Eco-Development: Rethinking the Roots of Environmentalism in the Global South

Abstract: In the fall of 1974, only a few months after the United Nations (UN) adopted the Declaration for the Establishment of a New International Economic Order (NIEO), a grouping of leading intellectuals from across the Global South converged in Mexico for the Cocoyoc Conference. Under the auspices of the UN, the collective issued the Cocoyoc Declaration—a radical manifesto intended to provide an environmental framework for the NIEO. In a period when oil shocks and limitations to extractivism forced leaders to rethink the very nature of international development, the Cocoyoc Declaration articulated a vision of eco-development for the Global South. An intellectual history of Cocoyoc challenges the prevailing historical narrative of a monolithic Global South reluctant to embrace environmental regulations. Instead, the Cocoyoc Conference represented a seminal gathering of experts from Latin America, Africa, and Asia who embraced environmental consciousness as a powerful source for rethinking and reforming international development. In its aftermath, Cocoyoc helped to legitimate and establish new academic centers dedicated to environmental research in Mexico. Archival research into the lives of economists Ignacy Sachs and Enrique Leff reveals the tensions bound up with environmentalism and development from the perspective of postcolonial nations.