Green Development: Environment and Sustainability in the Third World

Front Cover
Psychology Press, 2001 - 445 pages

This revised and updated new edition retains the clear and powerful argument which characterized the original. It gives a valuable analysis of the theory and practice of sustainable development and suggests that at the start of the new millennium, we should think radically about the challenge of sustainability.

Fully revised, this latest edition includes further reading, chapter outlines, chapter summaries and new discussion topics, and explores:

  • the roots of sustainable development thinking and its evolution in the last three decades of the twentieth century
  • the dominant ideas within mainstream sustainable development
  • the nature and diversity of alternative ideas about sustainability
  • the problems of environmental degradation and the environmental impacts of development
  • strategies for building sustainability in development from above and below.

Offering a synthesis of theoretical ideas on sustainability based on the industrialized economies of the North and the practical, applied ideas in the South which tend to ignore 'First World' theory, this important text gives a clear discussion of theory and extensive practical insights drawn from Africa, Latin America and Asia.

From inside the book

Contents

The dilemma of sustainability
1
Power without meaning?
4
The discourse of development
6
The challenge of poverty
9
The challenge of environmental change
12
one problem two cultures
15
Outline of the book
17
Summary
19
The neoMalthusian narrative
192
Overpopulation or intensification?
193
Overgrazing and new range ecology
197
Landscapes misread
203
Sustainability and desertification policy
206
The Convention to Combat Desertification
209
Summary
212
Further reading
213

Further reading
20
The origins of sustainable development
22
Tropical environmentalism
23
Nature preservation and the emergence of sustainable development
25
Tropical ecology and sustainable development
34
Ecology and the balance of nature
37
Ecological managerialism
40
Ecology and economic development
42
Environmentalism population and global crisis
45
Global science and sustainable development
47
Summary
51
Further reading
52
The development of sustainable development
54
The World Conservation Strategy
59
Sustainable development in the World Conservation Strategy
65
The Brundtland Report
69
Caring for the Earth
76
Summary
78
Further reading
79
Sustainable development the Rio machine
80
The Rio Declaration on Environment and Development
83
Agenda 21
86
The Forest Principles
89
The Biodiversity Convention
90
The Framework Convention on Climate Change
92
Beyond Rio
95
Summary
99
Further reading
100
Mainstream sustainable development
102
Market environmentalism
104
Ecological modernisation
110
Environmental populism
113
Natural capital and sustain ability
117
Ecological economics and cultural capital
123
Mechanisms for mainstream sustainable development
126
Tradeoffs equity and complexity
133
Summary
136
Further reading
137
Countercurrents in sustainable development
139
NeoMalthusianism and sustainable development
142
Green critiques of developmentalism
148
Ecosocialism and sustainability
153
Ecoanarchism
159
Deep ecology and sustainability
164
Ecofeminism and sustainability
167
Sustainability and radical environmentalisni
170
Summary
172
Further reading
173
Web sources
174
Environment degradation and sustainability
175
The desertification industry
177
Desertification and climate change
182
Desertification and the scientific imagination
188
Web sources
214
The environmental costs of development
215
Planning water resource development
217
The physical impacts of river control
220
The ecological impacts of river control
223
Dams people and floodplains
228
Dams and resettlement
233
The environmental impacts of irrigation
240
Summary
247
Further reading
248
The political ecology of sustainability
250
Political ecology
251
Understanding tropical deforestation
255
The political ecology of deforestation
261
Forest clearance and forest people
265
The political ecology of conservation
270
The political ecology of famine
277
Summary
283
Further reading
284
Sustainability and Risk Society
285
Risk and environmental class
287
Development and environmental pollution
290
Manufacturing pollution
295
The problem of pesticides
299
Summary
308
Web sources
309
Mainstreaming risk
310
The assessment of environmental and soeial impacts
312
Environmental assessment in the Third World
313
Environmental assessment in project appraisal
318
Why projects fail
320
Reforming impact assessment
323
Aid agencies and environmental policy
325
Summary
332
Web sources
333
Sustainable development from below
334
Development planning and indigenous knowledge
337
Community conservation
341
Conservation with development
343
Sustainability through consumption
349
Rainforest management reform
353
the example of river basin planning
361
Summary
365
Further reading
366
Green development reformism or radicalism?
368
Adapting for sustainability
371
Resistance to development
372
Protest for sustainability
374
Sustainability and civil society
379
reformism or radicalism?
381
References
384
Index
436
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2001)

Dr Bill Adams has worked for over 20 years researching the problems of environment and development in Africa. He is Reader in Conservation and Development in the Department of Geography at the University of Cambridge.

Bibliographic information