Why the APPLICATION_ENV does not set to development ?

(I am not sure if the debugger works right or there is bug in the code)

In the file .htaccess there is:

...
SetEnv APPLICATION_ENV development
...

In the index.php file (in the same folder) there is line of code:

...
defined('APPLICATION_ENV')
|| define('APPLICATION_ENV', (getenv('APPLICATION_ENV') ? getenv('APPLICATION_ENV') : 'production'));

...