22. International Development and Sustainability

This chapter explores some global development challenges – such as that of extreme poverty, growing inequalities, and poor governance, from the perspective of sustainability. We begin by questioning what we mean by “development” and tracing the evolution of this concept from the monolithic vision of development as a linear process that characterized postcolonial era thinking on development policy to that of “sustainable development” and the current thinking in terms of development as a highly contested term. We then examine some of the major challenges at the interface of international development and sustainability, such as the need to delink resource-intensive growth from progress on human development indicators. This discussion then leads us on to exploring some of the innovative solution options that have been proposed by central planners as well as grassroots level searchers and the usefulness of different approaches, such as randomized control trials, to evaluate the effectiveness of these interventions. We conclude with a discussion of some open issues, such as the potential of human rights-based thinking about development and its implications for sustainability.