ABSTRACT
Drawing on extensive personal experience, Sunil Roy makes a strong statement supporting his view that social aspects of resource management—patterns of development—demand equivalent attention to technical aspects. The basic issue becomes what kind of development, for whom, and how? Is there enough for everyone's need, if not his/her greed? Achievements proceeding from effective development and management of natural resources have been and are being made in the Third World, but data clearly show that the job is far from done, that the magnitude of the task is growing faster than is institutional capacity for its accomplishment. A complicating factor is the common perception in the Third World that conservation is an elitist pursuit, thus both external to and potentially contrary to the best interests of most people. Also, the outside expert may know the answers only to an incomplete or otherwise inappropriate schedule of questions. Perceived as another form of elitism, the outsider's solutions may create additional problems while compounding the original one.
