This paper argues that sustainable development can only be meaningful if people are offered a genuine chance to reorganize themselves and articulate their own gender relations paradigm. Such a paradigm must consider the people's interests and wishes in the context of their history and culture. Planners must recognise that poor people are not responsible for their own poverty, nor ultimately for the environmental damage that poverty causes. In most instances the people have been denied the use of good land and forced into marginal areas such as Zimbabwe's regions III, IV and V where average annual rainfall is less than 800mm. Imbalances in resource distribution is a major factor in the continued degradation of critical resources such as forest, soil, air, water, fauna and flora.
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