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In South Africa we have four environmental narratives, on how the society and the environment interact, which are the conservation, the economic, non-state actors and the local views. Now each of these narratives have their own unique objectives rather goals and motives.

The conservation narrative, this view focus on giving protection to the environment  and people are excluded and their rights are removed to land and other resources such as water. According to Cook (2007),he says that this view is authoritarian negative, meaning it focus on harsh behaviours such as during apartheid. The motive of this is that it creates awareness and panic about how the environment is regarding the qualities. The focus and argument is on the overuse and over exploitation of resources within the environment. The conservation narrative has no enough legitimacy hence it ignored the way people interact with natural resources.

The economic view, views the environment as a commodity not for the locals but select privileged few. In this view the environment is seen as a solution to solve poverty. There is also the non-state actor which originate from the factors external parties example is education, outside the community meaning it doesn't need participation of the community. It's focus is on the importance of environment and has the responsibility of environmental ranking, believing that the resources are limited. The last narrative is the local community which is complex and is differentiated by means of power distribution, the quality level of the environment, geographical area, class and other factors. Its focus is focus is the people's relationship with the environment is disrupted or damaged by colonisation. People need the environment the most in this narrative as it is regarded as an important resource. 

Yes, these narratives contribute to understanding SA environment as they make it clear how people consider the environment and how they regard it, looking at the context of SA mostly visible narrative is the local community because how we have a lot of of activities that take place within the environment such as farming, we also have people who are governed to protect the natural resources but we much access to those resources hence somethings should be do to stop the overuse of natural resources and  damaging the environment.

In South Africa we have these sustainable development and environmentalism. The sustainable development is defined as a development that meets the needs of the present not compromising the ability of the upcoming generations to meet their own needs. This suggests that sustainable development is a process that happens right away for example in South Africa we have mining industries and it is not stopping because it sustains people and the present economy,not thinking about the future needs. We also have environmentalism which it shows the perspectives on the society-environment and it forms a climate for social dialogues regardless of the message is communicated and recieved. Sustainable development link to South African policies through through aspiring to be sustainable, self reliant by meeting human needs and managing its resources and being against other policies which result in the overuse of resources. 

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Modernization theory is a process of social, economic and cultural transformation in which a country change from pre-industrial to a modern society  such as the Western Europe and North American societies. It illustrates that poor countries are poor because they are still to change into modern economies, meaning they are still developing. There are stages of growth, where the theory thinks that at some stage in the process of development there will be diffusing of growth from the MDCs to the LDCs. This theory is criticized because the traditional life is regarded as primitive and Western materialism is wrongly regarded as a goal of development.

Dependency theory is a process where there is a situation in which development and expansion of one economy is due to the economy to which former is subjected. It was formed after the failure of modernization theory to address the underdevelopment of the Third World countries and challenged the basic tenet of Modernization theory that countries fail to modernize .The dependency theory advances that all societies are intergrated into a capitalist. The dependency theory is criticized because it pays too much attention on external variable and ignores the internal factors that explain the underdevelopment of LDCs.

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Classical environment and their usefulness 

In this chapter I discovered how environments are so essential as Buckle has said that environment is an important factor for nations which is true because as we need it for living and our human activities requires land that will maintain lives. Buckle identified two eras which are the modern times and early on. Max Weber had two different aspects used by Murphy. He focused on formal rationalisation and substantive rationality. The formal rationalization promotes a pervasive logic whereby profit and efficiency reigns supreme,on occasion even giving a choice of goals and substantive promotes a logic disregarding the environmental impact which result to scarcity of resources. In the SA context we look at how minerals are diged up at high rates making them scarce. Max gave analysis of ecological crisis in which the problem was soil fertility within the capitalist agriculture, loss of natural resources and environmental degradation. In the SA context we experience rural urban migration which it affects the soil as its nutrients get drained. Max again proposed a solution that capitalist system to be replaced with humane system. 

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Anthropogenic nature of environmental problems 

In this chapter I learned about the environmental problems which are natural but are due to human activities. There are important environmental problems even though they have harmful effects. The existence of societies and humans causes all of the natural hazards, activities such as pollution, overfishing and deforestation are main contributors causing global warming, ozone depletion, natural fires and destruction of habitats.

By looking at SA context we are facing these problems mainly pollution and climate change which causes flooding in many areas of the country. In conclusion we must know that people and their daily activities contribute to the environmental problems. 

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Participatory development approach and its critiques with South African example

The participatory development is a part of alternative theories which allow the society to create their own independence. Now this development involves the people's participation of the beneficiaries to implement development interactions. 

This development includes participation organisations which are the ones that will show whether people participate or not and it needs people take action for it to be successful. An example in SA is the community forums that were implemented to represent communities in which these people work with their local leaders to solve problems such as lack of water within the community, but this development is unlikely to succeed because it is considered red flag as people fight within themselves. Participation empowerment is encouraged by structural changes and access to resources as their empowerment strategy. 

The critiques of the development is that  culture of poverty is South Africa is making it difficult to implement development and those who are not participating (anticipaticipato