This issue of Development Dialogue deals in a general way with the impact of the world crisis on the ideas of Another Development as elaborated in the 1975 Dag Hammarskjold Report (What Now) and in particular with the increasingly crucial role that communication and participation must play in this context. In order to elucidate these problems, we have-as in previous issues of Development Dialogue-drawn heavily on materials arising from the seminar projects mounted by the Dag Hammarskjold Foundation and by organizations with similar aims and objectives.
A central theme in the first section is the increasing threats to humankind- omnicide, genocide and ethnocide-and to the carrying capacity of the biosphere. These problems have been dealt with in previous issues of this journal but they have not been as sharply focused as in Professor Hannes Alfvin’s attempt to ‘rectify’ the terms in which the nuclear debate is being conducted and in his analysis of the lack of responsibility shown by most policy-makers and scientists, who seem more and more inclined to yield to the pressure to accelerate the ‘race to oblivion’. Under such circumstances, the Nobel prize-winning physicist sees as the only efficient remedy against the nuclear threat a popular movement strong enough to exert pressure on the politicians. In his view, this is ‘the only way to save our culture, the results of thousands of years of human activity, and the scientific and technical knowledge on which our civilization rests’.