Helena Norberg-Hodge, a linguist by training and a native of
Sweden, has been extremely critical of conventional notions of
development. She is the author of the highly acclaimed Ancient
Futures: Learning from Ladakh. She first went to Ladakh in
1975 and shortly thereafter founded the Ladakh Project, with
the goal of providing Ladakhis with the means to make more
informed choices about their own future. For her work as
Director of the Ladakh Project, Helena Norberg-Hodge shared
the 1986 Right Livelihood Award, otherwise known as the
‘Alternative Nobel Prize’. She is the Director of the <a href=”http://www.asiasource.org/news/special_reports/International Society for
Ecology and Culture in London.

In this interview…, Ms. Norberg-Hodge discusses the implications of
development as it is currently constituted and also what her vision of an
alternative development would consist in.”

Conditions are not ideal is most rural areas of the so-called “Third World” (terrible poverty following generations of colonialism, monocropping, an exploding population, to give only a few indicators), but they are vastly better than in most urban slums. Asia Source [via Jim Higgins]