Sud, développement et développement durable : l’apport de l’économie politique

• Main Author: Catherine Figuière
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: Éditions en environnement VertigO 2006-09-01
• Series: VertigO
• Subjects: development; political economy; sustainable development; south; Africa; environment
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/vertigo/2287

This paper addresses the issue of sustainable development for South countries. It offers a political economy approach of the coming of the Brundtland version of sustainable development. The aim is to show that this consensus seeking version does not offer a renewal of development approach because it does not require a change of paradigm. The guiding principles of the Brundtland report, widely accepted by the United Nations’ system, do not offer a hierarchy among the three poles, and thus do not question the prevailing central position of economic goals - whereas the ecodevelopment project in the 1970’s was to integrate the environmental constraint in a human needs satisfaction perspective. In this context we present the ‘Rio paradigm’ as a mere thematical extension of the Washington Consensus, thus bringing both more complexity and higher costs for development process in the South.