Displacement by Development: Ethics, Rights and Responsibilities

For decades, policy-makers in government, development banks and foundations, NGOs, researchers and students have struggled with the problem of how to protect people who are displaced from their homes and livelihoods by development projects. This book addresses these concerns and explores how debates often become deadlocked between ‘managerial' and ‘movementist' perspectives. Using development ethics to determine the rights and responsibilities of various stakeholders, the authors find that displaced people must be empowered so as to share equitably in benefits rather than being victimized. They propose a governance model for development projects that would transform conflict over displacement into a more manageable collective bargaining process and would empower displaced people to achieve equitable results. Their book will be valuable for readers in a wide range of fields including ethics, development studies, politics and international relations as well as policy making, project management and community development.

Peter Penz is Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Environmental Studies and former Director of the Centre for Refugee Studies at York University. His publications include Consumer Sovereignty and Human Interests (Cambridge University Press, 1986) and Political Ecology: Global and Local (co-editor, 1998).

Jay Drydyk is Professor of Philosophy at Carleton University, President of the International Development Ethics Association, and Fellow of the Human Development and Capability Association. With Peter Penz he co-edited Global Justice, Global Democracy (1997). More recently he has written on empowerment, democracy and intercultural justification of human rights.

Pablo Bose is Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Vermont. He is currently undertaking a research project with community organizations and service providers on transportation, mobility and access issues for refugees resettled in North America, from the perspective of environmental justice.