We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
from PART II - ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 October 2015
During the early seventies in Southeast Asia, strong lines were drawn between the concepts “environment” and “development” and the groups identified with them. “Environmentalists” were a very small minority. They were generally young, foreign-educated, urban, ambitious intellectuals. Most were in the universities. The “developmentalists” were the officials, scientists and technicians who dealt with problems of production, economic growth and poverty, had recently gained a confident grasp of how to proceed, and saw little reason to be dissuaded from doing so. On the one hand, in a sense, were the idealists and, on the other, the pragmatists. Both held strong social convictions.
Today the distinctions are no longer meaningful. A convergence has occurred. It is embodied in laws, plans, policies, new agencies, agency operations, university programmes, production techniques and public attitudes. Although conflicts continue, as they inevitably must, environmental norms, and organizational and technical responses to them, permeate development philosophy and practice. The converse is also true; one need only recall the confinement of concern of early environmentalism to relict protection and industrial pollution to recognize how far things have progressed since them. In fact, the environmental and developmental constructs are merging in broad concepts of national realization that strike little difference between the progress of a nation, its earth, and its heritage.
The transition has been rapid. How has it happened? What is the situation today? Where might it lead to? What has been the scholar's role in the progress of events, and what might it become? These are the questions which will be pursued here.
The Past
The process of growth in nations is fundamental to contemporary events in Southeast Asia. The end of colonialism removed constraints on comfortable modes of political and economic accommodation, and replaced sharp boundaries of power and control with a flux requiring reformation of social, political and economic institutions.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
