Alternative Pathways to Sustainable Development: Lessons from Latin America


Book Description

This 9th volume of International Development Policy looks at recent paradigmatic innovations and related development trajectories in Latin America, with a particular focus on the Andean region. It examines the diverse development narratives and experiences in countries such as Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru during a period of high commodity prices associated with robust growth, poverty alleviation and inequality reduction. Highlighting propositions such as buen vivir, this thematic volume questions whether competing ideologies and discourses have translated into different outcomes, be it with regard to environmental sustainability, social progress, primary commodity dependence, or the rights of indigenous peoples. This collection of articles aims to enrich our understanding of recent development debates and processes in Latin America, and what the rest of the world can learn from them. Contributors include: Adriana Erthal Abdenur, Alberto Acosta, Ana Elizabeth Bastida, Luis Bustos, Humberto Campodónico, Gilles Carbonnier, Ana Patricia Cubillo-Guevara, Fernando Eguren, Ricardo Fuentes-Nieva, Eduardo García, Javier Herrera, Antonio Luis Hidalgo-Capitán, Robert Muggah, Gianandrea Nelli Feroci, José Antonio Ocampo, Camilo Andrés Peña Galeano, Guillermo Perry, Darío Indalecio Restrepo Botero, Sergio Tezanos Vázquez, and Frédérique Weyer.




Development Crises and Alternative Visions


Book Description

More than half of the world's farmers are women. They are the majority of the poor, the uneducated and are the first to suffer from drought and famine. Yet their subordination is reinforced by well-meaning development policies that perpetuate social inequalities. During the 1975-85 United Nations Decade for the Advancement of Women their position actually worsened. This book analyses three decades of policies towards Third World women. Focusing on global economic and political crises - debt, famine, militarization, fundamentalism - the authors show how women's moves to organize effective strategies for basic survival are central to an understanding of the development process.




Can NGOs Make a Difference?


Book Description

Can non-governmental organisations contribute to more socially just, alternative forms of development? Or are they destined to work at the margins of dominant development models determined by others? Addressing this question, this book brings together leading international voices from academia, NGOs and the social movements. It provides a comprehensive update to the NGO literature and a range of critical new directions to thinking and acting around the challenge of development alternatives. The book's originality comes from the wide-range of new case-study material it presents, the conceptual approaches it offers for thinking about development alternatives, and the practical suggestions for NGOs. At the heart of this book is the argument that NGOs can and must re-engage with the project of seeking alternative development futures for the world's poorest and more marginal. This will require clearer analysis of the contemporary problems of uneven development, and a clear understanding of the types of alliances NGOs need to construct with other actors in civil society if they are to mount a credible challenge to disempowering processes of economic, social and political development.




Nuclear Power


Book Description

The construction of nuclear power plants in the United States is stopping, as regulators, reactor manufacturers, and operators sort out a host of technical and institutional problems. This volume summarizes the status of nuclear power, analyzes the obstacles to resumption of construction of nuclear plants, and describes and evaluates the technological alternatives for safer, more economical reactors. Topics covered include: Institutional issues-including regulatory practices at the federal and state levels, the growing trends toward greater competition in the generation of electricity, and nuclear and nonnuclear generation options. Critical evaluation of advanced reactors-covering attributes such as cost, construction time, safety, development status, and fuel cycles. Finally, three alternative federal research and development programs are presented.




Towards New Developmentalism


Book Description

Although neo-liberalism has been critiqued from various perspectives, these critiques have not coalesced into a concrete alternative in development economics literature. The main objective of this book is to name and formulate this alternative, identify what is new about this viewpoint, and project it on to the academic landscape.




H.J. Res. 589; International Biological Program


Book Description

Committee Serial No. 6. Considers H.J. Res. 589, to endorse and support the International Biological Program.













Alternative Development Strategies for the Post-2015 Era


Book Description

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on bloomsburycollections.com. The global economic crisis of 2008-2009 exposed systemic failings at the core of economic policy making worldwide. The crisis came on top of several other crises, including skyrocketing and highly volatile world food and energy prices and climate change. This book argues that new policy approaches are needed to address such devastating global development challenges and to avoid the potentially catastrophic consequences to livelihoods worldwide that would result from present approaches. The contributors to the book are independent development experts, brought together by the UN to identify a development strategy capable of promoting a broad-based economic recovery and at the same time guaranteeing social equity and environmental sustainability both within countries and internationally. This new development approach seeks to promote the reforms needed to improve global governance, providing a more equitable distribution of global public goods. The contributors offer a critical evaluation of past development experiences and report on their creative search for new and well-thought out answers for the future. They suggest that economic progress, fairer societies and environmental sustainability can be compatible objectives, but only when pursued simultaneously by all.