On the contrary, a radical change of values was necessary to move us from the limited and controlled expression of the

market principle found in numerous historical and cultural situations, to the present, with our more or less general accept-ance of the boundless extension of the market(Pg85) Technosciences and the market have become simply self-evident. Accord-ing to the contemporary utilitarian credo, they accomplish the most desirable objective of our human condition that is, to produce and distribute material prosperity for the greatest possible number. The process of commoditization which transforms all spheres of social life is at work throughout the world, with varying effects. We see here the extent to which development, as a policy and a practice, is a forceful attempt to implant new ways of thinking and acting which follow the rules of the market. At the level of localized projects, however, development still appears under the guise of apparent neutrality provided by its technical and productive characteristics

Very often, development means the possibility for a small minority to make large profits at the expense of the majority. With money as a supreme value, life counts less. The social imperative is quite obviously to get money by any available means. The infinite wants of man are categorically opposed to the scarce resources of nature To be human is thus to be able to exercise ones individual rights to accumulate goods within a culturally recognized competitive context. Note that this market modernity is the result of a symbolic and ethical reversal economic logic is projected onto the social whole, to the point where it encompasses the very totality of which it is a part. In contrast to the situation in traditional societies, where those who were fully involved in market exchange had relatively low social status, today, according to Adam Smith and his numerous followers, we should all behave like merchants if

we really want to achieve our objectives as human beings Once human beings have been defined by the principle of utility, the virtues of development can no longer be called into question Our modernity, this radical project to create a new man and a new society, implies a difficult combination and constant tension between the two antagonistic principles of utility and humanity. Are we so confident that this secularizing project gives us the key to distinguishing, in the individual, social and cultural domains, what is true and false, good and evil? Can a society be built and maintained only on the basis of universalist values such as these? Surely the valuing of human relations in itself, as the very foundation of any society, is what is missing. Indeed, this is precisely what is destroyed in the name of development This has nothing to do with a utopian vision of mankinds future. Such a return would simply counterbalance the dominant principle of utility and its market manifestations. But more fundamentally, according to Mauss, the morality of the exchange-through-gift is eternal, as it is the very principle of normal social life. 15 These are the conditions on which every society should, in some respect, be built. Even in a society in which the market market developmentalism With development, all of these reli-gious and spiritual limits are progressively removed. The end result, as is well demonstrated by contemporary Western societies, is a hypertrophic economic order, a subordinated political domain, and an indefinable social sphere of only residual significance. Individual freedom, this cardinal value of our cultural system, thus involves the boundless use of all manner of

resources, and as such it presents a fundamental threat to our ecology, even our very survival two closely connected forces of technological and market utopianism resourses shiva For natural resources require to be developed. This created a new dualism between nature and humans. Since nature needed to be developed by humans, people had also to be developed from their primitive, backward states of embeddedness in nature Money and investment had completely replaced the life processes of nature in the economists equations and debates about scarcity The theology of the market, and the belief in technological miracles, allowed modern economists like Robert Solow to argue that The ancient concern about the depletion of natural resources no longer rests on any firm theoretical basis. It was this violation of natures limits that then brought forth the most recent phase in the ever-changing development recipe the notions of sustainable development and sustainable growth

In contrast to the knowledge system created through the scientific revolu-tion, ecological ways of knowing nature are necessarily participatory. Nature herself is the experiment and ordinary people are the scientists, as sylvicul-turalists, agriculturists and water experts. Their knowledge is ecological and plural, reflecting both the diversity of natural ecosystems and the diversity

RESOURCES in cultures that nature-based living gives rise to. Throughout the world, the colonization of diverse peoples was, at its root, a forced subjugation of

ecological concepts of nature, and of the earth as the repository of all forms, latencies and powers of creation, the ground and cause of the world. The symbolism of Terra Mater , the earth in the form of the Great Mother, creative and protective, has been a shared but diverse symbol across space and time, and ecology movements in the West today are inspired in large part by the recovery of the concept of Gaia, the earth goddess However, this much vaunted possibility of limitless growth does not take place in practice because the conditions of sustainability have been violated. New limits are now faced by the development process itself, and, more seri-ously, survival itself is threatened, especially of the poor. New poverty is created, and this growing poverty itself becomes evidence of the development crisis. To see it involves, first, a recognition that the categories of productivity and growth, which have been taken to be positive, progressive and universal, are in reality politically, spatially and temporally restricted in character Industrially produced fertilizer and scientifically engineered seed strains were considered superior substi-tutes for natures fertility and seed The dominant ideology of post-war development has been exclusively concerned with the conversion of nature into a resource and the use of natural resources for commodity production and capital accumulation. It ignores the ecological processes that have been regenerating nature outside the domain of human activity. It also ignores the requirements of the huge numbers of people whose needs are not being satisfied through market mechanisms

hidden negative externalities of the development process

In a finite, ecologically interconnected and

entropy-bound world, natures limits need to be respected; they cannot be set by the whims and conveniences of capital and market forces, no matter how clever the technologies summoned to their aid environment goldman sachs Unfettered enthusiasm for economic growth in reflected the Wests desire to restart the economic machine after a devastating war, the emphasis on manpower planning echoed American fears after the shock of Sputnik in , the discovery of basic needs was stimulated by President Johnsons domestic war on poverty in the s, and so, too, for the concern about worldwide inequality

As the adamant rejection of all no-growth positions, in particular by Third World governments at the Stockholm Conference demonstrated, the compulsion to drive up the GNP had turned many into cheerful enemies of nature Out of this awareness of technological flexibility grew, towards the end of the s, a new perception of the ecological predicament: the limits to growth are no longer seen as an insurmountable barrier blocking the surge of growth, but as discrete obstacles forcing the flow to take a different route. Soft-path studies in areas from energy to health care proliferated and charted new riverbeds for the wrongly headed stream

No development without sustainability; no sustainability without development is the formula which establishes the newly formed bond. Development emerges rejuvenated from this liaison, the ailing concept gaining another lease of life. This is nothing less than the repeat of a proven ruse: every time in the last thirty years when the destructive effects of

development were recognized, the concept was stretched in such a way as to include both injury and therapy. For example, when it became obvious, around , that the pursuit of development actually intensified poverty, the notion of equitable development was invented so as to reconcile the irreconcilable: the creation of poverty with the abolition of poverty. In the same vein, the Brundtland Report incorporated concern for the environment into the concept of development by erecting sustainable development as the conceptual roof for both violating and healing the environment

On the other hand, however, ecosystems theory, based on cybernetics as the science of engineering feedback mechanisms, represents anything but a break with the ominous Western tradition of increasing control over nature. How can a theory of regulation be separated from an interest in manipulation? Today, survival of the planet is well on its way to becoming the wholesale justification for a new wave of state interventions in peoples lives all over the world Provision for the coming generations has been part of their tribal and peasant practices since time immemorial. What is more, the new centrally designed schemes for the management of environmental resources threaten to collide with their locally based knowledge about conservation. For example, the Indian Chipko movement has made the courage and wisdom of those women who protected the trees with their bodies against the chainsaws of the loggers a symbol of local resistance acclaimed far beyond the confines of India. Yet their success has had its price: forest managers moved in and claimed responsibility for the trees. All of a sudden the conflict took on a different colour: the hard-nosed woodcutters had given

way to soft-spoken experts. They brought along surveys, showed diagrams, pointed out growth curves, and argued over optimal felling rates. Planting schemes along with wood-processing industries were proposed, and attempts made to lure the villagers into becoming small timber producers Calls for securing the survival of the planet are often, upon closer inspection, nothing else than calls for the survival of the industrial system The ecocratic discourse which is about to unfold in the s starts from the conceptual marriage of environment and development, finds its cogni-tive base in ecosystems theory, and aims at new levels of administrative monitoring and control production Working in the milpa, needs are shaped by the activities which satisfy them one cannot speak of distinguishing production from consumption. Modern production, on the other hand, separates needs from satisfaction and clearly creates two spheres, one of production and the other of con-sumption. The milpa, unless carried out on a large scale, contributes little to economic indicators, wages and employment. However, production, by definition, increases the GNP as well as other economic indicators They define subsistence as a situation of endemic scarcity, not realizing that they thereby project the foundational axiom of Western economics scarcity onto a setting which obeys a non- or pre-economic logic We are the witnesses of a war, a war against subsistence embed-ded in specific cultures, a war against nature itself. A whole bevy of experts united in interdisciplinary efforts to explore the potential for increases in efficiency Their existence and complexity place the production of corn within a cosmology where nature is not reduced to resources but respected in its

autonomy

Jean Robert, in his essay Production says tha