Rethinking sustainable development within the framework of poverty and urbanisation in developing countries Patrick Brandful Cobbinah a,n , Michael Odei Erdiaw-Kwasie b , Paul Amoateng a a School of Environmental Sciences, Institute for Land Water and Society, Charles Sturt University, PO Box 789, 2640 Albury, NSW, Australia b Faculty of Business, Education, Law and Arts, Australian Centre for Sustainable Business and Development, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, QLD, Australia article info Article history: Received 6 August 2014 Received in revised form 5 November 2014 Accepted 6 November 2014 Keywords: Developing countries Sustainable development Urbanisation Poverty abstract Since its emergence in the 1980s, the ideology underpinning sustainable development has become a metaphor for describing human welfare and environmental management. However, pre- vious studies have overly focused on environmental aspects with little known about poverty–urbanisation implications on sustain- able development. Given the magnitude of urbanisation and the pervasiveness of poverty in developing countries, this paper advocates for a poverty–urbanisation analytical approach to sustainable development in developing countries. First, the article provides an overview of sustainable development discourse. Second, the paper looks at the concepts of poverty and urbanisa- tion and their ramifications on sustainable development. Third, examples of sustainable development policy initiatives and their associated poverty–urbanisation threats are presented. Fourth, the paper discusses the policy implications of these two phenomena on sustainable development. The paper concludes with some key issues necessary to make sustainable development a reality in developing countries. & 2014 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/envdev Environmental Development http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envdev.2014.11.001 2211-4645/& 2014 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved. n Corresponding author. Tel.: þ61 412749960. E-mail addresses: pcobbinah@csu.edu.au (P.B. Cobbinah), Michael.Erdiaw-Kwasie@usq.edu.au (M.O. Erdiaw-Kwasie), pamoateng@csu.edu.au (P. Amoateng). Environmental Development ] (]]]]) ]]]–]]] Please cite this article as: Cobbinah, P.B., et al., Rethinking sustainable development within the framework of poverty and urbanisation in developing countries. Environmental Development (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envdev.2014.11.001