The ideology of the dominant pattern of development derives its driving force from a linear theory of progress, from a vision of historical evolution propounded in the eighteenth and nineteenth century Western Europe and universalised throughout the world especially in the post-war development decade. The linearity of history, presupposed in this theory of progress, created the ideology of development that equated development with economic growth, economic growth with expansion of the market economy, modernity with consumerism and non-market economies with backwardness. (Shiva 1991, p. 24)
The religion of industrial man
Western economic systems, as found within Australian capitalism, support and maintain government control, and in significant cases, the large corporations that hold positions of power through wealth generation. Economics props up the dominant ideology: by ignoring the particular (the contextual) in its efforts to gain generalisable knowledge; by attempting to reduce all values to objectifiable expressions in monetary terms; by ignoring diverse community views and knowledge; by marginalising other ways of knowing that value contextuality and difference; by endorsing and encouraging a consumerist society that views ‘environment’ only as a resource to meet human needs; and finally, by enabling economic systems that sanction inequality.
Edward Goldsmith writes in his ‘foreword’ to Richard Douthwaithe’s book, The Growth Illusion, that economic growth, which has emerged as an avid goal of our economy, has become synonymous with our depiction of progress:
It is seen as providing a veritable panacea for all our problems, and signalling the path that we must religiously follow in order to create a material and technological paradise here on Earth. This is the fundamental tenet of what is, in effect, the religion of industrial man (sic), with which we have all been imbued since our earlier childhood. (1993, p. xi)
With this in mind, consider many of the concepts associated with the environment, such as ‘sustainability’, ‘under-developed’ and ‘best practice’ (when the conceptualisation of what is ‘best’ is in the hands of those in positions of power). These concepts are enshrined through policy to maintain the economic imperative and, with it, current systems of control. To borrow an analogy from Sachs to describe this relationship; “development without hegemony is like a race without a direction” (Sachs 1993b, p. 7).
Environmental issues have fallen prey to an economic imperative. There are examples aplenty to support this claim. Sachs acknowledges that the relationship between economics and the environment “help to secure the collaboration of the dominating actors in government, economy and science, but it prevents the rupture required to head off the multifaceted dangers for the future of mankind (sic)” (Sachs 1993b, p. 3).
Falling victim to the dominant discourse
In countries such as Australia, there still exists ‘against the grain’ expressions of environmentalism devoid of this dominant economic imperative. Such expressions though are marginalised. Sachs reasons that this near silence exists because environmentalists have fallen victim to the dominant discourse and, from within that framework, no longer raise questions to do with democracy, local self-reliance, cultural diversity, cultural authenticity, moral choice and power relations. They now “support the global empowerment of governments, corporations and science” (Sachs 1993a, p. xv).
The current Trump administration in power in the United States in 2025, exemplifies, more than ever perhaps, the dominance of the discourse of economics over environment. It shuts out social discourses of democracy, moral choice, ethical discussion, issues of power and control in decision-making, and concern for the exigencies of contextual arrangements, communities and geographies.
Conceivably, the Trump administration epitomises Esteva’s (1995, p. 18) observation:
Establishing economic value requires the disvaluing of all other forms of social existence. Disvalue transmogrifies skills into lacks, commons into resources, men and women into commodified labour, tradition into burden, wisdom into ignorance, autonomy into dependency. It transmogrifies people’s autonomous activities embodying wants, skills, hopes and interactions with one another, and with the environment, into needs whose satisfaction requires the mediation of the market.
Esteva discerns that through an economic formulation, particular skills, needs, aspirations and knowledge that do not support economic processes, are marginalised.
If we accept the economic imperative, what quantitative value can be put on nature, or an aspect of nature that is cherished for historic, social or cultural reasons?
Robert Costanza and Lisa Wainger discuss the issue of valuing the environment in a paper entitled ‘Ecological Economics’ (1991, pp. 45-46). They state:
… a standing forest provides real economic services for people: by conserving soil, cleaning the air and water, providing habitat for wildlife, and supporting recreational activities. But as GNP is currently figured, only the value of harvesting timber is calculated in the total. On the other hand, the billions of dollars that Exxon spent on Valdez cleanup—and the billions spent by Exxon and others on the more than 100 other oil spills in the past sixteen months—all actually improved our apparent economic performance. Why? Because cleaning up oil spills creates jobs and consumes resources, all of which add to GNP.
If the environment is to be viewed in purely economic terms, as expressed above and as we see through the executive orders of the second presidency of Donald Trump, then it is difficult to see how it will be preserved. Even the introductory statement by Costanza and Wainger values the environment in purely economic terms, which reflect an unmistakable anthropocentricism.
Value in the ‘cathedral’ of Nature
So how can dominant economic systems account for views that are outside anthropocentric judgements? What dollar value can we place on the ‘Cathedral effect’ of nature, the ethereal solace some individuals find in nature?
This anthropocentricism is fundamental to the rationale behind the application of economic theory to environmental issues. As A. Myrick Freeman III argues, the economist sees the environment as a scarce resource which promotes human welfare. This sentiment is echoed by Seneca and Tanssig (1974, pp. 3-4) who explain that “different aspects of environmental quality are economic goods or … items of scarcity”. In this context ‘scarcity’ means that demand exceeds supply, or
… that the demand for environmental goods (often perceived as the demand for avoidance of environmental pollution) exceeds the supply at a zero price.
Unfortunately, nature does not provide enough of these goods free to satisfy all of man’s (sic) desires for them. (Seneca & Tanssig 1974, p. 4)
Scarcity within the field of economics is, then, based on the assumption that human wants are immense whilst the means (resources) are limited. Gustavo Esteva describes scarcity as the “keystone” of the economic founding fathers’ theoretical framework (Esteva 1995, p. 18):
The finding marked the discipline forever. The whole construction of economics stands on the premise of scarcity, postulated as a universal condition of social life. Economists were even able to transform the findings into a popular prejudice, a self-evident truism for everyone…
The ‘law of scarcity’ was construed by economists to denote the technical assumption that man’s (sic) wants are great, not to say infinite, whereas his means are limited though improvable. The assumption implies choices over the allocation of means (resources). This ‘fact’ defines the ‘economic problem’ … whose ‘solution’ is proposed by economists through the market or the plan. (Esteva 1995, pp. 18-19)
The economists’ notion of scarcity is anthropocentric and instrumentalist—the environment is viewed as a scarce commodity; it is a resource for human use. Thus, the economist does not allow for the value of nature beyond its material use to humans.
Value for its own sake
Many people, however, reflect a different view of nature, which is often distinguished by the term intrinsic value. Although there is much debate and conjecture about intrinsic value and its intended meaning (see Rea & Munns 2017; Himes et al. 2024; Piccolo 2017), the sense that I am applying it here maintains that nature and aspects of nature have value for its own sake – nature and aspects of nature have non-instrumentalist value. Such a view dispels, to some degree, a belief in the universality of scarcity, although many examples exist beyond those within capitalist systems as Esteva attests:
The assumption of the previous existence of economic ‘laws’ or ‘facts’, construed by economists, is untenable when confronted with what we know now about ancient societies and cultures, and even with what we can still see in some parts of the world.
Marchall Sahlins and Pierre Clastres, among others, have given detailed and well documented accounts of cultures in which non-economic assumptions govern lives which reject the assumption of scarcity whenever it appears among them.
Men and women seen today on the margins of the economic world, the so-called marginals, find support in that tradition as they continue to challenge the economic assumptions both in theory and in practice. (Esteva 1995, p. 18)
The term ‘scarcity’, as documented by Achterhuis (1995, p. 18), is linked to the notion of progress originally formulated in the seventeenth century by Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes believed that all social incidents are based on power relationships between individuals and groups.
Scarcity for Hobbs springs from the conviction that anything that someone attains is at the expense of another person, everything potentially becomes a scarce resource as individuals and groups strive to surpass the attainment of others. Scarcity, then, is “the relation between limited means and unlimited ends” (Achterhuis 1993, p. 106).
Growth as a panacea
The seventeenth century philosopher, John Locke, also conceptualised scarcity, but as a relationship between people and nature whereby nature inevitably failed to supply enough for all people, so further production is required to mitigate scarcity. Locke sees economic growth, along with economic expansion, as the panacea to the threat of scarcity.
Without changing the very economic underpinning of our democracy, it is difficult to envisage anything other than a deteriorating environment.
In the 1990s, Wolfgang Sachs warned that environmentalism in the hands of government, corporations and international agencies, would inevitably become conjoined to the dominant Western economic worldview (Sachs 1993a, p. xvii).
He believes that as the concept of ecology moves away from being “understood as the philosophy of a social movement, it moves closer to becoming a knowledge of domination” (Sachs 1993a, p. xv):
… ideas like ‘risk’, ‘eco-system’, ‘sustainability’ or ‘global’—which were once hurled from below to the elites at the top, begin now to bounce back from the commanding heights of society to the citizens at the grassroots … as the call for ‘sustainability’ becomes common currency, the concept becomes infected by the time-honoured certainties of the ruling economic world-view.
And I feel that this is where we are entrenched now, more than ever.
Profit above all other values
Where science was viewed as a support for environmental decision-making, market economic theory has taken on the reductionist way of knowing of the scientific method and, in so doing, inherits the perceived objectivist epistemology of science and applies this to an economic value system. Through this process market economies, which value profit and profit-generating activities above other values, attempt to objectify resources in financial terms only to the detriment or denial of other non-market values.
Alongside this, scientific environmental endeavours tend to now adhere to political agendas, with the linking of research dollars to specific agendas that are generally shaped by governments, large corporations and international organisations. As Bandyophyay and Shiva (1987, p. 33) note:
… scientific conflict is in fact an economic conflict over which needs and whose needs are important. In such a clash … dominant scientific assumptions change not by consensus but by replacement. Which of the two paradigms becomes dominant is determined by the political strength of their backers.
The problem lies not with the scientific method as such but with the belief that it is value neutral and apolitical and that it can necessarily provide solutions beyond its scope, including the resolution of issues in a social or philosophical sphere.
My theory of change*
Change within this context can only come through a reconstruction of community-based education that responds to and encourages engagement in debates which expose disparate views, assumptions and positions. Community ideology must be challenged through the public practices of communication and understanding, decision-making and action. Communities must learn how to engage respectfully with diverse opinions and views, and individuals must learn how to interrogate information and actions.
Interventions should not be at a level that encourages a pre-ordinate outcome but, rather, what is encouraged is elaborate consideration of disparate views and rational opinions, and the exposure of assumptions and interests behind ideological positions. It is essentially through a critical philosophy underpinned by active participation in debates and actions that impact on communities.
Can this be done? Not without significant political, educational and social change.
References
Achterhuis H (1993). ‘Scarcity and Sustainability’, in Global Ecology: a New Arena of Political Conflict, ed. W. Sachs, Ferwood Books, Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Bandyophyay J & V Shiva (1987). ‘Chipko: Rekindling India’s Forest Culture’, in The Ecologist, vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 26-34.
Costanza R & L Wainger (1991). ‘Ecological Economics’, in Business Economics, October 1991 edn., USA.
Esteva G (1995). ‘Development’, in The Development Dictionary: a Guide to Knowledge as Power, ed. W. Sachs, Witwatersrand University Press, Johannesburg, South Africa and Zen Books Ltd., London, UK.
Freeman III A Myrick (1986). ‘The Ethical Basis of the Economic View of the Environment’, in People, Penguins and Plastic Trees, eds. R. Van der Veer & C. Pierce. Wadsworth Publishing Company, California, USA.
Goldsmith E (1993). ‘Foreword’, in The Growth Illusion by R. Douthwaithe, United States edn., Council Oak Books, Oklahoma, USA.
Himes A et al (2024). ‘Why nature matters: a Systematic Review of Intrinsic, Instrumental, and Relational Values’, in BioScience, Vol. 74, Issue 1, January 2024, pp 25–43, https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biad109 Sourced: 12 July 2025.
Piccolo JJ (2017). ‘Intrinsic Values in Nature: Objective Good or Simply Half of an Unhelpful Dichotomy?’ in Journal for Nature Conservation, Vol. 37, 2017, pp. 8-11, ISSN 1617-1381, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jnc.2017.02.007 .
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1617138117300742 Sourced:12 July 2025.
Rea AW, WR Munns Jnr (2017). ‘The Value of Nature: Economic, Intrinsic, or Both?’ in Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management, 2017 September, Vol. 13, no. 5, pp. 953-955. doi: 10.1002/ieam.1924. PMID: 28834367; PMCID:
PMC5790155. Sourced from: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5790155/ . Sourced on: 12 July 2025.
Sachs W (1993a), ‘Introduction’, in Global Ecology: a New Arena of Political Conflict, ed. W. Sachs, Fernwood Books, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
Sachs W (1993b), ‘Global Ecology and the Shadow of ‘Development’’, in Global Ecology: a New Arena of Political Conflict, ed. W. Sachs, Fernwood Books, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
Seneca JJ & MK Tanssig (1974). ‘The Main Ideas of the Theory of Values’, in Ethics and the Will, eds. B. McGuiness & J. Schlte, Vienna Circle Collection, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Norwell, MA, USA.
Shiva V (1991). Ecology and the Politics of Survival: Conflicts over Natural Resources in India, Sage Publications, New Delhi, United Nations University Press, Tokyo, Japan.
My theory of change*
The catalyst for this article was the question I posed in a recent blog post on Sustainabity Bites (What’s your theory of change?). Dr Jennifer Andrew is a social scientist, writer, environmental educator and editor, and long-time friend of Sustainability Bites. If you have your own ideas on what brings about (or blocks) change, please consider putting down your thoughts ‘on paper’ and sending them to me.
David Salt, Sustainability Bites
Banner image: Without changing the very economic underpinning of our democracy, it is difficult to envisage anything other than a deteriorating environment. (Image by Alexa from Pixabay)
An excellent piece; thankyou , David.
The hegemony of neoclassical economics over ecological literacy is fundamental to our headlong path to civilisational collapse.
Steve Keen and others have written extensively on the flaws of neoclassical economics.