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their stance on economic growth. They argued that population is still a problem,
but it is the outcome of poverty, rather than its cause. Because poverty is the
problem, economic development becomes the solution to both socio-economic and
environmental problems; industrialisation in the South will create economic growth
that will decrease poverty, reduce population growth, relieve direct pressure on
resources, and provide economic resources for conservation. No longer seen as an
environmental threat or cause of global inequality, development became the route
to sustainability. Governments around the world could embrace the broad outlines
of this sustainable development agenda because they could sidestep discussion of
politically diffi cult changes necessary to reduce poverty, increase equity, and create
more environmentally friendly ways of living. Critics responded by claiming that
the notion of sustainable development promotes the status quo, i.e. global economic
activity that exploits the environment and dispossess the poor of access to resources
(The Ecologist, 1993; Chatterjee and Finger, 1994).
Ten years later, the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development (the WSSD,
held in Johannesburg), further entrenched the idea that sustainable development
should be linked to capitalist development and neoliberal globalisation (Luke, 2005;
Sneddon et al., 2006; Mansfi eld, 2008). The approach institutionalised at the WSSD
not only subordinates sustainable development to neoliberalism but promotes neo-
liberalism as the central means to achieve sustainable development. WSSD agree-
ments are emblematic of a private, market-based approach to environmental
protection and poverty alleviation. They promote free trade and investment in
general, encourage developing countries to increase their level of participation in
global trade, and explicitly state that it is necessary to implement agreements of the
World Trade Organization to achieve sustainability. They also promote 'voluntary
partnerships' in which governments work with the private sector to achieve particu-
lar goals. Thus, the WSSD represents the triumph of neoliberalism as a framework
for sustainable development. By using the term sustainability, proponents can cast
neoliberal, market-based approaches as a form of egalitarianism, justice and ecologi-
cal economics (Okereke, 2006; Krueger and Gibbs, 2007; Mansfi eld, 2008).
Sustainability as a Bridging Concept: Promises and Pitfalls
Academic commentators have responded to the troubling trajectory of sustainable
development within global politics in different ways. Whereas some argue that the
entire concept of sustainability should be abandoned because of its problematic
political commitments (e.g., Luke, 2005), others argue that sustainability should be
'resuscitated and rescued from those proponents of sustainable development who
use it to advance a development agenda that is demonstrably unsustainable' (Sneddon
et al., 2006, p. 264, see also Krueger and Gibbs, 2007). For Sneddon, sustainability
is precisely a way of bringing politics back into the debate, asking key questions
about what is meant by sustainability and who will benefi t from it. Because sustain-
ability is a malleable concept, it has the potential to create bridges among very dif-
ferent people. Discussion about sustainability can be a way in which people recognise
their differences and work through the politics of human-environment interactions
(Sneddon, 2000; Padoch and Sears, 2005).
A resuscitated sustainability also creates bridges between the human and the
natural, and between the social and physical sciences (e.g., Costanza et al., 2007).
