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Sustainable energy policies for the Brazilian Amazon are possible, but a large measure of policy integration and political will are necessary. A considerable amount of literature on the environmental impacts of resource use in the Brazilian Amazon has already been written. The environmental effects of development schemes and spontaneous settlement have regional and global implications, involving political complexities and continuous monitoring.

Economists have begun to examine the potential of market and fiscal policy interventions for improving environmental management among small farmers. These approaches can be criticized for failing to reflect both the 'demand' and 'supply' side of the equation. Most interventions emphasize institutions and policies rather than the strategies and choices of the rural poor. Important moves to improve resource accounting and to remove disincentives to better environmental management will have unpredictable effects if the perspectives of most environmental managers are not considered on the 'demand' side of the equation.

To purchase or authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-4446.2008.00198_1.x Byline: Michael Redclift (1) Author Affiliation: (1)King's College London

The UK Overseas Development Administration (ODA) and the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), Regents College, London, organized a conference entitled 'The environment, development and economic research,' which took place in London, 27-28 March 1990. This report summarizes the discussions of the meeting, and the questions they raised about sustainable development. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

Local concern over environmental degradation, together with increasing demands for political reform, has led to the emergence of green groups throughout the countries of the Eastern Bloc. Such movements have exposed problems in orthodox. Marxist analysis and remind us that ecological politics cannot simply be understood in terms of Western capitalism. They illustrate how the ecological crisis is bound up with questions of human rights, freedom of information and democracy.

The environment has been confined to the margins of most research in the social sciences, particularly theoretical work on development. One consequence is that the environment has lacked an historical focus, which would allow a broader, more comparative view of how nature is transformed under the impact of capitalist development. The object of this article is to sketch out such a framework, beginning with 'autochtonous' societies, in which sustainability, rather than development, is the key characteristic. The role of the market in transforming such societies is explored through a typology of social and environment systems. In the light of the transformation of environmental goods, made necessary by market accumulation, the role of 'environmental management' is considered, and found to be inadequate. Sustainability, as a concept, needs to be related to the role of the market within the process of development itself. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)