Environmental roots of development problems

Abstract

The introductory chapter reviews the meaning and fundamental features of the advance of development, what is later detailed and exemplified in the other parts of the book. The chapter presents the rationale, the justification and the structure of the study and explains that its main purpose is to examine the contested nexus between development goals and environmental problems. Environment-development dilemmas are actually much broader and more complicated than suggested by simplistic narratives of progress and conservation. The main attention of the first chapter is on the socio-cultural construction of development frontiers as spaces of opportunity and likely rewards for those who persevere helps to maintain social inequalities. Interrogating the frontier is a formidable challenge for critical, left-wing thinking (primarily concentrated on justice and equality), considering that frontier making is by definition a generation and perpetuation of inequalities. Likewise, critical scholars need to develop the ability to work through the political, apparently chaotic process of landscape change and silent resistance through the interstices of the established, taken-for-granted foundations of the frontiers of environment and development.