The classical environmental theories and their usefulness in the SA context

According to Huntington, he set out to prove that the rise and fall of entire civilizations follows a shift of the climate zones in historical periods. He linked climate and productivity, with implications for nations over time and attempted to get established a series of correlative between climate and interpersonal factors and external factors. Buckle's premise was that the environment is a critical factor for nations to flourish. He realized that with  warm climate, an abundance of cheap food, populations grew, flourished, leading to overcrowding, impoverishment and whole social disparities.

Hebert Spencer applied Darwinist principles to the human social context. He noticed a competition of life whereby humans struggle with other species for survival in the natural universe and also with each other in a social universe. Mead, Cooley found that sociology had fundamentally shifted psychology replacing physics, nature and climate. According to Durkheim society constituted a social organism, which must constantly adapt to the outside social and physical environment.

The environment and society are linked reciprocally. They provide insights relevant to current environmental phenomena, concepts and ideas useful in theorising about 21st century problems, they are extracted from classical canon, some paradigms conceptualized in typologies using the classical canon.

The application of these theories in the SA context: the problems found are of provision of clean water, provision of water sustainable and the provision of water as agreed

Critical discussion, reflection, application: the anthropogenic nature of environmental problems and with examples from the SA context.

Our Mother earth is presently facing plenty of environmental concerns. These situation issue like global warming, acid rain, ozone depletion, destruction of natural habitats, a decline in freshwater, the adverse effects on marine life and more feeling every human, animal and nation on this planet. Over the last few decades this mistreatment of our planet and degradation of our surroundings have started up in the alarming pace. As our activities have been not in our favor of protecting the planet, we have seen physical calamities hitting us more frequently in the shape of instant floods, tsunamis and cyclones.

The environmental issues faced are ozone depletion which is a layer of the ozone that exists in the stratosphere that absorbs between 97% and 99% of the suns ultraviolent light. The ozone layer now has a hole which is expanding and soon enough the suns rays will be damaging our bodies. Secondly we have the destruction of natural habitats such as forests, wetlands and coral reefs that are often being destroyed across the globe. The loss of forest leads to other problems for humans, including a diminished supply of timber and of other raw material. The decline in fresh water is a concerning issue as less developed countries in the world that are most likely to experience this.

One example of an environmental issue in SA is the water crisis in the Western Cape in 2017 and 2018 which is still ongoing to this day but with slightly higher levels in dams. Another issue is that of air pollution, as it is a source of many of the environmental issues present such as climate change. The process of a slowly dying planet can be sourced through one of the biggest problems of deforestation since it leads to loss of oxygen, more creation and consumption of goods and more people occupying less available land.

Discuss the concept of participatory development approach and critique with an example from the SA context.

Participation  has become the dominant approach in all development initiatives, and is recognized by the world bank, by acknowledging that a meaningful social change in any development initiative cannot be achieved only by external experts involving in development processes (World bank, 1996:p.7). This approach allows development initiatives to be able to incorporate local communities as part of the development process without being dominated upon. The development process involves the participation of the beneficiaries from the inception stage to implementation of the development intervention. This approach is also significant today because it allows people and communities to define and become subjects of their own development rather than becoming objects to technologically processes involved in development. This approach allows grassroots people to become partners in the development and this approach enables the society to build their own capacity and self reliance.

Despite the ambitious direction in which participatory approach strengthens community's and citizens participation in development processes, the approach still faces operational challenges, for example, a potential pitfall of joint decision making in a group of stakeholders representing diverse social positions and technical backgrounds is the power imbalance among actors that threatens the integrity of participatory strategy (Ingaki, 2007). This is evident as pointed out in the study of community partnership project to improve healthcare services in South Africa. In the study she asserts that the author found out the different ways in which certain groups of participants were not involved in decision making process. And the study revealed that inputs from youth, people with low income, the elderly and community members with low education were overshadowed by inputs from academics and elites.

Participatory development employed in particular initiatives often involves the process of content creation, for example UNESCO's finding a voice for employs ICT for development initiatives.

Critically discuss women in development and development approaches. Which of these are most useful in the SA context?

By the 1970's it had become very clear that women were being left out of development. They were not benefiting significantly from it and in some instances their existing status and position in society was actually being made worse by development. The Women In Development approach saw the problem as the exclusion of women from development programmes and approaches.  As a result, the solution was seen as integrating women into such programmes. WID saw women as a group being treated as lacking opportunity to participate in development. The main task, therefore, was to improve women's access to resources and their participation in development. Although  the WID concentrated narrowly on the inequalities between men and women and ignored the social, cultural, legal and economic factors that give rise to those inequalities in society. WID tended to focus on women almost exclusively and assumed that women were outside the mainstream of development.

The main argument of the WAD was that women had always been part of the development processes. Women and Development asserts that women have always been important economic actors. The work they do both inside and outside the household is critical to the maintenance of society. The main focus of WAD is on the interaction between women and development processes rather than purely on strategies to integrate women into development. WAD saw both women and men as not benefiting from the global economic structures because of disadvantages due to class and the way wealth is distributed. It saw global inequalities as the main problem facing poor countries and, therefore the citizens of those countries.

The GAD represents the coming together of many feminist ideas, it sort to bring together both the lessons learned from and the limitations of the WID and WAD approaches. It seeks to ensure that both women and men participate in and benefit equally from development and so emphasis equality of benefit and control. GAD focuses on the social or gender relations between men and women  in society and seeks to address issues of access and control over resources and power. The GAD approach has also helped us understand that the gender division of labor gives triple roles to women in society. GAD goes further than other approaches in emphasising both the reproductive and productive role of women and argues that it is the states responsibility to support the social reproduction role mostly played by women of caring and nurturing of children.

Postmodern feminism is a new branch of feminism that strives for equality for women within the category of women. While along so, they take into account the difference among the women on the basis of class and race. PAD theorists emphasised on differences suggesting that the requirements of women across the world vary regionally. They argued a space for the marginalized third world women should be provided in development rather than regarding women of the south as undifferentiated other. They favored an approach that accepts and understands difference and fosters open consultative dialogue that can empower women in the south to articulate their needs and agendas.

The two approaches that will be most useful in the SA context is the GAD and  WAD.

Compare and contrast modernization and dependency theories

The dependency theory coincides with the conflict viewpoint, as it focuses on ways that poor nations have been wronged by rich nations. It was created in part as a response to Western centric mindset of modernization theory. It states that global inequality is primarily caused by core nations (Metropolis) exploiting semi-peripheral and peripheral nations (Satellite) which creates a cycle of dependence. As long as low income nations are dependent on core nations for economic stimulus and access to a larger piece of the global economy, they will never achieve stable and consistent economic growth. It challenged the basic tenet of Modernization theory that countries fail to modernize because they lack the values that first world countries possess which lead to modernization. Its theorists argue that third world countries are poor because they have been and continue to be exploited by the first world countries and this exploitation evolved from colonialism. The dependency theory focuses on the fact that resources flow from the poor and underdeveloped states to the already developed states while enriching the latter while the poorer states continue to suffer..

Modernization theory holds that increases in technology will increase wealth throughout the globe, and that low income nations can follow the path taken by wealthier, modernized nations. It focuses on the social elements which facilitate social progress and development of societies and further explain the process of social evolution. There are five stages to modernization: the traditional society, preconditions for take off, take off, the drive to maturity and high mass consumption.

In stark contrast to modernization theory, dependency theory underlines that relationships between developing and developed countries are based not on growing cooperation between them but rather on the dependence of developing countries on developed ones. The modernization theory and dependency theory are similar in their views on the modern world, both theories admit the leadership of western countries and their currently dominant position in the modern world, while underdeveloped countries are characterized by socio-economic and political backwardness. At the same time , the two theories agree that the cooperation between  western countries and developing countries is constantly growing and leads to their integration

What constitutes development with examples in South Africa

1. Growth and structural change

• the main focus of the economy is to move from primary to secondary to tertiary sectors
• countries in the primary sector achieve their income through fishing, farming and mining.
• countries in the secondary sector achieve their income by taking the primary sectors raw material and they create finished goods suitable for use by other businesses for sale to domestic consumers, e.g. industries and construction
• countries in the tertiary sector achieve their income from the production of services, it involves the provision of services to other businesses as well as final consumers, e.g. services include transport and distribution of goods from producer to customer.

2. Distribution of income

• even distribution of income resulting in improved incomes for all
• an equitable distribution may help accelerate growth and promote economic, it is also the way in which wealth income of an economy is divided fairly among its population.
• distribution of income has to be equal and fair but the concept is subjective.
• examples are: in Gauteng the income distribution is $10 000 and more, in Western Cape its $8 000 to $10 000 and in Eastern Cape its less than $4 000

3. Rural to urban migration

• due to changes in urban industries, migration from rural to urban areas takes place
• this improves the living standards of migrants because they get better paying jobs
• they get better education and jobs or they follow family members that stay in the urban areas
• this results in better conditions 
• for example people move from the rural areas like Limpopo to the cities for better job opportunities and better living conditions

4. Improvements in education and health

• education enriches peoples understanding of themselves and the world
• it  raises peoples productivity and creativity and promotes entrepreneurship
• it plays a crucial role in improving income distribution
• health reduces production losses due to worker illness and it also increases the productivity of an adult as a result of better nutrition.
• for example if we educate people with the proper material they need, we can get entrepreneurs who can start businesses and hire people therefore reducing our unemployment rate in South Africa.