Sustainable Development

Sustainable development means improving and maintaining the well-being of people and ecosystems. This goal is far from being achieved. To develop sustainably, people need to improve their relationships with each other and with the ecosystems that support them – by changing or strengthening their values, knowledge, technologies and institutions.

Major obstacles include a lack of agreement on what should be done, resistance by interest groups who feel threatened by change, and uncertainty about the costs and benefits of alternatives. Overcoming these obstacles requires continuing public discussion, negotiation and mediation among interest groups, and development of a political consensus.

National sustainable development strategies are needed to provide a framework and focus for debate on sustainable development and processes of negotiation, mediation, and consensus-building; and to plan and carry out actions to change or strengthen values, knowledge, technologies and institutions with respect to priority issues. An existing strategic initiative, such as a national development plan, national conservation strategy, environmental action plan, or sectoral strategy, could be built into a national sustainable development strategy.

Strategies can help countries solve inter-related economic, social and environmental problems by developing their capacities to treat them in an integrated fashion. Existing strategies have already resulted in improved organizations, procedures, legislation, public awareness and consensus on issues.

Strategies are not panaceas, however. They are breaking new ground in the ways societies and governments tackle complex issues. Therefore, they can be controversial, take time to develop and get results, and require special management skills. This handbook aims to help strategy participants and managers overcome such difficulties, and design and implement a successful strategy for sustainable development. 

The challenge of sustainable development

Over the past 30 years, growing numbers of people have come to recognize that efforts to improve their standard of living must be in harmony with the natural world. Many have also realized that a lack of development can be as great a threat to nature as reckless or misguided development.

The idea that conservation and development are two sides of the same coin became current in the 1970s. The World Conservation Strategy (IUCN/WWF/UNEP 1980) called for the integration of conservation and development:

‘...because unless patterns of development that also conserve living resources are widely adopted, it will become impossible to meet the needs of today without foreclosing the achievement of tomorrow’s.’

The World Conservation Strategy called development that is sustained by conservation ‘sustainable development’: a term that
in 1987 was taken up and widely publicized by the Brundtland Commission’s report, Our Common Future (WCED 1987). Since then, people have struggled with what sustainable development means in practice, and how to achieve it. They have wrestled with the meanings of ‘sustainable’ and ‘development’. Some have proposed rival terms, such as ‘ecologically sustainable development’, ‘ethical and sustainable development’, ‘sustainable living’ and ‘sustainable well-being’.

Regardless of terminology, the central concept is the same; the human system is an integral part of the ecosystem. A society is sustainable only if both the human condition and the condition of the ecosystem are satisfactory or improving (Box 2). If either is unsatisfactory or worsening, the society is unsustainable.

Human and ecosystem well-being

Human well-being exists if all members of society are able to define and meet their needs and have a large range of choices and opportunities to fulfill their potential. Ecosystem well-being means ecosystems maintain their quality and diversity and thus their potential to adapt to change and provide a wide range of options for the future.

In most societies today, neither condition is being met. In some, progress is being made in one area at the expense of the other. Even in wealthy societies, which make huge demands on resources and the environment,
 
 

decay among the least advantaged. This widespread evidence of unsustainability is summarized in Box 3.

Two sets of relationships are crucial to improving the well-being of people and ecosystems:

• human relationships, both inter-personal (among individuals and families) and inter-community (among communities, organizations and nations); and

• relationships between people and the ecosystem.

The model shown in Figure 1 portrays these relationships as two interacting cycles of pressures, conditions and responses; one cycle being within the human system (inter-personal and inter-community relationships), the other between the human system and the ecosystem.

The key area of the model is the one marked ‘human responses’. To improve the well-being of both people and ecosystems, societies need to improve the ways they respond to social and ecosystem change and moderate their pressures on ecosystems and people.

Specifically, societies need to change or strengthen:

• the values that guide them in human and human–ecosystem relationships;

• the knowledge that enables them to understand and make sense of these relationships;

• the technologies with which they apply their knowledge and equip themselves with tools and infrastructure; and

• the institutions – the customs, laws, social and economic incentives, and organizations – by which they manage the relationships.

Values

Values based on respect and care for each other and the Earth are the foundation for a sustainable society. The transition to sustainability will require changes in how people perceive each other and other life on Earth, how they evaluate their needs and priorities, and how they behave. Values are important because what people do depends on what they believe. Widely-shared beliefs are often more powerful than government edicts.

Values that emphasize respect and concern for people and respect and concern for ecosystems can be found in many religions and cultures and in basic global statements such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UN 1948), the World Charter for Nature (UN 1982), and the Rio Declaration (UN 1992). Seldom, however, are the values expressed in such declarations, or embraced by religions or cultures, manifest at ground levels.
 

Box 3: Signs of unsustainability   Rising human numbers and consumption of resources: Since the industrial revolution, human numbers have grown eightfold. Water withdrawals have grown from 100 to 3600 cubic kilometres a year. The 5.3 billion people now on the Earth use 40 per cent of its most elemental resource: the energy from the sun made available by green plants on land.  Poverty: More than a billion people live in absolute poverty. One person in five cannot get enough food to support an active working life. One quarter of the world’s people are without safe drinking water. Every year millions of children die from malnutrition and preventable disease.  Resource depletion: In less than 200 years, the planet has lost six million square kilometres of forest. An estimated 60,000–70,000 square kilometres of agricultural land is made unproductive by erosion each year. The sediment load from soil erosion has risen threefold in major river basins and by eight times in smaller, more intensively used ones.  Pollution: Human inputs of nutrients into coastal waters already equal natural sources. Human-caused emissions of many heavy metals now range from double those from natural sources (for example, arsenic and mercury) to five and even 18 times higher than natural rates (cadmium and lead respectively).  Global climate change: The climate regime to which people and other forms of life have long been adapted is threatened by human impact on the atmosphere. Since the mid-18th century, human activities have more than doubled the methane in the atmosphere, increased the concentration of carbon dioxide by 27 per cent, and significantly damaged the stratospheric ozone layer.  Debt: The combined cumulative debt of lower-income countries is more than $1 trillion, and interest payments alone have reached $60 billion per year. As a result, since 1984 there has been a net transfer of capital from lower-income to upper-income countries. Nonetheless, many upper-income countries also run substantial deficits.  Source: IUCN/UNEP/WWF (1991).

 

There are many reasons why people live unsustainably. People who are poor are often forced to do things to help them survive for the present that they know create problems for the future. The more affluent live unsustainably because of ignorance, lack of concern, or incentives to wasteful consumption.

People will adopt attitudes and practices more conducive to sustainable development when they are persuaded that it is right and necessary, when they have sufficient incentive, and when they can obtain the required knowledge and skills. Societies must provide incentives, formal and informal education and training to promote values that support a sustainable way of life and discourage values that are incompatible with it.

Knowledge

There is a lack of scientific information and  an inadequate understanding of ecosystem functions. This means that development often proceeds in ignorance of the possible consequences, and with no or inadequate measures taken to avoid or counter negative environmental effects. Predicting the effects of human activities is difficult, and continuous monitoring of vulnerable ecosystems is essential. Direct cause and effect are often far from obvious and are the subject of disagreement among cientists.
Political and economic change at all levels, from international to local, add to the uncertainty. But the problems are too big and the consequences of delay too serious to risk inaction until there is scientific certainty. In any case, given the many variables, scientific certainty is most unlikely.

Environmental, social and economic problems are complex. Their interactions are hard to detect and change constantly. A wide range of scientific, economic, political and philosophical knowledge and skills is needed to understand and resolve them.

Understanding ecosystems, societies and their relationships therefore needs constant improvement through research. Existing information on these relationships should be made more accessible and useful through synthesis and analysis, which should be widely communicated and incorporated in education and training programmes.

Technologies

Technologies provide people with tools and infrastructure: a means of communication, transportation, energy supply and use, water supply, waste disposal, and extraction of raw materials and their manufacture into products. Research and development are needed, as well as better manufacturing, engineering and physical planning processes, in order to develop and apply technologies that:

• minimize hazards to people and ecosystems; and

• minimize the use of energy and raw materials, reduce waste, and prevent pollution.

Institutions

Laws and incentives

Laws and incentives are necessary to ensure that people and their organizations behave sustainably. But existing legislation and incentives do not provide adequately for sustainability, and often the two systems conflict with each other. For example, the law may tell a business not to pollute a river, but more powerful economic incentives may encourage it to do so.

At present, incentives to deplete resources and degrade ecosystems are strong because the market treats ecosystems and their functions as useless, limitless or free of charge. The market does not take account of the full value of ecological processes or biodiversity, or of the costs borne by society when these values are degraded.

Comprehensive and effective legal frameworks are needed to safeguard human rights, the interests of future generations, and the vitality and diversity of ecosystems; and incentive systems should be in harmony with them.

Organizations

In many countries, governmental planning and decision-making systems are weak compared with financial and commercial interests. Some are excessively bureaucratic; many are insufficiently participatory to reflect the interests of local communities or the poor. Other organizational problems include limited political awareness of the social and ecological aspects of sustainable development, insufficient skilled personnel and lack of money. All such problems are closely related, and are exacerbated by each other, as well as by other problems such as inadequate legislative frameworks and lack of scientific information.

Traditionally, development planners have concentrated on controlling the allocation of resources to promote economic growth. Planning horizons have tended to be short: typically three to five years. In general, environmental and social concerns have been subordinated to crude measures of economic performance such as gross domestic product (GDP), employment generation, and foreign exchange earnings.

Development policies – particularly sectoral plans and annual budgetary processes – are usually given priority over environmental policies. Both are fragmented and poorly integrated with each other. In some countries, national planning focuses excessively on projects, particularly large-scale projects, rather than on the institutions and programmes needed for sustainable development. Or, project plans may entail major policy decisions for which the national plan provides no guidance or which override the national plan. Often there is a poor fit among national, regional and local decision-making and powers to act.

Miscommunication, gaps, overlap and conflicts among sectors are common. This lack of horizontal integration is most obvious:

• within economic development planning, notably between sectors;

• between development policies and plans and environmental policies and plans (partly due to the longer time scale of the latter; and

• in the ways that it is made difficult for interest groups and the public to understand and affect development and environment decisions.

Mechanisms for integration are weak and usually only exist at lower levels of planning, such as regional or local land use plans. Environmental impact assessment (EIA), although important for identifying and preventing environmental and social problems, is applied to projects and programmes more often than to development plans, sectoral plans or policies. As such, it does not have ‘upward reach’: it can change or mitigate a project but is unlikely to alter the policy or plan that gives rise to the project.

Failures of economic planning and the rapid decline of central planning systems have led to proclamations of the supremacy of the market system. There is no doubt that the market system has been more successful than state planning at promoting enterprise, economic growth, and economic efficiency. But a healthy society is much more than an efficient economy. Many social and environmental objectives require some other mechanism than one designed to maximize utility or profits. Moreover, the market has been very poor at integrating environmental factors into economic decision-making. Such integration remains a central need.

Given the complexity and rapidly changing nature of economic, environmental and social problems, rigid bureaucratic structures are ineffective. Worse, they are likely to compound the problems; as are governments acting alone and, still more so, individual government agencies acting alone. In addition, politicians lack sufficient motivation to undertake the thankless task of mediating among conflicting economic, social and environmental objectives that diverge substantially from the status quo.

Today new forms of government are needed, with more flexible structures. Governments need to be organized to facilitate a greater flow of information and expertise among sectors – rather than just within single sectors – and between governmental and non-governmental entities.

Communities and local groups provide the most accessible channels for people to express their concerns and take action to create culturally-appropriate sustainable societies. To enable them to do this, communities need effective control over their own lives, including secure access to resources and an equitable share in managing them; the right to participate in decisions; and education and training. They must also be able to meet their needs in sustainable ways, and to conserve their local environment.

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) like environmental groups and social development groups have enormous potential to mobilize local and national energies toward sustainable development. They are already leading valuable efforts to combine socio-economic development and environmental conservation at the grassroots level. But too often they have been marginalized by both government and the market, lacking equitable arrangements to become partners in planning and decision-making.

One approach is for government agencies, communities, businesses and non-governmental interest groups to form partnerships or dynamic networks in which they work together to solve common problems in an integrated fashion. In so doing, they should take care to ensure that a network operating at one level (eg, community, provincial, national or international) coordinates with partnerships working on the same or a related issue at other levels.

Obstacles to change

Making the required changes to values, knowledge systems, technologies and institutions is fraught with difficulties.

• Lack of agreement on the existence and severity of the problems, how to resolve them, and who among nations and interest groups is responsible for doing so. Disagreement is inevitable, because the issues involve value judgements and because of the absence of scientific certainty.

• The systemic or structural nature of many of the problems. Problems such as poverty and inequalities within and among nations are not mere side-effects of the way we do business. They are deeply embedded in our institutions. Meeting basic needs will require changes in the distribution of wealth and control over resources. Achieving sustainability will require changes in the ways corporations and consumers use resources and generate waste. Powerful groups – from big corporations, governments and political parties to ordinary workers, consumers and voters – will try to block changes that they perceive to threaten their immediate interests. Only the threat of even worse change if the required action is not taken – and confidence that compensating benefits can be obtained in the near future – will overcome this resistance.

• Lack of a model of economic development that would provide an acceptable standard of living for all, and at the same time keep environmental impacts and uses of energy and raw materials within sustainable bounds. The industrial model of development is not a viable option. It has brought prosperity to only about 1.5 billion people – few in world terms – and its environmental costs have been huge. Even if the expected eventual world population of 10–12 billion people were able to industrialize, the impact on the planet would be catastrophic. Yet people and their governments are reluctant to try different ways of developing because the results are so uncertain. It is a case of ‘better the devil you know than the devil you don’t’.

  Overcoming such obstacles calls for:

• Continuing public discussion of the nature of sustainable development, its ethical framework, and how to make the transition to sustainability, in order to develop a sense of common interest and a collective vision of the future.

• Negotiation and mediation. Decisions intended to lead to sustainability depend on value judgements: for example, the appropriate balance of short-term and long-term needs, or of industrial production and environmental quality. Such decisions involve difficult trade-offs between potentially conflicting objectives and different options. Often they have far-reaching consequences. Hence, they are essentially ethical and political and need to be negotiated among many sectors and interest groups.

• Development of a political consensus. Consensus does not mean unanimity or the absence of dissent: differing values and perspectives are a fact of life. Nor does it mean the exclusion of minority concerns. Consensus means general agreement: a common understanding of what values are shared and how to behave when values conflict. The ultimate aim is to expand consensus to include all values necessary for sustainability and all interest groups.

The need for strategies

‘National sustainable development strategies should be seen as a voyage and not as a harbour.’
Partnerships for Change Conference, Manchester, 1993

Strategies are needed to overcome the obstacles to sustainable development and make the necessary key changes. Haphazard or piecemeal attempts to do this are unlikely to succeed. The changes required are profound, and, to avoid doing more harm than good, will have to be made incrementally. But a process of incremental change is likely to lose direction without an explicit strategy to keep it on course.

It is not suggested that all of a nation’s efforts toward sustainable development be entirely subsumed into one single strategy. Such a grand design is impractical and unnecessary. What is necessary is to provide the many actors involved with a sense of collective endeavour, a common (albeit evolving) conceptual framework, and a focus and energy sourcefor a set of key initiatives.

National sustainable development strategies (NSDSs) are needed to: 

• provide a forum and context for the debate on sustainable development and the articulation of a collective vision of the future;

• provide a framework for processes of negotiation, mediation, and consensus-building; and to focus them on a common set of priority issues;

• plan and carry out actions to change or strengthen values, knowledge, technologies and institutions with respect to the priority issues; and

• develop organizational capacities and other institutions required for sustainable development.

The purpose of NSDSs and other multi-sectoral strategies is to mobilize and focus a society’s efforts to achieve sustainable
development. National strategies for sustainability are participatory and cyclical processes of planning and action to achieve economic, ecological and social objectives in a balanced and integrated manner (Figure 2). NSDSs aim to achieve all three objectives; other strategies for sustainability emphasize one or two of them. The process, in most cases, encompasses the definition of policies and action plans, their implementation, monitoring and regular review.

All countries probably have some kind of existing strategic initiative that can be built into an NSDS. This may be a national development plan, a national conservation strategy or an environmental action plan. It may be a strategy covering a sector such as forestry, agriculture or transport; or a theme such as biodiversity. A national strategy could also be built from several subnational strategies. Chapter 4 discusses how to start an NSDS or develop one from an existing initiative.

The role of strategies

The purpose of strategies for sustainability is to mobilize and focus a society’s efforts to achieve sustainable development. They can do so by providing the means to:

• define choices, goals, targets and standards for sustainable development;

• illuminate the ethical dimensions underlying the choices and goals;

• analyze ecological, economic and social issues in a comprehensive and integrated fashion, clarifying links, exploring ethical considerations, identifying policy gaps, and showing how to reduce conflicts between environment and development;

• identify and evaluate options for addressing priority issues (problems and opportunities), which includes identifying appropriate packages of legal reforms, economic instruments, institutional development, capacity-building, and other programmes;

• prepare and carry out sectoral and cross-sectoral policies and plans to rationalize responsibilities for environment and development, reduce duplication, close gaps, prevent or reduce conflicts, and take advantage of compatibilities and synergies among sectors and interest groups;

• improve decision-making through better information and analytical techniques, and by enabling those most affected by decisions to contribute to them;

• develop understanding and build consensus so that decisions have strong support;

• identify, promote and support actions leading to sustainable development and reduce, slow or stop actions impeding sustainable development;

• identify and apply practices to sustain the resource base of the economy, achieve sustainable levels of resource use, restore degraded natural resources, make use of unused or under-used resource potential, improve the efficiency of existing resource use, and diversify the use of existing resources;

• determine priorities for action, evaluating costs and benefits and the trade-offs between the often very different concerns affecting society;

• allocate limited resources;

• develop and strengthen institutions for sustainable development; and

• build capacities to handle complex and inter-related issues.

National sustainable development strategies are gaining recognition as a highly appropriate course of action for many countries.
This was highlighted both in Caring for the Earth (IUCN/UNEP/WWF 1991) and in Agenda 21 (UNCED 1992) (see Box 4):

‘[Agenda 21’s] successful implementation is first and foremost the responsibility of govern-ments. National strategies, plans, policies and processes are crucial in achieving this...’  

Governments – in cooperation, where appropriate, with international organizations – should adopt an NSDS based on, among other things, the implementation of decisions taken at UNCED in 1992, particularly in respect of Agenda 21. This strategy should build upon and harmonize the various sectoral economic, social and environmental policies and plans that are operating in the country. The experience gained through existing planning exercises such as national reports for UNCED, national conservation strategies and
 
 

environment action plans should be fully used and incorporated into a country-driven sustainable development strategy. Its goals should be to ensure socially responsible economic development while protecting the resource base and the environment for the benefit of future generations. It should be developed through the widest possible participation.

The benefits of strategies

Some countries undertake strategies for sustainability when they begin to recognize that ad hoc and piecemeal attempts to solve environment and development problems are not working. The problems may be resource depletion; erosion, pollution and other forms of environmental degradation; loss of natural habitats; increased competition for land; rising levels of friction among resource users; frustration of social or economic objectives; or rejection of decisions by groups who feel excluded from decision-making.

Strategies have a number of strengths. Their integrated multi-sectoral approach should enable countries to act on the basis of a better understanding of how environmental, social and economic problems relate to each other. Strategies can stimulate and focus cross-sectoral debate, provide an overview and analysis of key environment/development issues, and differentiate between negotiable and less negotiable issues.

Strategies can help to overcome problems of organizational and policy fragmentation and compartmentalization by:

• developing multi-agency networks;

• setting in motion analysis of the main constraints to more integrated management;

• providing on-the-job training in integrated management; and

• developing institutions and organizational arrangements that are better equipped to cope with uncertainty, rapid change,and the need for more integrated decisions.

A major obstacle to economic and social development is the shortage of national management skills. Strategies can help to develop these skills. This is especially true of skills in integration: in short supply in both upper-income and lower-income countries.

Strategies, if they are participatory, are likely  to be unconstrained by the limits of governance. They will be able to engage both governments and other major actors, such as businesses, communities, and NGOs. Strategies combine the coherence of plans and the flexibility and opportunism of ad hoc approaches. They can integrate planning with other components of the decision-making system such as investment procedures and political processes.
 
 

The benefits of strategies to date, including better organization, legislation and procedures, have been significant (see Box 5).

The difficulties with strategies

The potential of strategies for sustainability  is only beginning to be realized. Because they are still a relatively new concept, preparing and implementing them is time-consuming, and remains a learning process in most cases. Many strategies are still more akin to conventional plans than to the strategic, dynamic and participatory processes described in this handbook. Also, because they are new, and because of the nature of the problems they are tackling, results are still far off in terms of objectives
achieved and improvements in human and environmental conditions.

A strategy is not a panacea. The obstacles to sustainable development discussed earlier can disrupt and impede a strategy and bring it to a halt. It is an ambitious undertaking no matter how well-equipped a country is. Potential problems include the following:

• The concepts of sustainable development and integrating human and ecological concerns are still unfamiliar and poorlyworked out. Some of the required methods are not widely known (a constraint that this handbook aims to address). Some remain to be developed and tested.

• The changes promoted by the strategy may include changes in decision-making structures and resource allocation, which may be resisted by those in government and positions of influence.

• The process calls for wide participation and consensus-building, and hence for freedom of expression and assembly, which may not be acceptable to certain forms of government. In addition, consensus is often not possible on issues about which there are deep differences in values.

• Because it deals with complex issues and involves many interest groups, a strategy usually requires time to develop, plus significant managerial and other resources.

• The long-term nature of strategies – optimally longer than the tenure of a particular government – means that their continuity is often at risk.

• The process relies on cross-sectoral thinking and techniques, for which traditions and skills may be weak.

• The process is necessarily experimental: not all outcomes can be foreseen and few can be guaranteed.

• For some issues, external forces beyond the reach of the strategy (like terms of trade and international markets) may be immovable constraints.

Some of these difficulties may prevent the successful development of a strategy. The cyclical nature of strategies allows them to be incremental and flexible. Consequently, many difficulties can be tackled as part of the strategy process. Opportunities for doing this are identified in later chapters. The conditions necessary for an effective national strategy are identified in Chapter 4.

Conclusion

Sustainable development means improving and maintaining the well-being of people and ecosystems. Since we cannot stand still, the alternative to sustainable development is a situation in which ecosystems degrade and lose their viability and people’s choices are limited by a mounting struggle against want, insecurity and catastrophe. The poor already live with this situation and there is evidence that it is spreading.

In general, present values, knowledge systems, technologies and institutions make it easier to live unsustainably than sustainably.
Changing them is an enormous challenge, made all the more difficult by the fact that many people feel threatened by change, and viable alternatives are not clear.

An integrated approach to these problems is necessary; one that combines concern for people and concern for ecosystems. Also needed are processes to encourage and focus public discussion, negotiation, mediation, and development of a political consensus. Strategies for sustainability can provide both these needs.

Strategic initiatives like national conservation strategies, environmental actions plans and national development plans provide building blocks and experience for the development of national sustainable development strategies. They show some of the benefits and many of the difficulties of undertaking strategies. Their lessons provide ample material with which to design and undertake an effective strategy for the transition to sustainability. 

Chapters of Agenda 21 that describe the need for national strategies: Preamble 1.3; Social and Economic Dimensions 2.6; Combating Poverty 3.9; Changing Consumption Patterns 4.26; Demographic Dynamics and Sustainability 5.31, 5.56; Protection and Promotion of Human Health 6.40; Promoting Sustainable Human Settlement Patterns 7.30, 7.51; Integrating Environment and Development in Decision-Making 8.3, 8.4, 8.7; Protection of the Atmosphere 9.12; Integrated Approach to  the Planning and Management of Land Resources 10.6; Combatting Deforestation 11.4, 11.13; Fragile Ecosystems, Desertification and Drought 12.4, 12.37; Sustainable Agriculture 14.4, 14.45; Biodiversity, objectives (b); Biotechnology 16.17; Oceans 17.6, 17.39; Freshwater and Water Resources 18.11, 18.12, 18.40; Toxic Chemicals 19.58; Solid Wastes 21.10, 21.18, 21.30; Local Authorities 23.2; Financial Resources 33.8, 33.22, 33.15; Science 35.7, 35.16; Education 36.5; National Capacity Building 37.4, 37.5, 37.7, 37.10; International Institutions 38.13, 38.25, 38.36, 38.38, 38.39, 38.40; Information 40.4; Rio Declaration – Principle 10; Convention on Biodiversity – Article 6; Convention on Climate Change – Article 3, 4, 12.

Chapters of Caring for the Earth that describe the need for national strategies: Chapter 8, Providing a National Framework for Integrating Development and Conservation: Action 8.2; Chapter 13, Farm and Range Lands: Action 13.1; Chapter 17, Implementing the Strategy: Action 17.7; Box 31 (Targets – page 180: Adoption by all countries of a national strategy for sustainability by the year 2000); and Annex 8, Strategies for Sustainability.