Redefining Sustainable Development

Book Description
Development and assistance in disasters is about helping people to help themselves. It is to do with facilitating 'sustainable livelihoods' and addressing the ills of social discrimination. These seem to be self-evident propositions, in fact they are a minefield. If development workers intervene to assist in the creation of environmentally sustainable livelihoods, what judgmental codes are contained in the everyday cultural and linguistic assumptions of development practitioners? What account do they give of the environment and people's relationship to it? If livelihoods are to be economically sustainable, by which economic criteria is the judgement made? Is the objective to keep projects going until the funds run out, or, like cancer patients, to survive for five years, or to knit people into the world's trading systems? If projects are to be sustainable, they must be socially just. By whose justice do we judge? At present much development and disaster relief work derives its importance solely from providing opportunities for honing survival skills. The authors of this book examine these questions and others in some detail and argue that the assumptions of the social-democratic world, including those of international NGOs, are tied to the perpetuation of capitalism. Middleton and O'Keefe suggest that the issue, in the face of anarchic global financial power, is to re-think the nature of class in a late capitalist world and to recognize indigenous NGOs as the new political vehicles for its struggle.

About the Author
Neil Middleton has written widely on development and aid and is a consultant with ETC UK. Phil O' Keefe teaches Economic Development and Environmental Management at the University of Northumbria. He is also the director of ETC UK. He has written and edited many books and articles on development issues, including three with Neil Middleton, and continues to lead large-scale science policy initiatives and evaluation teams.


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Development and assistance in disasters is about helping people to help themselves. It is to do with facilitating 'sustainable livelihoods' and addressing the ills of social discrimination. These seem to be self-evident propositions; in fact they are minefields.If development workers intervene to assist in the creation of environmentally sustainable livelihoods, what judgmental codes are contained in the everyday cultural and linguistic assumptions of development practitioners? What account do they give of the environment and people's relationship to it? If livelihoods are to be economically sustainable, by which economic criteria is the judgement made? Is the objective to keep projects going until the funds run out, or, like cancer patients, to survive for five years, or to knit people into the world's trading systems? If projects are to be sustainable, they must be socially just. By whose justice do we judge? At present much development and disaster relief work derives its importance solely from providing opportunities for honing survival skills. The authors of this book examine these questions and others in some detail and argue that the assumptions of the social-democratic world, including those of international NGOs, are tied to the perpetuation of capitalism. Middleton and O'Keefe suggest that the issue, in the face of anarchic global financial power, is to re-think the nature of class in a late capitalist world and to recognize indigenous NGOs as the new political vehicles for its struggle.


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