The 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development was the most recent of a series of global political meetings convened to assess international, regional and local progress on achieving sustainable development, as well as setting priorities for continued efforts. Sustainable development is a grand but elusive concept in which social and economic development efforts are integrated with environmental considerations. It received widespread attention through the report Our Common Future by the World Commission on Environment and Development (the so-called Brundtland Commission) in 1987 (WCED 1987). Yet international debate and policy-making on issues relating to the linkages between environmental protection and social and economic development started long before the term ‘sustainable development’ gained prominence (Worster 1994). These early efforts on environment and development form an important conceptual and institutional background to sustainable development as well as to the ongoing political responses to the sustainable development challenge.