Populations and economies are considered 'underdeveloped' if they do not achieve the levels of wealth through the industrialisation associated with the Industrial Revolution, and the ideals of education, rationality, and modernity associated with the Enlightenment.
In contrast, the framework of overdevelopment shifts the focus to the 'developed' countries of the global North, asking "questions about why excessive consumption amongst the affluent is not also seen foremost as an issue of development".
"[6] The legacy of colonialism can be said to play a role in why overdevelopment has been largely unconsidered due to the "almost exclusive focus on 'underdevelopment' and the underdeveloped world that has characterized development studies and associated disciplines for so long needs".
This sentiment of "metropolitan responsibility for distant human suffering" is reminiscent of imperialist and colonial movements from Europe and North America as they "became entwined within global networks of exchange and exploitation in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
"Almost everything we now eat and drink, wear and use, listen to and hear, watch and learn come to us in commodity form and is shaped by divisions of labour, the pursuit of product niches and the general evolution of discourses and ideologies that embody precepts of capitalism.
Their versions of these concepts overlap with those of environmental activism, but differ in many important ways, many of which relate to the ideal interrelation of humans and environment in the particular places in question.