Okay. I typed up this whole thing earlier and for some reason my question got deleted. I don't know why but here it goes again.

I'm taking an IB econ class in high school. We had a summer project and I needed some help with something but I'm not sure who to ask. I came across this site and hopefully there is someone on here that can explain this question to me.

The question was...

Evaluate the extent to which environmental protection should be sacrificed in order to have sustainable development.

I understand what sustainable development is but to have sustainable development, the consumption of natural resources has to be less than natures ability to replenish. So doesn't that question kind of contradict itself? Or am I missing something? I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I've been trying to put things together to answer this but I just don't know.