The impact of growing population and economic activity has already weakened the natural resource base of many countries and poses increasing risks to the prospects for sustainable development. But the ability to make development meet the needs of the present and the future increases with scientific knowledge and the development of ecologically sound technologies. Sustainable development does not imply cessation of economic growth. Rather, it requires a recognition that the problems of poverty and under-development and related environmental problems cannot be solved without vigorous economic growth. Sustainable development will require changes in current patterns of growth, however, to make them less resource and energy intensive and more equitable. Inequalities in international economic relations, coupled with inappropriate economic policies in many developed and developing countries alike, continue to cause environmental degradation and otherwise limit the sustainability of the development process. Growth derived from rapid resource depletion is neither ecologically nor economically sustainable.