Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era, along with other groups, called for the transformation of growth-based development models towards gender-responsive development (Wiltshire, 1992). Women's Action Agenda 21, a platform of various groups, critiqued existing development pathways and free market thinking, instead embracing the concept of sustainable livelihoods and highlighting the need to link everyday practices of care with resource justice (Wichterich, 2012). Yet many of the alternatives put forward by women's groups and networks in the global women's lobby at the Conference were overshadowed by the prevailing optimism about economic efficiency, technology and markets. Women were considered the primary users and effective managers and conservers ofthe environment at the local level (see, for example, Dankelman and Davidson, 1988, Rodda, 1991).