ABSTRACT
Until recently the debates on environment and development have been dominated by values which reflect the “ first” biases of normal professionalism. These start with things rather than people, the rich rather than the poor, men rather than women and numbers rather than qualities. They bear the imprint of interests that are urban, industrial and central in location rather than rural, agricultural and peripheral. Poor rural children, women and men have been treated as residual not primary, as terminal problems not starting-points.
