Ranking alongside motherhood and apple pie in the modern era is the policy objective of sustainable development, famously defined in 1987 by the Brundtland Commission as ‘development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’. Yet as is documented in A Living Countryside?, a substantial and stimulating collection of twenty-one essays by thirty-one authors from a variety of disciplines, edited by John McDonagh and colleagues, the reality of pursuing sustainability can be a contested and disappointing process. Much of the ‘politics of sustainable development’ in the book's subtitle, the editors explain in their excellent introduction, arises from conflicts between different interests holding divergent perceptions about what is ‘sustainable’. The volume considers in some detail the experiences in rural Ireland, north and south of the border, more or less since the 1990s. Each chapter surveys one of a very wide range of issues, from the usual suspects of farming, fishing, tourism and regional planning to less obvious, but amply justified, sustainability concerns such as gender roles, information and communication technologies (ICTs) and the Irish language. Environmental organisations and movements also receive coverage.

Much progress towards rural sustainability has been achieved on the island of Ireland. For instance, Roy W. Tomlinson and John Fennessy conclude that on balance afforestation objectives in both jurisdictions are aligned with the sustainable development goal. But most of the contributors to A Living Countryside? understandably tend to highlight the disappointments. One common complaint is that the principle of sustainable development has not been incorporated fully into government policy: hence for John Barry and Peter Doran, state action in regard to environmental issues ‘can be described as slow, minimal and reluctant’, largely driven by external pressure from the European Union (p. 331). Part of Brendan Flynn's lively chapter discusses one of the most striking examples, namely the much delayed implementation of the European Union Nitrates Directive, principally due to opposition from farmer representative groups. Fragmentation of policy responsibility and the need for a more collaborative style of policy making are among the other recurring themes. Meanwhile Seamus Grimes and Stephen Roper write that ‘ICTs do not bring about the end of geography’ (p. 208), a discomforting conclusion for peripherally located rural areas seeking economic sustainability in the twenty-first century ‘knowledge economy’.

The authors’ analyses almost always involve a national level review and/or case studies of particular policies or institutions. Several chapters contain some coverage of pre-1990 Ireland, including Tony Varley's interesting appraisal of the long standing community organisation Muintir na Tíre (People of the Land), such material being usually utilised to provide a little long-term perspective on the issue under consideration. The quality of the essays varies somewhat and equally unavoidably there are very occasional disconnections and overlaps, most glaringly from repetition of the Brundtland definition quoted above, but it is not just with the benefit of hindsight that this reviewer wished for more explicit coverage of the Republic's excessive economic dependence on the construction/property sector by the mid-2000s – clearly the antithesis of sustainable development. Ideally, too, the editors’ conclusion might have included additional reflections; this reader could not quite decide, for example, which government had the better overall record. Nevertheless this is a valuable book full of interesting insights which provides a splendid interdisciplinary survey of recent change in rural Ireland viewed through the lens of sustainable development. The comparative north-south perspective is always extremely illuminating, and individual chapters will surely become required readings in their particular specialist areas.