In its broadest ecological context, economic development is the development of more intensive ways of exploiting the natural environment.

The remark reframes “economic development” in ecological rather than purely financial terms. Instead of treating development as an unqualified social good—more output, higher incomes, improved infrastructure—it defines it as a historical process of increasing the intensity and efficiency with which societies extract value from nature (land, forests, minerals, energy, ecosystems). The implication is critical: growth is not immaterial or cost-free, but rests on biophysical throughput and environmental transformation. Read this way, the quote invites scrutiny of development narratives, highlighting that technological progress and rising productivity often mean deeper penetration into natural systems, with attendant limits, externalities, and distributional consequences.