Who sustains whose development? Sustainable development and the reinvention of nature

This paper explores the contradictions inherent in one of the more popular buzzwords of today: sustainable development. I argue that, despite claims of a paradigm shift, the sustainable development paradigm is based on an economic, not ecological, rationality. Discourses of sustainable development embody a view of nature specified by modern economic thought. One consequence of this discourse involves the transformation of `nature' into `environment', a transformation that has important implications for notions of how development should proceed. The `rational' management of resources is integral to the Western economy and its imposition on developing countries is problematic. I discuss the implications of this `regime of truth' for the Third World with particular reference to biotechnology, biodiversity and intellectual property rights. I argue that these aspects of sustainable development threaten to colonize spaces and sites in the Third World, spaces that now need to be made `efficient' because of the capitalization of nature.