Product Description: Amid the hubbub of daily life and the seemingly endless bounty of capitalism, it’s easy to forget that all human action must be played out within our planet’s limitations. Any hope of infinity—of infinite growth, infinite prosperity, and the like—is an illusion...read more

In this pioneering collection, some of the world’s most eminent critics of development review the key concepts of the development discourse in the post-war era.Each essay examines one concept from a historical and anthropological point of view and highlights its particular bias. Exposing their historical obsolescence and intellectual sterility, the authors call for a bidding farewell to the whole Eurocentric development idea. This is urgently needed, they argue, in order to liberate people’s minds - in both North and South - for bold responses to the environmental and ethical challenges now confronting humanity.These essays are an invitation to experts, grassroots movements and students of development to recognize the tainted glasses they put on whenever they participate in the development discourse.

In preparation for the World Summit on Sustainable Development, to be held in August 2002 in Johannesburg, here Wolfgang Sachs and colleagues advance some fundamental ideas and principles for tackling humanity's double crisis of environmental deterioration and mass poverty.

Product Description: While sustainability is in danger of being reduced to a meaningless platitude, the brutal fact remains that industrial countries make a disproportionately large and negative impact on the environment. A serious transition to sustainability will require changing people's mindsets and social institutions, in addition to public policies, technologies and business practices...read more

Product Description: Früher forderten die Umweltschützer neue gesellschaftliche Tugen­ den. Heute rufen sie nach besseren Managementstrategien. Früher drängten sie auf mehr Demokratie und lokale Eigenständigkeit, doch jetzt liebäugeln sie mit einer globalen Machtergreifung durch Regierungen, Konzerne und die Wissenschaft...read more

Product Description: Behind the public's hope of effective action by governments on environmental issues lies a complex terrain of conceptual confusion, conflicts of interest and philosophical dispute. This is why some of the world's leading environmental thinkers have come together in this volume to probe critically the new language being developed by environmental professionals...read more