INTRODUCTION: Development and environment in the 2020s

Environmental contradictions loom larger than ever across scales, from the global coronavirus pandemic reaching into households to accelerated global climate change melting ice caps, amplifying dramatic and devastating wildfires, and flooding coasts. Environmental economics treats the environment, often conceptualized as “natural capital” as a commodity to be “priced” and factored into cost-benefit or profit equations. The idea of balance and sustainability crystalized in the Brundtland Report in 1987, where the driving notion of development and environment was utilizing the earth’s natural resources for the greatest number of people in current and future generations. Political ecologists contest foldings of development and environment together and often directly address who defines and controls notions of “growth”. Eco-Marxist, green Marxist, and other related schools of thought take a different ontological approach to the relationship between people and their environment. The chapter also presents an overview on the key concepts discussed in this book.