Analyze the absence of the ecological concerns in the development discourse till about the end of

second millennium.

“What Now” The 1975 Dag Hammarskjold Report prepared on the occasion of the Seventh
Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly suggests through ten points, the
direction in which a process of change might be set in motion. Development encompasses the
natural environment, social relations, education, production, consumption and well-being. As the
Stockholm Conference showed, there is no incompatibility between development and
environment, but there are ecological limits to mankind’s actions. The main challenge of the
Seventh Special Session was to achieve a turning point. Placing the satisfaction of needs at the
focal point of the development process, strengthening Third world capacity for self-reliant
development, transforming social, economic, and political structures, increasing the availability
of, and access to, food, reorienting science and technology, improving public information,
redefining policies of international resource transfers, establishing an authority to manage
mankind’s common heritage, adapting the UN system to new requirements and the need to be
able to appeal, are the ten points of which some concern the immediate future and others aim at
long term goals. Human societies should be able to live in harmony with the environment; such
development would often require structural transformations. The exchange which has sustained
social life is evident in the way in which nations are dependent to each other. Food, habitat and
health entail a relationship of reciprocal dependence. We cannot leave the poor to their fate as
the fabric or the network of exchange -which includes right to speak, to know, to understand the
meaning of their work, to take part in public affairs, to defend their beliefs and responsibilities in
the production system- of the society gets disrupted and people suffer.

Until about the end of second millennium, the importance of ecological aspect of development
was ignored. The report points to the fact that development must necessarily take into account
the environment. Social relations and relations between social and natural systems are
interrelated. Ecosystems are to be respected and used with imagination to satisfy needs so that
the limits are not exceeded. Ecosystem loses its capacity to regenerate itself if the outer limits are
transgressed. The report identifies the importance of demographic picture. The pressure on
resources has little to do with demographic pressure in itself. The monopolization of and misuse
of resources by a few is endangering the outer limits. The unexplored possibilities are a
harmonious relationship between society and its natural environment. The solutions to problems
can be possible on the basis of resources in a community; this concept of ecodevelopment gives
perspectives to the satisfaction of many needs. There are limits within which a decision maker
can operate due to long term ecological consequences.

The report emphasizes that self-reliance at all levels of development. A new international order
is required to justify the new development. Abolition of unequal economic relations is the first
step. Second, redeployment of world industrial capacity and a better flow of real resources to
Third World countries. Third, resources, employment and trade redirection. Fourth, management
of international commons. Finally genuine cultural promotion to obtain conscious opinions. The
five aspects constitutes the essence of the new international economic order.