Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 26
Environment and Development
Tom Perreault
Introduction
'Environment and development' has long been a cornerstone of environmental
geography. It is an inherently integrative fi eld that incorporates a broad diversity
of theoretical and methodological approaches, many of which are covered
elsewhere in this volume, such as political ecology, environmental governance,
sustainability, land use/land cover change, ecological modernisation, and environ-
mental conservation. Moreover, geographers concerned with the relationship
between environment and development draw heavily on economic and sociolo-
gical theories of development as well as the fi elds of biogeography and ecology.
As such, this chapter will examine environment and development not as a stand-
alone subfi eld of geography, but rather as one that necessarily brings together
diverse intellectual approaches trained on an array of social and environmental
problems.
Since the 1970s, the twin themes of environment and development have become
increasingly prominent in geography, and have continued to evolve in focus and
scope. At its core, the fi eld of environment and development geography is concerned
with two fundamental realities: (i) social groups - households, rural communities,
cities or nation states - are dependent upon nature and natural resources for their
survival and welfare, and (ii) the practices and institutional arrangements social
groups employ to ensure survival and welfare in turn impact environmental quality
and the functioning of geo-ecological systems. This reciprocal relationship between
resource use and environmental conditions, and the implications that these processes
have for social welfare, have long been a focus of study for geographers. This vital
area of research has undergone something of a sea change since the 1960s and
1970s, when dominant thinking in both development and conservation viewed
'local' and 'traditional' resource use practices - i.e., those strategies employed by
the rural poor in the global South - as 'backward' and deleterious both to environ-
ments and to national development. In the 1970s and 1980s, critical scholarship
began to challenge these views, as discussed below.
