Explorations in the Environment–Development Dilemma

Abstract

Although the financial and economic crises have diverted attention from global and local environmental threats and natural resources management issues in developing and developed economies, environment and development concerns must remain on the agendas. The IPCC just released the Working Group I contribution to the IPCC 5th Assessment Report, which will focus World’s attention on topics such as the impact of climate change and the possible mitigation and adaptation options. This report follows the June 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development held in Rio. This meeting provided an occasion for the World to take stock of the situation (see e.g. Damon and Sterner 2012) and opened some new perspectives. For instance, member States decided to initiate a process for building a set of Sustainable Development Goals, based on the Millennium Development Goals, which will put at the core of the debate the relation between development and environment. The link between development and environment is subjected to an important tradeoff, which goes back at least to the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment held in 1972 in Stockholm and to the Brundtland “Our Common Future Report” from 1987. The tradeoff is the following: on the one hand, developing countries aim at achieving higher standards of living; on the other hand, this development process is based on agricultural and