Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
(IUCN) in its 1980 World Conservation Strategy report (IUCN 1980), and later
enshrined in the World Commission on Environment and Development's
Our
Common Future
, the so-called Brundtland Report, released in 1987 (WCED 1987).
The concept of sustainable development, detailed elsewhere in this volume and
briefl y outlined below, proved particularly fertile ground for geographers concerned
with the relationship between environment and development.
By the late 1970s, received wisdom regarding the salutary effects of industrial
modernisation and scientifi c environmental management had to a large extent been
turned on its head. Much geographical scholarship in the environment and develop-
ment tradition of the 1980s - infl uenced by ascendant North Atlantic environmental
movements, as well as 20 years of skepticism towards ideologies of scientifi c mod-
ernisation from environmentalist, Marxist and poststructuralist positions - critiqued
prevailing ideas regarding both development and environment. This new wave of
scholarship, much of it falling under the rather loose heading of political ecology,
exposed the socially and environmentally negative effects of dominant development
practices, while highlighting the many benefi ts of 'traditional' environmental man-
agement practices (Robbins, 2004). If foundational texts can be identifi ed for politi-
cal ecology, Watts'
Silent Violence
(1983b), Blaikie and Brookfi eld's
Land
Degradation and Society
(1987), and Hecht and Cockburn's
Fate of the Forest
(1989) - each centrally concerned with questions of environment and development
- are surely among them. Indeed, it is no mere coincidence that critical approaches
to environment and development came to the fore at the same time that sustainable
development emerged as a prominent discourse and policy objective among inter-
national institutions (if not in the halls of power in Washington and London). To
a considerable extent, political ecologists writing in the 1980s were critiquing the
same processes, institutions, and ideas as their contemporaries in the IUCN and the
UN, though they typically did so from a more explicitly political, and politically
radical, position and only rarely from within policy-making institutions. Insofar as
these geographers critiqued conventional wisdom regarding, for instance, drought
and famine, soil erosion, and deforestation, they raised vital questions about the
functioning of international development programmes and the implications these
have for environmental degradation, human welfare, and social justice (Adams,
2001; Robbins, 2004).
Key Themes: Conservation, Livelihood and Sustainability
Rather than attempting a comprehensive review of the environment and develop-
ment literature, the chapter now turns to three themes that are central to environ-
ment and development geography: conservation, livelihoods, and sustainability. By
directing analytical attention to questions of resource use, management and gover-
nance, these concepts help shed light on the complexities and contradictions inher-
ent in the fi eld. Though fully aware of the limitations of this brief discussion, I hope
that it will help illuminate the ways in which geographers have approached these
three interconnected core themes.
Nature conservation and protected areas
Questions of environmental conservation, and in particular the management of
protected areas, lie at the heart of the environment and development tradition in
