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economy. Such growth rates could be environmentally sustainable is industrialized nations can continue the recent shifts in the content of their growth towards less material- and energy-intensive activities and the improvent of their efficiency in using materials and energy.
33. As industrialized nations use less materials and energy, however, they will provide smaller markets for commodities and minerals from the developing nations. Yet if developing nations focus their efforts upon eliminating poverty and satisfying essential human needs. then domestic demand will increase for both agricultural products and manufactured goods and some services. Hence the very logic or sustainable development implies an internal stimulus to Third World growth.
34. Nontheless, in large numbers of developing countries markets are very small; and for all developing countries high export growth. especially or non-traditional items, will also be necessary to finance imports, demand for which will be generated by rapid development. Thus a reorientation of international economic relations will be necessary for sustainable development, as discussed in Chapter 3.
2. Changing the Quality of Growth
35. Sustainable development involves more than growth, it requires a change in the content of growth, to make it less material- and energy-intensive and more equitable in its impact. These changes are required in all countries as part at a package of measures to maintain the stock or ecological capital, to improve the distribution of income, and to reduce the degree of vulnerability to economic crises.
36. The process or economic development must be more soundly based upon the realities or the stock or capital that sustains it. This in rarely done in either developed or developing countries. For example income from forestry operations is conventionally measured in terms of the value of timber and other products extracted. minus the costs of extraction. The costs or regenerating the forest are not taken into account, unless money is actually spent on such work. Thus figuring profits from logging rarely takes full account of the losses in future revenue incurred through degradation of the forest. Similar incomplete accounting occurs in the exploitation of other natural resources, especially in the case or resources that are not capitalized in enterprise or national accounts: air, water, and soil. In all countries. rich or poor, economic development must take full account in its measurements or growth or the improvement or deterioration in the stock of natural resources.
37. Income distribution is one aspect of the quality or growth, as described in the preceding section. and rapid growth combined with deteriorating income distribution may be worse than slower growth combined with redistribution in favour or the poor. For instance, in many developing countries the introduction or large-scale commercial agriculture may produce revenue rapidly, but may also dispossess a large number of small farmers and make
