Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
education. A market economy is incompatible with ecology and consistently fails to
provide a social welfare function. Ophuls argues that human beings must learn self-
restraint and respect values that are other than those of constant material accumulation
before the necessary restrictions imposed by a totalitarian regime or by 'the brute
force of nature' (1977: 236). An ethical and spiritual rebuilding rooted in ecological
realities is necessary that, although not opposed to democracy at local levels, needs
to recognize necessary limits to freedom and the need for a simple but culturally
rich life (Ophuls, 2011). These views are not widely shared but they continue to
resonate as ecological conditions worsen. In contrast, for the political scientist John
Dryzek (1996), democratization, or the enhancement of democratic values, involves
increasing the number of people participating in the political process, increasing the
quality of their contributions, and extending the range of issues subject to popular
control and scrutiny, and the degree to which this control is actual (substantive)
rather than purely formal or symbolic. Political greening, or 'ecologization', falls
into two categories:
•
Politics becomes more biocentric and less anthropocentric, including recognizing
the rights of nature and non-human others.
•
Politics becomes increasingly sensitive to human interests in the context of a
clean, safe and pleasant environment.
Some international agreements, like the Montreal Protocol restricting the manu-
facture and use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in order to protect the ozone layer,
represent political ecologization at the global level, but generally progress has
been slow at all levels, despite the growth in our ecological knowledge and our
understanding of humanity's impact on the planet. Dryzek identifies four poten-
tial strategies frequently cited as potential vehicles for ecological democratization.
These are:
1
Making the most of liberal democracy
: This can be seen as a neutral platform
for political outcomes and/or something that can itself be enhanced by ecological
values, although economic and business imperatives have always seemed to trump
ecological concerns in securing the attention of decision-makers.
2
Crisis and apocalypse
: A view that sees liberal democracy as a major part of
our ecological malaise, given the silo mentality of governments and the consequent
disaggregation of policymaking and policy implementation.
3
Reflexive development
: Collective life is now largely organized around the
production, distribution and management of risks, leading to a society in which
science and technology has lost much of its authority, often because new
opportunities for debate and intervention in decision-making from citizens,
activists and social movements have emerged.
4
Rejection
: Whereas the risk society envisages democracy extending beyond
the state, a rejectionist strategy calls for vibrant para-governmental activity and
an active global and national civil society offering alternative, separate and
prefigurative forms of political action, values and organization.
Dryzek places his faith in a sustainable future in a combination of reflexive
development and what he terms a 'rejectionist' civil society:
