{"id":239,"date":"2018-11-22T11:21:24","date_gmt":"2018-11-22T10:21:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.p288574.webspaceconfig.de\/?p=239"},"modified":"2021-12-20T11:59:36","modified_gmt":"2021-12-20T10:59:36","slug":"why-we-need-alternatives-to-development","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.developmentresearch.eu\/?p=239","title":{"rendered":"Why We Need Alternatives to Development"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Ashish Kothari, Ariel Salleh, Arturo Escobar, Federico Demaria, and Alberto Acosta<\/em><\/p>\n

The seductive nature of development rhetoric, sometimes called developmentality or developmentalism, has been internalized across virtually all countries. Decades after the notion of development spread around the world, only a handful of countries that were called \u2018underdeveloped\u2019 or \u2018developing\u2019, now really qualify as \u2018developed\u2019. Others struggle to emulate the North\u2019s economic template, and all at enormous ecological and social cost. The problem lies not in lack of implementation, but in the conception of development as linear, unidirectional, material and financial growth, driven by commodification and capitalist markets.<\/p>\n

Despite numerous attempts to re-signify development, it continues to be something that \u2018experts\u2019 manage in pursuit of economic growth, and measure by Gross Domestic Product (GDP), a poor and misleading indicator of progress in the sense of well-being. In truth, the world at large experiences \u2018maldevelopment\u2019, not least in the very industrialized countries whose lifestyle was meant to serve as a beacon for the \u2018backward\u2019 ones.<\/p>\n

A critical part of these multiple crises lies in the conception of \u2018modernity\u2019 itself \u2013 not to suggest that everything modern is destructive or iniquitous, nor that all tradition is positive. Indeed, modern elements such as human rights and feminist principles are proving liberatory for many people. We refer to modernity as the dominant worldview emerging in Europe since the Renaissance transition from the Middle Ages to the early modern period. The cultural practices and institutions making up this worldview hold the individual as being independent of the collective, and give predominance to private property, free markets, political liberalism, secularism and representative democracy. Another key feature of modernity is \u2018universality\u2019\u2013 the idea that we all live in a single, now globalized world, and critically, the idea of modern science as being the only reliable truth and harbinger of \u2018progress\u2019.<\/p>\n

Among the early causes of these crises is the ancient monotheistic premise that a father \u2018God\u2019 made the Earth for the benefit of \u2018his\u2019 human children. This attitude is known as anthropocentrism. At least in the West, it evolved into a philosophic habit of pitting humanity against nature; it gave rise to related dualisms such as the divide between humanity and nature, subject and object, civilized and barbarian, mind and body, man and woman. These classic ideological categories both legitimize devastation of the natural world, as well as the exploitation of sex-gender, racial and civilizational differences.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is no guarantee that development will resolve traditional discrimination and violence against women, youth, children and intersex minorities, landless and unemployed classes, races, castes and ethnicities. As globalizing capital destabilizes regional economies, turning communities into refugee populations, some people cope by identifying with the macho power of the political Right, along with its promise to \u2018take the jobs back\u2019from migrants.. A dangerous drift towards authoritarianism is taking place all over the world, from India to USA and Europe.<\/p>\n

Development and Sustainability: matching the unmatchable <\/strong><\/p>\n

The early twentieth-century debate on sustainability was strongly influenced by the Club of Rome\u2019s Limits to Growth <\/em>argument. Regular conferences at a global level would reiterate the mismatch between \u2018development and environment\u2019, with the report Our Common Future <\/em>(1987) bringing it sharply into focus. However, the UN and most state analyses have never included a critique of social structural forces underlying ecological breakdown. The framing has always been on making economic growth and development \u2018sustainable and inclusive\u2019 through appropriate technologies, market mechanisms and institutional policy reform. The problem is that this mantra of sustainability was swallowed up by capitalism early on, and then emptied of ecological content.<\/p>\n

In the period from 1980s on, neoliberal globalization advanced aggressively across the globe. The UN now shifted focus to a programme of \u2018poverty alleviation\u2019 in developing countries, without questioning the sources of poverty in the accumulation-driven economy of the affluent Global North. In fact, it was argued that countries needed to achieve a high standard of living before they could employ resources into protecting the environment. This watering down of earlier debates on limits opened the way for the ecological modernist \u2018green economy\u2019 concept.<\/p>\n

At the UN Conference for Sustainable Development in 2012, this hollow sustainability ideology was the guiding framework for multilateral discussions. In preparation for Rio+20, UNEP published a report on the \u2018green economy\u2019, defining it \u2018as one that results in improved human well-being and social equity, while significantly reducing environmental risks and ecological scarcities\u2019. In line with the pro-growth policy of sustainable development advocates, the report conceptualized all living natural forms across the planet as \u2018natural capital\u2019 and \u2018critical economic assets\u2019, so intensifying the marketable commodification of life-on-Earth.<\/p>\n

The international model of green capitalism carried forward in the declaration Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development<\/em> reveals the following flaws:<\/p>\n