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Ariadne’s Thread pp 365–400Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Defusing the Global Powder Keg

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Abstract

If we look at a map of the world and ask — Where is armed conflict going on? Where are populations growing fastest? Where is there the greatest poverty? — we discover that all maps coincide. Of the 120 armed conflicts taking place in 1987, all but four were in the so-called developing countries of the Third World. 1 Likewise, the highest rates of population growth are located in those same countries, and there also are found the lowest levels of literacy, of per capita income and of nutrition, and the highest levels of infant mortality and epidemic disease.

In Mexico, you must be either numb or very rich if you fail to notice that ‘development’ stinks. The damage to persons, the corruption of politics, and the degradation of nature which until recently were only implicit in ‘development,’ can now be seen, touched, and smelled. The causal connection between the loss of healthy environment and the loss of peasant solidarity … has now been documented by a new, expert establishment. The so-called crisis in Mexico has now provided the peasants and others with the opportunity to dismantle the goal of ‘development.’ Gustavo Esteva, 1987†

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Notes and References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. San Diego State University, California, USA

    Mark E. Clark (Professor of Biology)

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  1. Mark E. Clark
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© 1989 Mark E. Clark

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Clark, M.E. (1989). Defusing the Global Powder Keg. In: Ariadne’s Thread. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20077-1_13

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