I was very interested in the posting concerning Zhou Guangzhou's speech to the China Association of Science and Technology. A Canadian working in Ottawa as an economist and policy consultant on environmental and other issues, I was invited in 1986 to participate in a China - U.S. Scientific and Technological Exchange. The purpose was an exchange of views and of information with professionals in China having similar interests and responsibilities. We made presentations to Chinese officials and academics in several centres, and listened to presentations by our hosts. It was a most interesting experience, with China's new openness to the world and its new free enterprise system clearly in evidence. However, despite their having an earlier and different tradition to draw upon, it appeared that the Chinese approach to conceptualizing the environment-economy relationship was little different from our own (an approach that I hold to be demonstrably in error). I was therefore struck by Zhou Guangzhou's recent statement: "China needs a new development road and models that are different from Western countries for its sustainable development." I can only applaud this insight and hope to reinforce it. The issue is of concern to more than China. The following are some excerpts from the presentation that I made in the city of Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, in 1986. "I am happy to have been invited by my American friends to join in this science and technology exchange visit. My friends have presented a detailed and current picture: I shall be taking a general view over the long term future. "I hope you may find some use for China in what I say, but you should know that I hold an unusual viewpoint both in the Western world generally and in my own country. This viewpoint is now held by only a small minority of persons in North America. However, I believe their numbers may be growing. I prefer to think of my viewpoint not as a minority viewpoint but as a leading viewpoint. It may show the direction in which those of us concerned with environmental protection may want to lead events, may want to give direction to the economic and social planners. "My viewpoint, or perspective, suggests that an approach to the environmental problem that consists of fighting pollution and providing environmental protection without first altering the way we think about environment may be misguided. The key idea in my viewpoint is that we are making an error in our economic and social planning (and) in our development plans. We are treating society and the environment as two interacting entities, without first locating society as WITHIN the environment. Yet we know from the findings of science that we are located in the biosphere on a small planet, that we live inside our environment. "This means that the logic of our thinking about economic and social and environmental development, when we think of them simply as interacting, is incorrect. They interact in a special way -- one within the other. ...What we should be doing, from the beginning of our economic planning, is to accept the fact that the economy functions within the environment. This is a simple point but a very important one with many consequences. "It is not easy to do this kind of correct thinking because it upsets so much of our usual viewpoint. ...The people who have learned to think this new way foresee a very different development path for the future than the industrial path taken by European and North American countries, and now perhaps being followed in its turn by China. In this respect China, whose industrialization is now proceeding, may have an advantage if you will think through the questions of the logical relations between society and environment and make your economic and social plans and develop your technologies on a corrected basis. "The assumption that environmental exploitation is viable is an assumption that is embedded in almost all of the technologies of the developed world. Your importation of these technologies should therefore be marked by extreme caution. Were you to pursue your industrialization and develop your technologies synchronously with environmental protection, as you propose, then technology transfer might proceed in a different direction from that which is currently supposed. China could exploit what will undoubtedly be a growing world market for ecologically responsible products and technologies." "...In terms of public education there is very little social and economic thinking and writing...along the lines I am talking about. Nor are there yet teachers. However...once the planetary and ecological principles are grasped, it is my view that education then best proceeds by using the peopleÕs own practical experience and encouraging them to discuss this in the light of a planetary ecological perspective, in consciousness-raising groups...." "Again, I hope that you will recognize that the view I have presented is not a widely-accepted perspective -- it is still an unusual view. ...(But) I hope you find these ideas to be interesting and thought-provoking. I have certainly found them to be this way in my own life and work. ..." -- Gail Stewart [EMAIL PROTECTED]
