Environment and Alternative Development *

This paper stresses the global dimension of the present-day human predicament, marked by the inequity of simultaneous material abundance and overdevelopment in some regions or sections and underdevelopment, increasing poverty and deprivation in some others. It seeks to examine the dynamics of a global structure that forces a continual flow of resources away from non-industrialized into industrialized countries, and from a steady and sustainable to an accelerating and rapacious use of resources in the service of a parasitic and wasteful life-style that is now spreading to the developing countries as well. The science-and-technology that sets this process in motion and sustains it, by making an incessant demand on fast-depleting natural resources, leads not only to the domination of man by machine but also to an increasing redundancy of man himself, besides blighting the life chances of future generations. Furthermore, this science-and-technology posits development and environment in an adversary relationship, and thus puts developmentalists and environmentalists in two hostile camps. The paper examines the philosophical, historical, cultural and ethnic underpinnings of modern science-and-technology, which has subverted its original purpose of liberating man, and points to the urgent need for rediscovering the other traditions that take an integrated and holistic view of life as a whole, in which science and technology and development and environment all merge in a symbiotic relationship. This entails the search for an alternative concept of both development and technology as well as of life-styles, so as to ensure diversity in consonance with local resource endowments (human, material and technical), foster self-reliance and autonomy, and promote equity and participation, not only in economic and political processes, but also in giving meaning and content to human dignity at various levels. In the end the paper spells out the policy implications of such an approach.