poverty and international inequality' (WCED,
1987: 3). Therefore, the underlying philosophy of the report is economic
growth, although for development to be sustainable it must (in the still
widely cited and adapted phrase) 'meet the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs'
(WCED, 1987: 8). However, as Reid (1995) points out, very little attention
is given to what these needs are or how they might be met.
The UNCED (the Rio Earth Summit) in 1992 again gave the sustainable
development concept a fresh impetus. The conference provided a blueprint