ecological modernisation theory: towards a critical ecopolitics of change?
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Ecological modernisation theory:towards a critical ecopolitics ofchange?Rosalind Warner aa Department of Political Science, Okanagan College,Kelowna, BC, CanadaPublished online: 10 Aug 2010.
To cite this article: Rosalind Warner (2010) Ecological modernisation theory:towards a critical ecopolitics of change?, Environmental Politics, 19:4, 538-556, DOI:10.1080/09644016.2010.489710
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Ecological modernisation theory: towards a critical ecopolitics of
change?
Rosalind Warner*
Department of Political Science, Okanagan College, Kelowna, BC, Canada
The literature on ecological modernisation (EM) is reviewed from acritical political ecology viewpoint. Critical political ecology is centrallyconcerned with how change in industrial societies occurs. Does the EMliterature presently offer a theory of ecopolitical change that is bothcoherent and relevant to the contexts prevailing today in industrialisedcountries? Two strands in the EM literature are discussed: the functionaland socio-political accounts of change. From the perspective of criticalpolitical ecology, EM thinking does not provide an ethically orpolitically coherent argument for more radical change. The possibilitiesfor elaborating a more nuanced ‘post-EM’ account of ecopoliticalchange that incorporates a politics of conflict and an expansion of thescope of politics itself are evaluated.
Keywords: ecological modernisation theory; critical political ecology;nature
Introduction
In the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)countries there is a growing call to bring socio-political processes in linewith the imperatives of ecological crises like global climate change andenergy and resource security. From the perspective of critical politicalecologists, the recent global economic meltdown presents an opportunity toraise new questions about the role and nature of change in industrialisedsocieties. What kind of social change is needed? Is change incremental orradical? Is it controlled, directed and limited, or spontaneous and self-organising? My goal here is to evaluate the literature of ecologicalmodernisation (EM) in light of these questions. Arguing that criticalpolitical ecology is centrally concerned with how change processes inindustrial societies occur, I evaluate whether the EM literature presently
*Email: [email protected]
Environmental PoliticsVol. 19, No. 4, July 2010, 538–556
ISSN 0964-4016 print/ISSN 1743-8934 online
� 2010 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/09644016.2010.489710
http://www.informaworld.com
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offers a theory of ecopolitical change that is coherent, and therefore capableof providing a rationale for sustained change, and also relevant to today’sconditions.
It is important to raise questions about the scope, depth and substance ofchanges, for both ecological and social reasons. The ecological outcomes of,for example, processes of ‘preventative innovation’ (Milanez and Buhrs 2007)are inextricably linked to their social, economic and political context.Technological innovation without social critique is likely to reflect prevailingsocial relations of power. In turn, if critical questions are not raised, asadvocates of environmental justice point out, inequities will likely undermineany ecological or economic benefits (Blowers 2003).
Critical ecopolitical thought is centrally concerned with these questions ofchange. Based broadly on early Frankfurt School theory, it draws out thelinkages between ecology and emancipatory social change. A criticalecopolitics of change, as understood here, incorporates: first, a distinctlyecological set of ideas and strategies that might be used to rethink and evensubvert modern forms of states, markets and industrial institutions; second, asustained and reflexive (in the sense of a discursive attitude of continual self-reflection) critique of such institutional forms and third, possibilities forexploring alternative worlds in which social, political and economic life can bemore ecologically sustained.
A critical ecopolitics of change encompasses both an ethical and anepistemological shift in the way that societies are organised.
In articulating the meaning of social change, Robert Cox elaborated a nowwell known but important difference between problem-solving and criticaltheory. While the purpose of the former is to solve the problems posed ‘withinthe terms of the particular perspective which was the point of departure’, criticaltheory suggests the possibility of choosing a different perspective from which‘the problematic becomes one of creating an alternative world’ (Cox 1981,p. 88). Cox’s ideas about the purposes of theory are worth reiterating becausethey suggest an important question about EM theory: whether it accommodatesthe kind of theoretical purpose that might produce such transformations. Bydefinition, this approach is informed by a view that a critical ecopolitics ofchange involves some subversion of existing modern configurations of states,markets and social institutions. The ‘normalising’ strategies of power and theinequities that inhere in modern industrial forms of social and political relationsare anathema; these are the very definition of ‘business as usual’.
A second question provoked by EM and social change concerns the role ofreflexivity as a mechanism of radical change. For a critical ecopolitics ofchange, reflexiveness is necessary, but it is not a sufficient condition forrealising such change. Not all EM theorists view reflexivity as an importantfactor in social change, nor is there agreement on exactly what reflexivitymeans. Mol, for example, places greater emphasis on observable empiricalphenomena as a guide to social change. Others, such as Beck, Christoff,Eckersley and Dryzek, identify reflexivity as a key component of radical social
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change. I argue here that reflexivity, or self-critique, whether a function ofknowledge, social discourse or ethical framing, is an important component ofboth critical theory and radical social change. However theorists may approachthe question of change, it is increasingly difficult to proceed in the absence ofreflexive deep critique, since the scale of environmental problems suggests theseare now fundamental problems of modern industrial society, and notephemeral or transitory features of a particular historical epoch.
EM has emerged as a dominant mode of thinking about how changes occurin OECD countries since the 1970s. EM describes, explains and commendsways of advancing changes, and, at least implicitly, foresees a radicallytransformed society emerging from within the premises of industrialmodernity. While not monolithic, EM theorists argue that change can andnecessarily does result from within the prevailing forms of industrial states andmarkets. For example, weak versions of EM describe a process in whichmaterial environmental progress comes from more economically efficient use ofnatural inputs and reduction of negative outputs. Weak EM can be considered‘problem-solving’ in its orientation in that it is limited to the frame of referencein which questions are asked and does not in and of itself produce more criticalquestioning. Whether weak EM’s form of incrementalism is ultimatelyinconsistent with radical change is an open question. However, weak EM isexplicitly not sufficient to produce deeper socioeconomic changes, and isalmost universally decried. Eckerlsey, for example, states: ‘it is precisely thislack of any deep critique that explains the distinction between simple versusreflexive modernisation’ (Eckersley 2004, p. 73).
On the other hand, are strong(er) versions of EM capable of reachingbeyond reformism to advance major socioeconomic changes? Strong EM refersto a process in which the ‘ultimate purpose and character of the modernisationprocess’ (Eckersley 2004, p. 109) is thrown into question and transformativechange becomes a quality of the modernisation process itself. Nevertheless,even if second generation ‘strong’ variants of EM attempt to move it towards amore radical account of change, this does not demonstrate its transformativecontent and so does not offer a clear unambiguous route towards a criticalecopolitics of change. Assuming that critical political ecologists are interestedin advancing an argument that provides substantive and pragmatic reasons forundertaking what is likely to be a costly and potentially long-term socialproject of radical restructuring, then the limited ability of EM to provide acoherent rationale for these kinds of changes should be of concern.
Given the normative emancipatory orientation of critical political ecology,therefore, the key question is whether EM has the potential, compared withother, competing accounts of environmental change, to develop an argumentthat might lead to changes that are sustained, pervasive, reflexive, and open-ended (in other words, a critical ecopolitics of change) in the sense that theseare described above (Hajer 1995). This task is made more complex by the factthat EM does not appear to have an obvious ‘founding manifesto’ upon whichto build a critique (Young 2000, p. 1). As well, many of the definitions used by
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EM theorists are vague and broad (Milanez and Buhrs 2007, p. 565). Whileefforts to provoke a reflexive self-criticism from within the EM literature haveproduced a considerable degree of reworking, EM’s presently constituted termsof reference place limits on the kind of critical ecopolitics of change that can berealised. Indeed, the incrementalism of weak EM implicitly reaffirms ratherthan subverts the ‘framework of the prevailing institutional world’ (Torgerson1999, p. 59).
While helpful in illuminating certain aspects of EM theorising that held itback from a deeper movement towards green change, this extensive self-criticism has muted potential criticisms from ‘outside’ of EM theorising. As aresult, there is little direct engagement between EM literature and itsalternatives. This is regrettable, since the questions that stronger variants ofEM seemed to answer have persisted but with few sustained efforts to answerthem in more theoretically sophisticated ways. These include: what are the limitsto the diffusion of modernisation and economic growth? What kinds of criticalpolitical ecology and environmental politics characterise social changeprocesses?
Addressing EM from the ‘outside’, from the perspective of critical politicalecology, is important because it can clarify the limits of change that areimplicated in the kinds of environmental discourse prevalent today. However,in terms of theorising, it is also important because self-generated criticisms mayobscure the degree to which EM arguments are actually dependent upon andcontextualised by more radical ecological critiques.
In the conclusion, I consider two possible ways to resolve these tensions.One solution is for EM to explicitly acknowledge its debt to radical ecologicalcritiques and to more fully explore the implications of social conflict andresistance in major change processes. This would require a significant breakfrom EM’s current focus on consensual processes of socio-political orfunctional change. A second possibility is to provoke a discussion of thekinds of alternative worlds that might be implicated given different conceptualvectors. This would push EM to evaluate and critique the normative andepistemological premises of industrial society per se, rather than the specificitiesand particularities of change processes within existing industrial and moderninstitutions. To this end, the argument here is not only that present EMthinking, even in its ‘strong’ variants, does not provide a clear rationale in thisrespect, but also that alternative possibilities for a critical ecopolitics of changemay well not be among the outcomes of EM’s attempt to renew itself.
EM theorising of change: functional and socio-political accounts
EM theorists have developed different ways of describing and accounting forchange. However, in general, three characteristics are common to EMtheorising about change. First, EM theorises that processes (whether social,political, technological or economic) are more important than structures.Change is driven by processes that operate around and through structural
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impediments in order to institute more widespread reform from the ‘inside out’.Second, an important distinguishing feature of EM is its reformism: changeprocesses begin with incremental adjustments within industrialism and proceedto wider, more fundamental forms of socio-political change. Finally, EMtheorises that change processes are less the result of social or political conflict,and more the result of consensus arrangements such as corporatist or neo-corporatist structures.
Two basic strands (Buttel terms these ‘generations’) develop these ideas aboutchange. The first strand addresses economic and firm-level industrial activitiesand their implications for the environment and policy making. The second strandlooks at the role of the state, social movements, ecological democracy andglobalisation. In keeping with Christoff’s distinction between ‘weak’ and ‘strong’EM, the primary distinction between functional and socio-political approacheslies in the degree of determinism used to explain changes in industrial societies.
The first strand, drawing upon EM’s emphasis on process, understands EMto be a process of innovation emerging from crises within the industrial system.This strand traces the first work of EM to writings in Germany and theNetherlands in the late 1980s and 1990s. This strand analysed trends in thosesocieties towards green planning and industrial and state restructuring. Theseworks explained EM processes (or, as Andersen (2000) suggests in the case ofJanicke, ‘technological modernisation’) in terms of ‘state failure’ (see alsoHajer 1995, Janicke 1990) and policy failure (Weale 1992). Janicke in particularwas interested in the ways in which industrial restructuring, pollution reductionand eco-efficiency might produce broader structural and institutional changestowards more ecologically sustainable forms.
For Janicke, change processes are driven by functional crises. Crises occuras a result of the tendency of the industrial system to ossify into large,inefficient structures. These crises are multiple in that they occur throughoutand at different points in the state and the industrial system. Crises are manifestin the inability of these structures to accurately and properly price the servicesand goods that they provide. So, for example, the ‘good’ of healthcare becomesoverpriced and inefficient as larger industrial-type bureaucracies emerge toproduce and subsidise it at ever-increasing cost and ever-declining quality(Janicke 1990, pp. 41–44).
These crises are functional in that ‘crisis management is regarded as theultimate decisive functional problem of the system’ and because crises are alsodevelopmental stages in the ‘long waves’ of the industrial system (Janicke 1990,pp. 145–146). Innovation, defined as ‘the search for and discovery,experimentation, development, imitation and adoption of new products, newprocesses and new organisation set-ups’ plays a key role as a process and as asource of both incremental and radical changes. It is ‘through innovation andchange that environmental concerns can begin to be integrated intoproduction’ (Murphy 2001, p. 9). For functionalist perspectives of change,then, the central motors of change are crises and innovation in response tothese crises.
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For Janicke and Weale, functional change followed an intrinsic logic that isintegral to crisis-prone industrial processes. This meant that the social andpolitical changes that followed crises were a logical consequence of the structuralproblems and contradictions created by industrialism. The comprehensiveplanning and consensual approach to politics was a ‘way out’ that ultimatelyenabled societies to deal with crises. Consequently, for example, following thehighly conflictual period of the 1970s, when state regulatory bureaucracies werebeing established and forging space for environmental policies, the new moreinclusionary and consensus-based politics was viewed as a step forward. EMtheorising established first that political conflict was associated with crisis, andsecond, that political consensus was associated with resolution of this crisis.
The result is an overstatement of the new consensus politics as a completetranscendence of the 1970s oppositions. Oppositions (particularly thosebetween economic growth and environmental degradation) were consequentlydecried as counterproductive (Mol and Spaargaren 2000). Functional accountsemphasised that change is primarily a response to regulatory and policyfailures that were integral to the system of industrialism1 (Janicke 1990, p. 6).Political conflict is merely the reflection of this crisis rather than an engine ofbroader political and social changes.
Eckersley argues that ‘such highly functionalist analysis can tend towardsan overly deterministic understanding of state/economy relations’ and are, tosome degree, exposed as primarily heuristic or analytical rather than empirical(2004, pp. 60–61). From the perspective of critical political ecology,functionalist approaches ascribe too much importance to the material effectsof industrial reforms as intrinsic motors of change, and allow little role forsocial forces, social conflict, or, for that matter, for the contingency ofhistorical agency. The move towards socio-political accounts of change is aresponse to the lack of attention given to these ‘social contradictions’ infunctional accounts. Explorations of newly emergent green politics, includinggreen parties, environmental social movements and political modernisationand democratisation are a needed supplement to overcome this narrowfunctionalism. The intrinsic logic of change, however, is maintained in thesesocio-political accounts.
The account of change shifted from a functional to a socio-economicemphasis with the incorporation of Beck’s ‘risk society’ thesis, and the theoryof ‘reflexive modernisation’, in which the central institutions of industrialsociety are called into question by their own ‘modus operandi’ (Beck 1992, p.260). EM’s core premise of dematerialisation remains, however. As Mol (2002,p. 93) states: ‘environmental reform can . . . result in an absolute decline in theuse of natural resources and discharge of emissions, regardless of economicgrowth in financial or material terms (product output)’. In this light, socio-political accounts of change continue to see change as a material imperative to‘de-couple’ economic output from environmental degradation. In this sense,economic growth is an exception to the tendency to functional crises, and it isconsidered autonomous rather than intrinsic to industrialism.
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Whether or not ‘de-materialisation’ of the economy can accommodatecontinued high levels of economic growth has been questioned by someanalysts of EM (Janicke et al. 2000, p. 149, Barry 2005, p. 318). For example, inits economistic-technical variants (as in the Kuznets Curve, which correlatesimproved environmental quality with increasing per capita incomes) the resultshave been mixed (Ekins in Barry 2005; see also York and Rosa 2003). Theassociated policy recommendations stemming from this model leave the state’s‘core imperatives’ of economic growth untouched (Dryzek et al. 2003). Fromthe perspective of socio-political changes, there are serious questions abouthow ‘de-materialisation’ can lead to the kinds of cultural changes, such as thegrowth of consumer awareness, that indicates moves towards a ‘risk society’.These ideas are not well developed or well understood, even in thoseapproaches that claim to place socio-political processes and issues at thecentre of analysis.
The notion of ‘reflexive modernisation’ might go some way towardsaddressing these ambiguities. However, Buttel, for example, makes theargument that there are problems with equating EM with Beck’s ‘reflexivemodernisation’. As he says: ‘while Beck points to a sharp distinctionbetween ‘‘industrial society’’ and ‘‘risk society’’, the thrust of core EMthought is that eco-efficiency gains can be achieved without radicalstructural changes in state and civil society’ (Buttel 2000, p. 62). ForBeck, however, the lack of fit between prevailing modes of social andpolitical organisation and the risk society holds both promises and perils.Chief among its perils is its ‘justifying cloak of technoeconomic progress, incontradistinction to the simplest rules of democracy – knowledge of thegoals of social change, discussion, voting and consent’ (Beck 1992, p. 260).How might eco-efficiency gains affect risk (either actual environmental riskor the perception of risk) or the capacity for sub-politics of change? Is therea potential for a kind of ‘moral hazard’, in which future environmental riskis underwritten by past reforms?
Functional accounts of change and socio-political accounts of change are inconflict, and are rarely, if ever, in dialogue. The functional view of change is indirect contrast with Beck’s, in which he argues that change comes ‘not fromcrisis, disintegration, revolution or conspiracy, but from the repercussions ofthe very ordinary ‘progress’ on its own foundations’ (Beck in Schlosberg andRinfret 2008, pp. 97–116). For functionalists, change is self-motivated,although it may be advanced by processes of ‘social engineering’ (Janicke1990). For social theorists, change is motivated and mediated by socialprocesses that are more contingent on learning, dialogue and agency. It is notat all clear that the ‘first strand’ functionalist view of change and the ‘secondstrand strong agency’ view of change are reconcilable. At any rate, given EM’smarked reformism, it is also not clear exactly how the transition can be madefrom functional to more agency-based forms of change. What kinds of change,for example, might be involved in promoting a stronger role for ecologicaldemocracy?
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The difference between the functional and socio-political accounts ofchange is also evident in the discussion of self-reflexiveness. In his criticalanalysis of EM, Hajer makes an important distinction between Beck’s theoryof reflexivity and his own. Where Beck sees reflexivity as a ‘self-confrontation’rather than ‘reflection’, Hajer defines reflexivity as a quality of discourses andof knowledge of change processes (1995, p. 40; see also Eckersley 2004, ch. 1).For Eckersley, reflexive change means ‘state and non-state agents ‘acting back’upon social structures’ (2004, p. 15). For Mol, reflexivity involves institutionalchanges that are observable as empirical phenomena, such as technologicalchange, market dynamics and social movement activities (Mol 2002, p. 94).The reflexive potential of EM is ultimately less important than, if not irrelevantto, its objective power to explain and prescribe change. More important is anautonomous ‘ecological rationality’ (2002, p. 93) that is responsible for changesin the core practices and central institutions of modern society. However, Molmakes little reference to the role of political action in this rationality. Thedistinct uses of reflexivity by Beck and Mol stand in contrast with the use ofreflexivity by Hajer and Eckersley, even though these appear to draw incommon upon Beck’s ideas of ‘risk society’ and the emergence of post-industrial, post-materialistic social changes.
At heart is the question of the dynamics of change that are implicated bythe integration of environment into society. It matters whether these areessentially functional (internal to the logic of industrialism, unplanned,unintentional, even spontaneous) or socio-political (and in some sense plannedand conscious). Arguably, even Mol’s account of institutional reflexivityinvolves some change in consciousness, even if a minimal acceptance of‘ecological rationality’. This still implies some reflective awareness of changeprocesses that is in some ways non-quantifiable and non-observable.
The subject matter of EM social theorists encompasses a wider domain forchange than that of functionalists, yet even these are ambivalent about thesocio-political role of agents in creating change. The treatment of socialmovements and environmental groups in these processes of change is, in manysenses, an afterthought. For Weale, for example, social movements play littlepart in social learning about the ‘policy failures’ of early pollution control,except as sources of environmental expertise. Similarly, despite Buttel’s focuson political logic over economic, he considers social movement radicalismlargely irrelevant in explaining environmental gains. Although ‘nonmainstreamecology groups arguably play a significant role in pushing mainstreamenvironmental groups and their allies in the state and private industry toadvance a more forceful ecological viewpoint’ (Buttel 2000, p. 64) this is thelimited extent of their influence and effect. For Janicke, Weale, and even Beck,the route to reflexivity and change is direct from within industrialism andmodernity, seemingly unmediated by political or ecological communication orby critical ecopolitics.2
Mol and Spaargaren explain (and justify) this ambivalence about socialmovement politics by pointing out that EM emerged in response to a polarising
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debate dominated by ‘de-industrialisation’ ideas on the one hand and neo-Marxists on the other hand (2000). In this context, they argue, EM posed botha compromise position between these extremes and a positive pragmaticdiscourse capable of countering the pessimism of techno-sceptics and theapocalyptic visions of world’s end such as that posed by the Limits to growthpublished in 1972 (Meadows et al. 1972; see also Buttel 2000, p. 60). But theneed for optimism and compromise alone, even if these are admitted, seemsinsufficient reason for maintaining ambivalence about the potential for socialconflict to be ecologically productive.
When examining EM as a theory of ‘unplanned social change’ (Murphy2001, p. 2) ambivalence concerning the role of social conflict seems out ofstep with the call for a restructuring of social, political and economicinstitutions. Social conflict, social forces and historical agency are central,not secondary, to understanding how and why change occurs. The tensionsbetween functional and socio-political mechanisms of change suggest agreater role for political conflict (and not just crisis) than many EMtheorists are willing to allow. These ambiguities throw into question thecoherence of EM as an approach that explains both reformism and reflexiveor radical social transformations. If critical political ecologists are tounderstand more fully how change processes occur in industrial societies,then the EM literature presently does not offer a theory of ecopoliticalchange that is sufficiently coherent to be capable of providing a rationale forsustained change.
EM as an explanation for environmentalism
While it is important to evaluate the theoretical coherence of EM literaturewith regard to social change in industrial societies, it is equally important toevaluate whether the EM literature offers an account of change that is relevantto the trends and contexts prevailing today in industrialised countries. Thisimpacts upon the judgement of whether EM can incorporate the three elementsof a critical ecopolitics of change: ecological goals, reflexive critiques andalternative future worlds. The confluence of environmental state policies andbureaucracies, the expansion of environmental movements, and the growingconsciousness of environmental issues and problems in the industrialised worldis now a set of confirmed historical trends. The EM literature posits that thesedevelopments indicate a new environmental rationality arising from failuresand crises within industrial social institutions. For earlier authors of EM, suchas Weale and Janicke, such shifts had their origins in the failures ofenvironmental policy, and the ‘failures’ of states to address the need for widerreform in response to environmental imperatives. For Weale, pollution policyfailures were caused by several problematic assumptions ‘built’ into strategiesof the 1970s: the specialisation of government agencies and their discretedealing with environmental problems; the widespread use of ‘end-of-pipe’technologies; and, crucially, the requirement of ‘balance’ between
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environmental protection and economic growth in the setting of pollutioncontrol standards (Weale 1992, p. 75).
EM also seeks to explain the relative ‘successes’ (leaders) and ‘failures’(laggards) of environmental policies in industrialised societies (Barry 2005). Interms of state policies, studies have focused on Northern Europe: in particular,Germany, the UK and the Netherlands, with extensions to the US and Asia(Japan and China) (see for example Weale 1992, Hajer 1995, Mol andSonnenfeld 2000, Young 2000, Dryzek et al. 2003, Barrett 2005, Schlosbergand Rinfret 2008). While strong EM remains a normative ideal, Germany isidentified as being further along the road to strong EM (Dryzek et al. 2003, pp.185–191). This is not surprising since Germany is also the site of the mosthighly developed EM theorising, beginning with the origins of the concept inthe 1980s, which Dryzek traces to the work of Huber and Janicke (Mol andSpaargaren 2000, Dryzek 2005, p. 167). The US is characterised by a relativeabsence of EM ideas or policies and a corresponding position as anenvironmental laggard relative to Europe, although at least one recent workhas commented on the unique additions to the discourse in the US (Schlosbergand Rinfret 2008). In the EM literature, state decision-making is less a driverthan a coordinator of forces arising from within and outside of these societies.A general ambivalence about policy blocks deeper analysis of how the contentof policy priorities and choices might be distinguished, and hence, whichcriteria are used to measure environmental progress. For example, areinternational efforts to protect ecosystems evidence of environmental progress?If a country has highly developed institutional efforts to address climatechange, but persists in, for example, hunting whales, does this mean it is alaggard? If a country is a leader in the export of environmental technologiesbut continues to emit large volumes of greenhouse gases domestically, does thismean it is a laggard?
Organised institutional and bureaucratic processes, rather than processes ofsocial conflict, resistance or contestation occupy the central empirical focus ofthe literature. A quick survey of some recent case studies is indicative: StephenYoung’s (2000) volume includes discussion of corporate green strategies suchas those of the World Business Council on Sustainable Development,intergovernmental plans such as the Fifth Environmental Action Plan of theEU and the activities of the UN Environment Programme, and studies at thecountry-level of green social movements and green parties in the UK andGermany. In its empirical face, EM is highly institutionalist. In general, there isless interest as well in the implications of changes for the natural environment,such as climate change, deforestation, protection of biodiversity or conserva-tion of species. These empirical biases affect the kinds of phenomena that EMfocuses on.
Functional accounts of change describe and explain a key shift from a ‘firstwave’ of governmental environmental regulation in the 1970s to [generallyweak] forms of EM, including more proactive pollution control policies, moreintegrative functional organisation of state bureaucracies and greater focus on
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the international dimension (Weale 1992). In contrast to the ‘first wave’ ofenvironmental politics, which was based on an oppositional, ‘zero-sum’ trade-off of economic growth and environmental protection, the focus of theliterature is on consensual decision-making. Janicke, for example, focuses oncorporatist arrangements among state, capital and labour groups as animportant part of the politics of developing state capacities (Andersen 2000).Two mechanisms discussed by theorists of the second strand interested insocio-political change are social learning processes (Eckersley 2004) and statecompetitive strategies (Mol and Sonnenfeld 2000). The empirical markers forthese kinds of changes are, however, unclear. Dryzek et al. have pointed to theuse of green taxes, especially energy taxes, access to information legislation andreduced levels of environmental secrecy, and new organisational forms ofconsensus politics in which government, business, labour and environmentalgroups work together to formulate environmental policies (sometimes termed‘political modernisation’) (Young 2000, Dryzek et al. 2003, Eckersley 2004,Curran 2009).
The ambivalence towards the complexities and contradictions of policy-making leads to a tendency to overlook the promise of political conflict as apositive source of institutional reform. The welfare state, for comparison,emerged only after periods of intense social conflict and critique, and continuesto be a subject of struggle, challenge and pushback. While environmentalismcontinues to provoke change, it has also produced counter movements andexperienced periods of setback. While ideas are often highly progressive,implementation remains highly controversial. It is important, therefore, todistinguish EM strategies and policies from the larger phenomena of thegeneral growth of environmental policies, discourses, and institutions.3 Thephenomenon of institutional change that EM describes is only partial and isitself highly contingent on contextual factors, including the sustained critiqueof active, even oppositional, social movements.
A good example is the idea of environmental protection. We can identify atleast two distinct uses and conceptions of environmental protection in Weale’sThe new politics of pollution. In the first instance, Weale describes theinstitutional regimes and policies to control pollution as forms of ‘environ-mental protection’, with ecologically-based characteristics that distinguishthese from other policy arenas (Weale 1992, p. 99). In the second instance, thepolitics of environmental protection, in which social movements work toadvance environmental protection as a legitimate political activity, hedisparages as ‘counterproductive’, as in the description of Greenpeace’sopposition to dumping of sewage in the North Sea (p. 112). Little or noconnection is made between the politics and policy of environmentalprotection.
This disparagement of environmental politics and conflict is a problem forWeale because of the importance he places on ‘moral’ over ‘mechanical’reform. For example, Weale sometimes sees the change process as virtuallyautomatic: ‘Once the conventional wisdom about the relationship between the
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environment and the economy was challenged, other elements of the implicitbelief system might also begin to unravel . . . once this view has taken root, theline from mechanical to moral reform has been crossed’ (Weale 1992, p. 31).Weale speaks favourably of the role of the engineering community in the policyprocess, as against lawyers and scientists, which, he says, tend to an excessivelyadversarial and ‘hierarchical/deferential culture’. With respect to engineers,‘from these backgrounds the intellectual predisposition is not to ask forconfirmation of an hypothesis, but to ask whether there is an enforceabletechnical proposal for dealing with a pollution problem and then ask whetherpolicy can be built around that solution’ (Weale 1992, pp. 82–83). Such anemphasis is bound to lead to a de-politicisation of the issues, something thatWeale would likely not desire.
In the field of international environmental regimes, Gabriella Kutting hasmade the case that measures of effectiveness of environmental strategiesinvariably focus on political outcomes and accommodations as evidence ofenvironmental effectiveness, neglecting the importance of ecological outcomesand criteria (Kutting 2001). This type of ‘consensus-bias’ is apparent in studiesthat focus on EM capacities in different countries, and in studies that use EMto refer primarily to measures designed to improve eco-efficiency and industrialrestructuring (as in Janicke’s work) (Young 2000, p. 1). This tendency is theempirical echo of the discursive EM focus on political consensus as the primarydriver of change, and, by extension, the neglect of social conflict as a source ofpositive change.
While EM’s socio-political accounts of change do not appear incompatiblewith ‘green social democracy’ (Eckersley 2000, pp. 241, 243) there is a tensionbetween ecological democracy, de-materialisation, and consensus politics.While much comes down to how one defines ‘democracy’, consensusarrangements among what Hajer terms ‘discourse-coalitions’ of reformers(Fischer and Hajer 1999, p. 3) and professional planners such as Weale’sengineers seem unlikely crucibles for the formation of a wider ecologicalquestioning of modernity. These formations are largely elite-constructed, and itseems unlikely that these would contribute to any political conditions whichmight undermine their own power. Blowers (2003, p. 71) argues that thede-materialisation thesis undermines the potential for democratisation by‘bypassing’ democratic processes in favour of consensus politics andconsultation. In the end, democratic deliberation and political conflict areirrelevant to the establishment of environmental reform within EM theorising.
The place of environmental politics within the EM literature is paradoxical.The assumption of rational political processes pervades EM theorising ofchange. Political processes are reduced to interest articulation and aggregation(especially but not only through consensus) to arrive at an optimal means ofresolving problems. At the same time, the rationalist logic of ‘positive-sum’calculations and engineering problem-solving models seem anathema toecological democracy, whether in their measures of progress, processes oroutcomes.
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Fisher and Freudenburg argue that the EM hypothesis of ‘sum-sum’growth and environmental protection should involve its wider testing in avariety of contexts and settings, a sentiment that has been echoed by manyinterested in refining EM theorising and extending it beyond the OECD (seealso Milanez and Buhrs 2007). This expansion, they argue, would spur furthertheorising based on a larger sample of cases and on a more contextualisedunderstanding of the conditions leading to EM processes (Fisher andFreudenburg 2001). Whether the promise of this extension is likely to berealised will depend largely on how environmentalism is conceived andunderstood, whether one accepts the (presently unclear) criteria used tocompare measures of environmental progress, and how one understands theplace of environmental policy in the larger picture of critical ecopolitics andchange. Specifically, EM’s congruence with the epistemic premises ofneoclassical environmental economics (Barry 2005), especially the coreeconomic imperatives of growth (Dryzek et al. 2003, p. 164) restricts itsappropriateness to non-industrial or pre-industrial settings either as a testablehypothesis or as a model for development.
EM offers only a partial view of the progress of environmentalismgenerally, and although there is much to celebrate, there seems much that isunfinished. While EM ideas are likely to persist together with more radicalviews of environmental and social reform, they are less relevant in the face ofan emphasis on democratic deliberation of environmental issues and anincreased focus on ecological outcomes of social changes.
Is ‘strong EM’ a form of critical ecopolitics?
If indeed EM’s account of socio-political change is ambiguous, and thisambiguity has its echo in empirical biases, then why have EM theories beenable to achieve such purchase among critical political ecologists? The answerlies in EM’s ability to reach beyond the setting of modern industrial societies touniversalise its message through the vehicle of ecological theory. To aconsiderable degree, stronger forms of EM have appropriated the language ofcritical political ecology in order to radicalise the message of environmentalreform and institutional change through consensus.
By adopting an institutionalist epistemological and ethical focus, the EMliterature is implicitly indifferent to or even opposed to ‘naturalistic’, pre-modern or anti-modern modes of environmental politics (Buttel 2000, p. 59, n.3). At the same time, new technologies and innovations are premised uponobjective, quantifiable, cumulative sources of knowledge, an epistemologicalpremise that is characteristic of modern industrial societies. Christoff (1996, n.13) defines ‘ecological critique’ as ‘both the emergent scientific understandingof ecological needs which has evolved out of the biological and physicalsciences, and the normative and non-instrumental (re)valuation of Nature(including its spiritual and aesthetic aspects as these manifest in concern forpreservation of species and ecosystems, wilderness and visual landscape
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values)’. This critique is simultaneously knowledge-based and ethics-based, inthe sense that it calls for a distinct form of ethical, as opposed to pragmatic,reasoning. EM, however, uses this language of the intrinsic value of nature as ameans of advancing an instrumental rationalist logic with which it isfundamentally at odds.
The relationship between weak and strong forms of EM is both strategicand normative. It is strategic since strong EM stops short of the kind of radicaloverhaul of capitalism and the administrative state that techno-sceptics andneo-Marxist advocate, and it is normative (even utopian) because strong EMremains only a glimmering potential within existing configurations of industrialstates and late modernity.
Again, assuming that a move to strong EM embodies more than simply amaximising of ethics but also an epistemological shift, then the premises ofweak EM are a poor basis upon which to build this radical critique. Given thepervasiveness of weak forms of EM in modern industrial societies and theintrinsic vulnerability of these ideas to self-serving co-optation by powerfulgroups of governmental, environmental and business interests, on what basiscan one advocate for stronger forms of EM, as against these admittedly narrowand unreflective weaker versions? If strong EM is to ‘challenge each and everyassumption of its weak eco-efficiency counterpart’ (Eckersley 2004, p. 75) it isdoubtful whether this even remains part of the same logic. This feeds thetendency for EM to be used unreflectively, which in turn affects the conditionsfor a critical ecopolitics of change.
Buttel describes a pattern of change in which EM works ‘from the insideout’. As he argues: ‘while the most challenging environmental problems ofthis century and the next have (or will have) been caused by modernisationand industrialisation, their solutions must necessary lie in more rather thanless modernisation and ‘‘superindustrialisation’’’ (Buttel 2000, p. 61; see alsoCurran 2009). ‘Superindustrialisation’, or working from the ‘inside out’,implies that change does not work in the other direction (from the ‘outsidein’). Universalising the need for scientifically advanced forms of technolo-gical innovation overlooks less complex technological solutions from non-industrial settings. For example, attention has been focused towards hightechnology and capital-intensive proposals for technological and scientificinnovation in alternative energy sources. Much less attention has been givento expanding carbon sinks through agricultural reforms like the use ofbiochar to store carbon, a solution that arises from the conditions of pre-industrial societies.
When solutions are framed in the same terms as the problems, the scope forcritical theory, democratic politics and reflexive thinking is narrowed. Thedanger is that prescriptions for more industrialisation and more modernisationthen proceed as if nature were a manifest, fixed and authoritative foundationupon which to base these decisions. But can this epistemic realism be reconciledwith a reflexive and critical ecopolitics of change? ‘Superindustrialisation’ alsorisks compromising the ethics of environmental protection based on the
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intrinsic value of nature, to the point that these ethics are devalued as a criticaldiscourse of radicalisation.
Possibilities for a critical ecopolitics of change
What are the possibilities for developing a more nuanced account ofecopolitical change that might fulfil the social promise of conflict, subversionand resistance, incorporate a new ethical and epistemological premise forcritique of institutions, and explore alternative, more ecologically sustainableworlds? Exploring the limitations of EM provides important clues about whatit means to articulate a ‘post-EM’ critical ecopolitics of change in the contextof modern industrial societies.
Strong versions of EM may be able to reach further in principle andrhetorically, but strong EM is unable to do this without acknowledging its debtto ecological theory. Within its present terms of reference, then, EM remainsincoherent. Consequently, a ‘marriage’ between EM and more radical criticalpolitical ecology appears unlikely. But this still leaves the question: what kindof broader environmental politics would be likely to develop an ecologicalepistemology and ethic?
First, if EM were more fully to embrace the politics of conflict andresistance as productive sources of change, then it should first explicitlydelineate the distinctions between functional and socio-political changeprocesses. Where is the delicate balance between agency and structure thatproduces social change? For example, in Green states and social movements,Dryzek et al. (2003) describe how variations in state–society relationshipscan impact the development and progress of environmentalism. Theirresearch indicates that it is far from true that radicalism and oppositionalstrategies are counterproductive to the creation of vibrant and sustainedecological reform. Indeed, contrary to what one might expect of acorporatist and legalistic state, Germany is described as a passively exclusivestate in which the very oppositional Green politics of the 1980s were highlysuccessful in creating the conditions for innovative environmental politicsand policy to follow. Conflict, rather than consensus, was the engine ofenvironmental change.
Second, it should be possible to develop a vantage point from which thenormative underpinnings of modern industrial societies, especially theirframeworks of epistemic realism, can be critiqued. From this vantage point,questions can be raised about the (at present) hidden meanings and uses of‘environment’, ‘nature’ and ‘society’, while resisting the strict choice betweenepistemic realism and a totally relativist ontology (Hannigan 1995, p. 253,Meyer 2001). In this regard, strong forms of EM may move closer to thisvantage point by extending the ethical and epistemic bounds of analysis.However, in this move the debt to critical political ecology, with its moreradical orientation to social and political change, should be explicitlyacknowledged.
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Third, reflexivity suggests an explicit role for a non-instrumental and non-self serving ethic that can elaborate a challenge to industrial society writ large.This ethic acknowledges, but is not reduced to, arguments for the intrinsicvalue of the non-human and future generations, as part of its social theory. Inthe 1970s environmental radicals forced a confrontation with vested intereststhat resulted in the widespread acceptance of environmental norms, bureau-cracies of environmental regulation, new innovative ideological forms likegreen parties, and a global and local ecological sensibility. Similarly, thisreflexivity can bring about an expansion of politics and political life, and notjust an expansion of the state institutions and bureaucratic capacities requiredfor environmental policy and planning. This kind of reflexivity is in the spirit ofsocial learning and the cultivation of a green public sphere, or a ‘combinationof adaptive management and political change’ (Torgerson 1999, p. 58). It isboth process (‘means’) and outcome (‘ends’) in one, driven less by crisis andresolution than by a radical spirit of political change.
With respect to political strategy, environmental politics is also not onlyabout ‘deindustrialisation’ or ‘limits to growth’ (Mol and Spaargaren 2000, p.19). Environmental politics is also substantially about community andcollective action, and as a source of critique of the social order, is rightlyinterpreted as a social theory (Laferriere 2001, p. 204, Barry 2006, n. 3). AsMulberg argues, the concept of community as a counter to a rationalistconcept of political behaviour is a longstanding principal focus of the greenmovement (1994, p. 169). To put it differently, as Janicke et al. acknowledge,the ball is returned to the court of ‘political action, as in matters ofdistribution’ (2000, p. 149). A critical ecopolitics of change, therefore, is acommunitarian theory of political behaviour.
Conclusion
EM emerged from a socio-political context in which the primary focus waspragmatism and integration of opposing views. As we move into the twenty-first century, political and ecological circumstances have changed. Questioningthe effects of economic growth is more appropriate to the present socio-political context, especially, though not entirely, as a result of the re-emergenceof economic and ecological crises reminiscent of the 1970s. It is telling,however, that EM’s core premises have not anticipated or responded to thesechanges. The pace of global environmental change is out of sync with the paceof institutional reform advocated by EM. While much is still unknown, theapparent acceleration of climate change, the globalised effects of industrialpollution, the problems of invasive species, disease threats, reduced biodiver-sity and other complex environmental problems are occurring in ways thatchallenge the central argument of EM that industrial societies can be madesustainable with modest adjustments and corrections. The more appropriateresponse to these challenges is an expansion of understanding about how socialchange happens and an expansion of the legitimate scope of politics itself. The
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conceptual tools for understanding how to integrate environmental and socio-political domains need to keep pace with changes, including subversivechanges, in each of those domains. Consequently, radical ecopolitics andconflict has a necessary place in helping to redefine the nature of politics in thisshifting context.
Notes
1. Industrialism was broadly defined by Janicke as a structure and principle inventedby capitalism in which ‘specialisation, centralisation and rationalisation’ prevail(1990, p. 6).
2. In contrast, the existence of a radical environmental movement to play an ‘ongoingeducative role’ is a virtual necessity for other authors. For Eckersley (2004), the roleof social movements and reflexive social learning is of critical importance, not onlybecause of their observed effect on material and social structures and processes butalso because of the importance of political processes of framing, contestation andmediation in constructing the context for change. I would agree as well thatattention to these is key to developing a coherent theory of social and politicalchange processes. In critical political ecology, self-confrontation emerges as anecessarily dialogical process of ‘ecological communication’ (Bluhdorn 2001) as wellas an epistemological process of change in relevant knowledge.
3. Such a conclusion is in line with Langhelle’s and Baker’s points that sustainabledevelopment, rather than EM, is a broader contemporary project of environmentalreform in that it encompasses questions of social and environmental justice in waysthat EM does not. This is not, however, to argue that sustainable development andeven sustainability encompass all of the possibilities of environmental politics either(Langhelle 2000, pp. 303–322, Baker 2007, pp. 297–317, McClenaghan 2008).
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