What Is EASTERLY ARGUMENTS ABOUT DEVELOPMENT?

What Is EASTERLY ARGUMENTS ABOUT DEVELOPMENT?There are two types of easterly arguments about development. One is the more traditional type and the other is a little more aggressive. The traditional easterly argument goes something like this. We can develop into a more diverse society with an ecological balance, using a balancing paradigm.The idea of ecotopia originated from a book written by Richard Louv, 'A Synthesis of Ethical and Ecological Views.' In it, he explains that humans are not naturally able to live on a whole ecosystem and that they need a species for farming that will balance out their natural use of the land. In other words, we need another species to work in tandem with us as well as to harvest their crops. This is what ecotopia means.For some reason, it never occurred to us to take care of certain parts of the planet, leaving room for destruction to occur. We only saw the damage we were doing as we cleared forests and killed off animals and plants. Now that we have an ecological perspective, we can see our actions as ecotopian and do things differently.You can take this idea to its logical conclusion and see things in a long term perspective. What are the earth's biosphere doing? They are supporting human life. If humans are out of balance, then the environment is not doing its job of supporting life. Nature itself could cease to exist if this problem were not solved.If you analyze the planet in a long term perspective, you realize that nature is part of the ecosystem. If the ecosystem is in imbalance, so too is nature. The biosphere is a part of the entire ecosystem and needs to be monitored for balance and health.An ecotopian perspective would look at human society and environment in a wider picture than what most environmentalists are looking at. These environmentalists may think that only humans are the problem. The problem is that we humans have taken a simplistic view of the planet and concentrated our attention on just a small portion o f it. This becomes a problem because the bigger problem does not get enough attention. So we develop an agricultural paradigm and believe that we are doing it right.However, human beings only monitor their own problem. They look at what they are doing to their environment and ignore the ecological balances that are already there. They forget that we are part of the ecosystem. What has been left behind are discarded parts that need to be maintained. Ecotopia is trying to get people to see the forest for the trees.Humans only see the forest, ignoring the fact that it is not a tree, but the whole system that feeds them. Ecotopia is the recognition that humans are part of a larger ecosystem. It is a recognition that they will do what they need to do in order to survive.