ABSTRACT
Earlier chapters of this book have looked at how the environmental consequences of development have posed a contradiction for capitalism, and how that contradiction has been addressed. As the environment has become internationalized it has been transformed, and as it is transformed social struggles are mounted for the control and ownership of natural resources. The attempt to import solutions to environmental problems from developed countries, in the form of orthodox environmental management, therefore assumes more importance as the ecological crisis of development deepens. At the same time the potential exists to understand the historical dimension of environmental change by paying more than lip service to the kinds of environmental knowledge possessed by indigenous cultures. For those who recognize the importance of these cultures, sustainable development is not so much an invention of the future as a rediscovery of the past, even when the practical mechanics of how to combine modern technologies with a concern for sustainable-livelihood creation remains largely unexplored.
