Global Ecology: A New Arena of Political Conflict
by Wolfgang Sachs

In 'Global Ecology', the critique of Western-style modern development is worked out in relation to the current environmental debate. Behind the public's hope of effective action by governments on environmental issues lies a complex terrain of conceptual confusion, conflicts of interest and philisophical dispute. This is why some of the world's leading environmental thinkers have come together in this volume to probe critically the new language being developed by the environmental professionals.

The authors examine the contradictions inherent in the fashionable notion of sustainable development. They explore the emerging conflicts over the distribution of environmental risks between North and South. And they warn that 'global ecology' seen in a managerial perspective, may degenerate into an effort to redesign and manage Nature in order to keep economic growth going in the face of a rising tide of resource plunder and pollution. The y critically examine the turn towards globalizaton, arguing that it has become the dominant paradigm for viewing issues of development and of ecology - at the expense of more local and more human dimensions ad livelihoods.

Contributors are: Hans Achterhuis, Vandana Shiva, Wolfgang Sachs, Christine von Weizsäcker, and many others.

COMMENT : Reviewed by Michiel Schwarz, together with 'The Deveopment Diciotnary', in 'Industrial & Environmental Crisis Quarterly', Vol. 8, No. 4, 1994.