Environment and development: Concepts and practices in transition
| Published date | 01 July 1991 |
| Date | 01 July 1991 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1002/pad.4230110408 |
| Author | Adrian Atkinson |
PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION AND DEVELOPMENT, Vol.
I
I,
401413 (1991)
Environment and development: concepts and practices in
transition
ADRIAN ATKINSON
University College,
London
SUMMARY
This article starts by sketching the shape of the institutions and mechanisms which currently
aim to protect the environment in developing countries. The form these have taken is largely
based upon the environmental institutions created in the United States in the early
1970s.
under the influence
of
the outburst
of
environmental concern at that time. The sudden re-
emergence of environmental concern at the top
of
the political agenda in the
1980s
is attribu-
table in significant measure to the ‘Green Movement’, that has evolved out of the concerns
originally expressed in the early
1970s.
The new institutions and mechanisms have, however,
failed to check environmental deterioration in many developing countries; it is necessary
to focus on the macroframework determining development priorities and practices if environ-
mental problems are to be adequately addressed. The
root
of
the problem
is
not merely
institutional,
or
even macroeconomic, but is primarily cultural, stemming more specifically
from the imposition of European cultural values. The environmental crisis is not restricted
to developing countries and is unlikely to be solved without considerably more far-reaching
initiatives than we have seen
so
far. According to the literature
of
the Green Movement,
the process of the ‘greening of development’ is far from completed in the creation of current
environmental agencies and management mechanisms.
INTRODUCTION
Since the early 1970s, environmental planning and management has joined traditional
areas of concern
of
governments in both industrialized and developing countries,
expressing itself in the proliferation of environmental agencies and a distinct set
of environmental management mechanisms. In the late 1980s, the pace of concern
escalated sharply, new urgency and status being accorded to the stemming of what
is perceived in many developing countries to be accelerating environmental deterio-
ration on a very broad front.
The purpose of this article is to assess the current state
of
play and then to take
a look behind these concerns and institutional responses. First, it is necessary to
focus on the validity and structure
of
the concerns in question and to assess whether
the responses
so
far regarded as acceptable are really addressing the issues. Growing
out of the environmental concern and
Limits
to
Growth
(Meadows et
al.,
1972)
analysis of the early 1970s-which essentially contended that unless we undertake
a profound restructuring of our social and political system, we will rapidly destroy
the biosphere-the ‘Green Movement’ has continued to articulate these concerns
Dr
Adrian Atkinson
is
Course Director in Environmental Planning and Management at the Development
Planning Unit, University College London.
027 1-207519
1
/NO40
1-1
3$06.50
0
1991
by John Wiley
&
Sons, Ltd.
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