Paper short abstract:

This paper uses a core tradition of development theory, structuralism, to reflect on the limits of contemporary approaches to sustainable development and reconsiders forgotten structuralists contributions on an ecologically sustainable and needs-based approach to development for the periphery.

Paper long abstract:

The decade of the 1970s stands as a singular moment in the history of development thinking. It is indeed marked by the convergence of three major intellectual trends.

Firstly, the effort among structuralist development thinkers — i.e., thinkers studying the political-economic reality of peripheral countries — to overcome the economic reductionism that had characterised early post-war development theory. In addition, the 1970’s also saw the entry of the ‘environmental problem’ on the global stage. Rising environmental concerns presented structuralist thinkers with two challenges: i) reaffirming the right-to-development of the peripheral world against neo-Malthusian views, and ii) analysing the origins and drivers of ecological degradations and their implications for the development of “under-developed” nations. However, the conceptual outputs of this attempt to integrate ‘development’ and ‘the environment’ have been largely forgotten. This is a direct consequence of a third trend: the progress of neo-liberal and neo-classical ideas which contributed to the marginalisation of development structuralism.

Against this background, the ambition of this paper is twofold. Firstly, to demonstrate how the disappearance of the 'periphery' from development theory has led to the sedimentation of approaches to sustainable development that fail to properly consider how to avoid the reproduction of global asymmetries in a green configuration of global capitalism. Secondly, to reclaim and reconsider the concept of eco-development, a concept that emerged in the 1970s and catalysed the heterogeneous attempts of structuralists to reject mimetic forms of development and to reflect on an ecologically sustainable and needs-based approach to development for the periphery.