EnvStud 715 – Ecology in Development Policy
Content:
During the 1970s anxiety about the environment not only deepened but changed in quality and emphasis. More significantly, there is a growing tendency to make correlations between the quality of the environment and the quality of human life. Ecological, economic, and social decline are more often discussed as though they are inter-related (although the relationship is rarely well argued). Environmental problems now engage a greater mix of disciplines and professions than a decade ago, and in each group of specialists there is a greater awareness of other disciplinary orientations to similar problems and (dare we hope?) a new readiness to enter into genuine dialogue across disciplinary and professional boundaries. The fact that it is not yet possible to put a generally accepted name on it - though "human ecology" is often pressed into service, and for want of a better term is sometimes used in what follows - shows that its identity is barely formed and its independence scarcely viable. But there seems little doubt that it is gathering momentum and therefore warrants careful attention. This essay is concerned with some of the assumptions from which it is developing, and with its direction and significance.
Course Lecturer: Gerhard Berchtold, PhD
ECTS credits: 6
Coursebook:
Ecology in Development: A Rationale for Three-Dimensional Policy
Brian Spooner
© The United
NRTS-21/UNUP-458
ISBN 92-808-0458-8
United Nations University Press
The United Nations University
53-70 Jingumae 5-chome, Shibuya-ku
An ecological problem is not, in the first place, the same thing as a problem in ecology. A problem in ecology is a purely scientific problem, arising out of the fact that scientists do not understand some particular ecological phenomenon, how, for example, DDT finds its way into the fat of Antarctic birds. Its solution brings them understanding. An ecological problem, in contrast, is a special type of social problem. (We can easily be led to suppose otherwise because most books on ecological problems are written by scientists.) To speak of a phenomenon as a 'social problem' is not to suggest merely, or perhaps at all, that we do not understand how it comes about; it is labeled a problem not because, like a scientific problem, it presents an obstacle to our understanding of the world but rather because - consider alcoholism. crime. deaths on the road - we believe that our society would be better off without it.
Passmore (1974, p. 43)
- Teacher: Gerhard Berchtold
- Teacher: Peter Hodecek