Sustainable Development and Sustainable Management: Promoting Economic, Ecological and Social Sustainability in Post-crisis Asia

The recent economic crisis in Asia demonstrated clearly that the path towards higher levels of development is not a smooth one, and that success in the past does not assure future success in the development process. Furthermore, while some groups and countries have made significant progress in raising their living standards in the twentieth century, the President of the World Bank recently admitted that progress is too slow. Specifically, ‘With 3 billion people still living under US$2 a day, with growing inequity between rich and poor, with forests being degraded at the rate of an acre a second, with 130 million children still not in school, with 1.5 billion people still not having access to clean water, and 2 billion people not having access to sewage [facilities], we cannot be complacent. More than this, we must be concerned that 80–90 million people are being added annually to our planet, mainly in the developing world. Two billion more souls must feed themselves by the year 2025, hampered by wars, with growing inequity, and with distortions of economies and politics as evidenced in crises from Indonesia to Russia and from Latin America to Africa. With the reduction in Overseas Development Assistance and current instability in the international financial markets, there is much to be concerned about’ (Wolfensohn, 1999).1