Planet Dialectics

Explorations in Environment and Development

Wolfgang Sachs

Sachs is one of the most thoughtful and appealing intellectuals to deal with the dual crisis in the Western world’s relations with nature and social justice. In this book readers–be they concerned citizens, environmentalists, development specialists or cultural historians–will find trenchant and elegant explorations of some of the foremost issues the world faces at the beginning of the new century: Efficiency, the mantra of our times; Globalization, a market inevitability and the juggernaut of history; Sustainability, oxymoron as rhetoric; Development, the 20th century’s great undelivered promise; and Limits, a new principle for the coming century.

About the Author

Wolfgang Sachs, Ph.D., is a German researcher and author with many books including Fair Future, Environment and Human Rights, and Jo’burg Memo. He is also the editor of the Development Dictionary.
He suggests (see Sachs, 1996) three ways to reach sustainable development, three perspectives which are related to a security crisis: the home perspective, the perspective of an astronaut, and the endogenous perspective.
He is currently working and lecturing at the Wuppertal Institute in Germany. He is the head of the Cross-cutting Project “Globalization and Sustainability” and PhD Collegium “Environment and Fairness in the World Trade Regime” in the Wuppertal Institute.
Wolfgang Sachs is known as one of the many followers of Ivan Illich. His critical works on development idea influenced the green and ecological movements. Sachs participated in the Stock Exchange of Visions project in 2007.