From conservationism to sustainable territorial development

Abstract

Since the end of the 1960s, the eclosion of a planetary problematics related to the recognition of the “ecological limits of material growth” has mobilized growing attention on the part of scientific communities and public opinion. The systemic concept of eco-development has emerged from this context and been gradually disseminated as a an expression of the radical critique of the economistic ideology underlying industrial-technological “civilization”. Over the course of the 1980s and 1990s, the proliferation of case studies on experiences of local and territorial development in different national contexts has contributed to a deepening of (systemic) notions of endogeneity, de-centralization, self-reliance, local autonomy and integrated local productive systems, which have always considered bases of the ecodevelopmentalist position. Against the background of the uncertainties, constraints and opportunities imposed by assymetrical globalization, special attention began to be given to the analysis of the innovative and synergic responses – in terms of socio-economic, socio-cultural and political-institutional reorganization – that have been generated within these spaces. Furthermore, and in a rather paradoxical way, most of the studies linked to a territorial focus give little attention to the treatment of the immense challenges brought about through the elosion of socioenvironmental crisis and the appearance of a vast literature dealing with the connection between environment and development. The present article offers exploratory subsidies that attempt to overcome the aforementioned lacunae, evaluating both the pertinence and general conditions of viability of the sustainable territorial development approach at the current stage of evolution of the Brazilian environmental agenda. Keywords: systemic research, ecological policy, environmental policy, sustainable territorial development.