Inappropriate development policy

Government development policy may be based on biased, incomplete or out of date knowledge. In this case the development may fail to achieve the intended goals, or may have detrimental side effects.

The imposition of a market economy on traditional cultures in the name of development – or example, the insistence that everyone produce and consume more – can dissolve the ties to family, land, community, and place on which indigenous peoples traditionally rely for their security. Thus development projects intended to relieve the poverty of indigenous peoples may, by causing the loss of cultural identity, engender the very powerlessness they aim to remedy.

In 1994, the British government continued the policy of allowing old development orders to stand, rather than setting time limits on their validity. It allowed new stone quarrying to start up, based on orders that it had signed in 1947. At that time, the aim had been to further the reconstruction of Britain after World War II. Hundreds of these old orders exist and are now being re-registered. Standards of excavation were previously less strict and the capacity to excavate much lower, so there is fear that the countryside will be destroyed because the old orders do not take into account the new methods. In addition, the original aim of rebuilding Britain is no longer valid, and so the old orders should be rescinded, not re-registered.