Abstract

VICTORIA, Haidar,  and  MAURICIO, Tibaldo,. "Bifurcations" in the problematization of the socio-ecological issue: a review of the contributions of the project "Environment and styles of development" (ECLAC-PNUMA, 1978-1979). SaberEs [online]. 2023, vol.15, n.2, pp.59-79. ISSN 1852-4418.

Abstract. This article intends to reconsider the Environment and Development Styles project, co-organized by ECLAC and UNEP, as the locus of a “bifurcation” in the way of approaching socio-ecological problems. It is argued that the use of the "development styles" approach, coming from Latin America, involved a "holistic" and "social-constructivist" approach, which differs so much from the approach inspired by the "development and underdevelopment" perspective, that characterized the position of the countries of the South in the global debate on the environment since the 1970s, as the paradigm of sustainable development that was imposed at the end of the 1980s. In this direction, it is argued that hand in hand with the different valences that were conferred on the concept of "styles", the socio-ecological problem was linked to the "model of society" in the framework of which it was configured. Fully affirmed at the diagnostic level, such an association was not necessarily expressed at the political programmatic level. Although some researchers argued that the only solution to the crisis was to transform the society that had caused it, when formulating recommendations to the governments of the region, pragmatic positions prevailed.

Keywords : Socio-ecological issue; Styles of development; Latin American thought.