In these times of triumphal capitalism, the environment represents an increasingly tense and volatile battleground of ideas and practices that seek to find the Golden Mean between a materialistic civilization and an imperilled Nature.
Even as rapid economic growth promises deliverance from global poverty, it continues to do violence to ecosystems and those who depend on it for survival. It also gives rise to ecological nightmares such as Bhopal and Chernobyl, not to mention global climate change. 
The quest for a happy, enduring marriage between ecology and economic development takes on Herculean proportions in the South Asian sub-continent, which accounts for over one-fifth of the world’s population. In this age of globalisation spurred by neo-liberal economics, South Asia seems persuaded that an export-oriented high economic growth is the only way out of the quicksand of poverty. Indeed, it is also claimed to be best formula for resolving the contradictions between development and environment.
This neo-liberal worldview, however, raises several moral and philosophical dilemmas. Is this model of economic growth inspired by free-market capitalism the only way to reduce poverty? If yes, can it ever fulfil the material dreams of 1.4 billion people without triggering an environmental nightmare? Is it morally defensible for a privileged class to prosper at the expense of millions of people who are forced to sacrifice their homes, lands, and livelihoods at the altar of modernisation? Supposing it is the only way forward, is it possible to ensure an equitable and just distribution of the fruits of economic prosperity? How does one envision economic growth so that, to borrow an aphorism from Gandhi, there is enough for everyone’s need if not greed?
These are fundamental questions about entitlements to and rights over the earth’s resources. Panos South Asia believes that by holding a mirror to different ideas of development and their critiques, it might be possible to formulate, however provisional, a science, ethics and politics of “sustainable development” that, in the words of the Brundtland Commission, “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."