(De-)development

Does development create or mitigate poverty? - Clare Short MP and Teddy Goldsmith discuss. Published in The Ecologist, April 2005.

Can we cope with the growing oil shortage? - this talk was broadcast at various dates during December 2003 on the World Business Report programme of the BBC World Service, as part of a series of six talks by Edward Goldsmith.

What to do? - chapter from La terre vue du ciel (the Earth seen from the Sky) by photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand (Paris, 3 September 2002). "Ultimately the answer ... is to change the industrial system itself and return to a largely rural, community-based society in which economic activities are conducted on a very much smaller scale and that cater as much as possible for the local economy."

Reflection on the 2002 Johannesburg Summit - the World Summit on Sustainable Development was held in Johannesburg from 26 August to 4 September, the tenth anniversary of the Rio Earth Summit. This critique, written in advance of the Summit, shows that even in the unlikely event of 'success', the exploitation and destruction of peoples and ecosystems would continue unimpeded. Published in The Ecologist, 22 July 2002.

Why development creates poverty - "Development ... is above all the gradual disembedding from their social context of all such functions that were previously provided for free, their monetization and takeover by the state and the corporations... ". Published in The Ecologist Vol. 32 No. 6, July / August 2001, under the title "Poverty, the child of progress".

Can the environment survive the global economy? - "To increase trade is justified because it is seen to be the most effective way of increasing economic development, which we equate with progress, and which in terms of the world-view of modernism, is made out to provide a means of creating a material and technological paradise on Earth ... ". Too bad about the planet. First published as Chapter 7 of The Case Against the Global Economy, June 2001. This extended version appeared in The Ecologist Vol. 27 No. 6, November / December 1997.

Can humanity adapt to the world that science is creating? - human beings evolved as small bands of hunter-gatherers, and our fundamental, instinctive nature remains adapted to that role. Small wonder then that we are so maladjusted to the world which we have created. As we pursue the path of 'progress', fully expecting that science, technology and economic growth will lead us into a future of happiness and prosperity, we are only drawing further away from our origins, and from our true natures. Unpublished, 25 January 2001.

The last word: a personal commentary - "the development of the global economy ... will, we were assured, usher in an era of unprecedented prosperity for all. However ... it can only lead for most of humanity to an unprecedented increase in general insecurity, unemployment, poverty, disease, malnutrition and environmental disruption ... ". This essay was written as Chapter 26 of The Case Against the the Global Economy: and for a turn towards localisation edited by Edward Goldsmith and Jerry Mander, 2001.

The European project - an exposition of the problems inherent in the structure and institutions of the European Union.

On Seattle - some comments on the humiliation of the World Trade Organization.

Development as colonialism - this important essay exposes modern-day 'development' as colonialism repackaged and ferociously applied through transnational corporations, compliant local elites and global institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF - and backed by the threat of military force. It was published in The Ecologist Vol. 27 No. 2, March / April 1997, and as Chapter 1 of The Case Against the Global Economy by Edward Goldsmith and Jerry Mander (Earthscan 2001).

The Great Takeover and its reversal - a personal commentary on the development of the global economy.

Development, biospheric ethics and a new way forward - Contribution to The Future of Progress - Reflections on environment and development edited by Helena Norberg-Hodge, Peter Goering and Steven Gorelick on behalf of ISEC (the International Society for Ecology and Culture. This is a collection of essays that challenge the Western notions of progress that dominate the current debate on environment and development. Published by Green Books, revised edition 1995;

A strategy for ensuring the habitability of our planet - a lecture to the Royal Society of Arts, London, demonstrating that the interests of the economy, and those of society and the environment, are fundamentally incompatable.

Development and colonialism - in this important essay Edward Goldsmith explores why development, whether described as 'sustainable', 'ecological', 'appropriate' or otherwise, will only deepen the poverty and misery of poor tropical nations. Published in Ecoscript No. 35, June 1993.

An open letter to Mr Clausen to Mr Alden Clausen, Retiring President of the World Bank, and Mr Barber Conable, President Elect, reflecting on the disastrous social and environmental record of the World Bank, and its consistent inability to advance beyond the mere rhetoric of reform. Published in The Ecologist Vol. 16 No. 2/3, 1986.

The costs of modernisation - "There is a direct, historical link between the increasingly serious environmental problems we are experiencing today and the 'modernisation' of our economic activities ... ". Co-authored by Nicholas Hildyard, co-editor of The Ecologist this article is the Introduction to Green Britain or Industrial Wasteland (Polity Press, 1986).

The illusion of our time - review of In the Name of Progress: the underside of foreign aid, by Patricia Adams and Lawrence Solomon. Published in The Ecologist Vol 15 No 5/6 1985. "... aid programmes are not designed to help the people of the Third World, they are designed instead to help unrepresentative and usually tyrannical governments, in whose present interest it is to undertake vast agricultural and industrial projects... "

Maintenance: a limit to growth - Editorial article by Edward Goldsmith published in the Ecologist Quarterly, autumn 1978. While we press on with ever-greater expenditures on new capital plant and infrastructure, we are increasingly unable to finance the maintenance of what we already have, and thus "Our growing inability to maintain the physical infrastructure of our industrial society constitutes in itself, yet another limit to growth."

De-developing the Third World - reflections following the United Nations Conference on Desertification. Development is not the solution but the problem, as it forces the sacrifice of the ecosphere in return for short term increases in material production. Published in The Ecologist Vol. 7 No. 9, November 1977.

De-industrialising society - five years after A Blueprint for Survival, Edward Goldsmith updates and reaffirms the original message, that we must create "an economically and politically de-centralised post-industrial society". The article was originally published in The Ecologist Vol. 7 No. 4, May 1977. This slightly revised version was published as Chapter 7 of The Great U-Turn.

Planning for starvation - Editorial article, The Ecologist Vol. 7 No. 2, March 1977. Republished in The Doomsday Funbook (Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006).

What is an electric toothbrush? - editorial article in The Ecologist Vol. 6 No. 10, December 1976. An attack on reductionist science, and its insistence on the atomisation and isolation of whatever it examines. "Today's scientists wince at the suggestion that the behaviour of natural systems is purposive or directive, that, in fact, they have been designed to do particular jobs like electric toothbrushes. This, they maintain, implies 'teleology' - which is, surprisingly enough, still one of the principal taboos of the Religion of Science ... ".

Oiling the wheels of the Doomsday machine - editorial article published in The Ecologist Vol. 6 No. 6, July 1976. Some of the dire predictions made here have not been realised on the timescale anticipated. But it may only be a question of of time ...

Letter to the directors of FAO - The FAO is pursuing with zeal its aim to increase African meat and livestock production through the mass spraying of insecticide, intended to eradicate the tsetse fly. The most probable outcome is famine and the decimation of Africa's wildlife. Published in The Ecologist Vol. 6 No. 6, July 1976.

Strategy for tomorrow - editorial article published in The Ecologist Vol. 5 No. 2, February 1975. Commentary on the second Club of Rome report.