Views on the Environment and the Concept of Development Case Study: Colombia

This article aims to present the way in which different types of societies throughout human history have perceived the environment and how these perceptions have evolved according to a concept of development that arose concomitantly with capitalism. As a social formation, capitalism is fundamentally ordered along economic lines, every process oriented towards profit-making, extracting private benefits, and, consequently, permanently improving productive forces as a fundamental means of production. This constitutes a boundless process in which nature itself comes to be seen as a factor of production, rather than as a condition for the sustainment of life