ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to draw together the concepts of humanitarian relief and sustainable development, in part by linking research and practice and often separated fields of concern, research and practice. It addresses why various policy options that are open in situations of forced displacement have not been built upon to develop an approach based on ‘sustainability’ or ‘sustainable development’. The field of ‘political ecology’ hardly represents a prominent or particularly coherent theoretical position – although the absence of a ‘grand narrative’ might be seen as one of its most positive features by those concerned with the universalising assumptions of five decades of writing about ‘development’. Work that explicitly refers to ‘political ecology’ is not the only theoretical field in which fruitful questions and lessons could be learnt about the relationships between refugees, environment and sustainable development. The chapter also presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book.
