Situating Development in a Culture Sensitive and Eco-Conscious Framework: A Roadmap for Policy and Practice

Abstract

Environment has entered sociological discourse, both at the micro and macro levels, as an issue that affects human wellbeing. Finding a meaningful solution to the struggle for restoring the environment, while at the same time restructuring the economy, is one of the serious challenges being faced by our times. Development policies that have ignored issues of environmental sustainability have actually destroyed livelihood bases of a large number of people who are poor and dependent upon natural resources with which they have developed a sense of affinity. This is where an understanding of the cultural beliefs and practices of people comes into the fore. In many popular debates on development, culture and development are presented as if they are diametrically opposed to each other because culture is perceived as something that blocks development. This idea needs to be contested. The cultural ethos of many groups promote practices that actually have simple and viable solutions to conserve the environment and prevent the kind of irreversible loss to human life and life sustaining resources that many development projects impose. A sensitive sociological analysis would also show how environmental catastrophes such as climate change, for example, caused by profit-centric development programmes, are actually affecting vulnerable groups more severely than the elite groups who, in reality, control a major share of the resources in all societies. Even the policies that are often totally insensitive to the kind of damage that they could do to the environment need to be re-visited and recast in a pro-people model.