what do you understand by development? Explain the social and ecological problems that are encountered in relating devlopment with environment (600 Words).
Answers
Answer:
Development is a process that creates growth, progress, positive change or the addition of physical, economic, environmental, social and demographic compon
Explanation:
Development is a process that ensures good quality of life to all the people in terms of happiness, harmony and satisfaction of essential needs. It is related to improvement, progress and aspirations of people. This definition of development would benefit all the sections of society as it shows the basic need approach.
Development - a political term
A multitude of meanings is attached to the idea of development; the term is complex, contested, ambiguous, and elusive. However, in the simplest terms, development can be defined as bringing about social change that allows people to achieve their human potential. An important point to emphasise is that development is a political term: it has a range of meanings that depend on the context in which the term is used, and it may also be used to reflect and to justify a variety of different agendas held by different people or organisations. The idea of development articulated by the World Bank, for instance, is very different from that promoted by Greenpeace activists. This point has important implications for the task of understanding sustainable development, because much of the confusion about the meaning of the term 'sustainable development' arises because people hold very different ideas about the meaning of 'development' (Adams 2009). Another important point is that development is a process rather than an outcome: it is dynamic in that it involves a change from one state or condition to another. Ideally, such a change is a positive one - an improvement of some sort (for instance, an improvement in maternal health). Furthermore, development is often regarded as something that is done by one group (such as a development agency) to another (such as rural farmers in a developing country). Again, this demonstrates that development is a political process, because it raises questions about who has the power to do what to whom.
Development transforms the environment
But development is not simply about the interactions between human groups; it also involves the natural environment. So, from another point of view, development is about the conversion of natural resources into cultural resources. This conversion has taken place throughout the history of human societies, although the process has generally increased in pace and complexity with time. If we use a system diagram to illustrate - in very general terms - what an economy does, we see that the basic function of an economy is to convert natural resources (in the forms of raw materials and energy) into products and services that are useful to humans (see 2.1.1). Inevitably, because conversion processes are never totally efficient, some waste is produced which is usually discarded into the environment as various forms of pollution. Therefore, the environment is both a source and a sink in relation to economic processes: it is a source of raw materials and energy and a sink for pollution.