Overview Sustainable Development: Towards a Broader Policy Agenda

Over the last few decades, economic growth in developing countries has been, with some exceptions, slow; social equity has either not improved or worsened; and environmental degradation in many places has been significant. In numerous countries, economic development has not been environmentally sustainable. 1 A central message of this volume is that the failure to achieve environmental sustainability has been the result of a systematic underinvestment in public goods by governments. Since in many respects the environment is a public good, the low priority assigned by governments to supplying public goods implies a tendency to waste natural resources. This volume consistently identifies poorly functioning environmental institutions as well as other inadequate environmental regulation and enforcements such as ill-defined property rights. The failure to implement high yield environmental protection investments is a key source of environmental degradation. Complementary, crosscutting problems such as weaknesses in legal systems, underinvestment in human capital, weak financial capital markets, corruption, and rent-seeking often exacerbate the failure of environmental institutions. Most developing country governments attach low priority to spending public resources on developing or enforcing property rights for natural A renewed commitment to attacking these interlocking problems of economic progress, social development, and environmental sustainability by the world community as affirmed in