The term sustainable entered the economic development lexicon in the 1980s when people began to realize that economic growth and continuous increases in per capita income were unsustainable. Instead of living up to its promise to alleviate poverty, economic growth actually undermined ecological stability, thereby destroying people’s livelihoods and causing further poverty. Moreover, development strategies have been based on the growth of the market economy, even when large numbers of people operate outside of this network. The emphasis on the market economy has resulted in the destruction of the other economies of nature’s processes and of people’s survival, but this destruction is seen as nothing more than the “hidden negative externalities” of the development process.
