Midterm 1 Concepts Flashcards
Theoretical Approaches to Environment & Development
- Tragedy of the Commons
- Market Failure
- Government Failure
- Local is best - small is beautiful
- Big is best
Two explanations on how the third world was made
- Primitive Nature
2. Capitalism
Types of Contradictions
- Labor versus Capital
- Capital versus capital
- Production versus Consumption
- Contradictions are the engine that help run the system
The World’s economies are divided into two chambers
- Articulated
- producer sector and consumer sector
- first world - Disarticulated
- no producer sector, weak consumer sector
- low health, life expectancy, high urbanization, high unemployment, low economic dynamics, lower education
- Political economies: export enclave and import substitution
Capitalist Development - Triple meaning
- Accumulation: in order to develop you need accumulation
- Social Differentiation: People are built into different categories with different experiences
- Impact on ecosystem
Capitalist Development
Process of growth and expansion of the system itself
- Involves mostly accumulation but also social differentiation
Development in Capitalism
How resources of that growth are distributed, Going from disarticulated to articulated
- Mainly defined by social differentiation
Systems/Forces of Development
- Military System: Prevent other people from doing certain things
- Political System Organizes and regulates the world’s system at both the nation-state level and global level
- Economic System: Distributing resources, services and goods across regions
- These work together to create domination (physical force) and hegemony (subscribing into)
- Different levels of these systems
Defining Development
- Production: requires capacity, hardware/software, capitalism and usually articulated
- Development requires production - Surplus: production exceeds consumption
- Reinvestment: help people or rub people off
History of Debates
- Exploration/Civilization vs. Colonization/Exploitation
- Modernization vs. Structural Transformation
- Modernization: Agriculture to Industrialization transformation
- Structural Transformation: Restructuring an economy to combat against people trying to colonize - Neo-liberalization vs. Strong State Leaders
- Social Accumulation: Investing surplus in good public health, education, roads, etc.
- Private Accumulation: Trying to accumulate as much
Standard Measures of Development
- GNP
- PPP
- Gini Coefficient: Measure of inequality
Trickle-down Theory (60s-70s)
If there is growth, things will trickle down to the poor as a benefit (this was a failure)
Millennium Development Goals
- Eradicate Extreme Poverty
- Invest in primary education so everyone has access
- Equality between males and females (gender eq.)
- Increased investment in health and reduce infant mortality
- Protection of the ecosystem
- Global partnerships and more investments
Types of Capital
1) Human Capital
- labor/intelligence, organization & culture (skills & knowledge)
2) Financial Capital
- Cash investments & monetary instruments
3) Manufactured Capital
- Infrastructure, machine/tools & factories
4) Nature Capital
- Resources, living systems, ecosystem services
-Top three can be produced and lead to the 4th
Sustainability is a Normative Concept
1) Right of Future Generations
- Can’t consume at the level we are now
2) What environments do human want
- Sustainability of nature & constant natural capital
3) Internal Justice
- Global equity between and within generations
- Ecological system is not divisible
- 2 Dimensions: Ecological & Social sustainability
Environmental Space
Part of human beings can use in the natural world without doing lasting damage to its essential characteristics
A function of carrying capacity of the area and its recuperative efficiency
4 Needs/recommendations from Environmental space
1) Use of resources must not exceed its regenerative capacity
2) Discharge maximally match absorptive capacity
- What we put in the earth shouldn’t exceed what it can take
3) Limit use of non-renewables
4) Decomposition of waste should be in balance with natural processes
Methods of Sustaining
1) Radical Resource Productivity
- Least energy used for max. output (solar panels)
2) Biomimicry
- Mimicking nature as it produces little waste
- Reducing wasteful throughput, Eliminating idea of waste, redesign industrial system on biological lines
3) Service & Flows Economy
- Change relationship between producer and consumer
- Move ownership from access to service economy
4) Invest in Natural Capital
- Protect grasslands, water systems, forests
Gender Relations
Hierarchical relations of power between men and women that tend to disadvantage women
- Draws upon socially and culturally determined norms of what is appropriate for men and women
System of Patriarchy
It’s a societal system that institutionalizes male power over women, be it physical, economic or social
Intersectionality
women’s experiences are not uniform and are shaped by race, class, ethnicity, and caste backgrounds
WID
Calls for integration of women into the development process through legal and policy changes
WAD
Women have been an integral part of development, whose work reproduces existing structures of inequality
GAD
Women’s subordination and exclusion is systemic
- Need to challenge existing gender roles, relations and structures
Eco-Feminism
- Women & nature are placed below men and culture
- Women have a stake in ending environmental degradation
- Violence against women & nature rooted in ideological material dominance
- Ignores intersectionality
Feminist Environmentalism
- Critique of Eco-feminism and seeks to understand role of intersectionality
- Division of labor, property and power determine access to and control over resources
- Women can be affected by degradation in specific ways but can also use their knowledge as bearers of change
- Challenge notions about gender, g-division or labor and gender relations as well as who appropriates nature’s resources and how
Forms of appropriation
1) Statization
- State control over forests and village commons
- Restrictions on locals’ access to NTFPs
- Harassment by forest officials
2) Privatization
- Private (usually male) ownership of community resources
- Illegal encroachments made over time
- Redistributing public land to private individuals
Both contribute to erosion of commons and undermine local knowledge systems
- need sanction of state for privatization
Women as agents of change
- Women at the forefront of movements against ecological destruction
- Women’s leadership linked to material realities and placed below men
- Chipko Movement
- “Foresters”: profits and timber form forest
- Women: focus on soil, water and pure air from forest (more sustainable focus)
What is the Ecological Problem?
Full Earth Transparency
- Changing Gaseous composition (GW)
- Loss of productive soil
- Overfished Oceans
- Severely depleted acquires
- Alarming extinction of many species
- Depletion of forest ecosystems
Population Growth and Consumption main points
- Population growth is serious and undermines development
- Generalized western consumption levels is substantially more disruptive to the ecosystem
- Income of poor needs to increase and reduction of population
- Greening of production and reduction of per capita income in developed countries
