This report presents the findings of a preparatory research project whose aim was to explore the relationship between the three key variables the environment, poverty and conflict (EPC) in making economic development environmentally sustainable. It is based on the observation that much scholarly work on sustainability has tended either:
- to exclude issues of poverty, sometimes explicitly;
- to downplay the existence of conflict; or
- to ignore whether and to what extent political participation is necessary to achieve and implement environmental sustainability.