Introduction

In recent years there has been a growing awareness among development 'experts' (Chambers, 1983), of the importance of the natural environment, not simply as a constraint on possible action, but as part of the proper concern of development planning. In part this is the effect of the growth of environmentalism in the developed world in the 1970s (Sandbach, 1980; O'Riordan, 1981), in part a response to specific environment-related crises such as Sahelian drought and desertification. This interest has had two obvious results. First, there has been a realization that the welfare of the poorest groups in poor countries, themselves the target of recent development concerns such as the basic needs approach (e.g. Stewart, 1985), is closely related to environmental quality (Mabogunje, 1984). Second, there has been a search for a new paradigm of development based on knowledge about the limitations and potentials of the natural environment. This search has expanded from the definition of limits and criteria for development based on ecology (Dasmann, Milton & Freeman, 1973), to attempts to define an alternative to existing productivist paradigms of development in the form of ‘ecodevelopment’ (Riddell, 1981; Glaeser, 1984; cf. Redclift, 1984). Probably the best known statement of the principle that development can only be based on the conservation of the environment is the World Conservation Strategy (WCS), launched in 1979 by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN, 1980).