Are established economic, social and political practices capable of dealing with the combined crises of climate change and the global economic system? Will falling back on the wisdoms that contributed to the crisis help us to find ways forward or simply reconfigure risk in another guise? This volume argues that the combination of global environmental change and global economic restructuring require a re-thinking of the priorities, processes and underlying values that shape contemporary development aspirations and policy.

First published in 1984, Michael Redclift's book makes the global environmental crisis a central concern of political economy and its structural causes a central concern of environmentalism.

Michael Redclift argues that a close analysis of the environmental crisis in the South reveals the importance of the share of resources obtained by different social groups. The development strategies based on the experiences and interests of Western capitalist countries fail to recognise that environmental degradation in the South is a product of inequalities in both global and local...