Outsourcing Emissions: Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) as Ecological Modernisation - Implementing Environmental and Resource Management - page 272

Negation of Radical Change and Politics
Closely linked to the neoliberal economic understanding, EM eschews radical po-
litical options from its schemata by emphasising the macro structural changes that
bring forth transformation in the relation between state and society. Buttel (2000)
points out that the rise of EM has more to do with its role as a response to the
radical environmental politics of 1980s that stood for overhauling capitalist indus-
trialism through deindustrialisation, decentralisation and localisation by advocat-
ing significant decreases in fossil energy usage, reversal of tropical forest destruc-
tion and biodiversity loss and by demanding for strict regulation etc. Thus, while
the negation of radical politics is inherent to EM, its overarching faith in the pre-
vailing forms of liberal capitalism to lead to sustainable environmental practices
by merging the economic and ecological rationalities forecloses the possibility of
any radical systemic changes from within its purview. By adhering to the market
instruments to address climate change mitigation, Kyoto mechanisms very much
stand within the basic understanding of EM and do not incorporate the possibility
of any radical change in the interplay of ecological and economic actors or in the
framing of climate politics (directly).
Regulatory Issues
While the proponents of EM consider that the 'command-and-control' model of
state regulation is outmoded, inflexible and inefficient (Buttel 2003), stringent
regulation is argued, particularly of late, to be an important precondition for the
emerging technological regimes (Huber 2008). They envisage smart regulation
where knowledge embedded instruments is intrinsically part of the emerging regu-
latory capitalism (Jänicke 2008). At the same time there is a plea to reinvent and
strengthen the role of government to establish rigorous environmental standards
for industrial innovation in the context of multilevel governance (Jänicke 2008;
Murphy 2000). The national targets of the Kyoto mechanism that combine the
demanding, calculable and dialogue oriented policy style economic instruments at
one level with the broad but integrated actor configuration in a framework at an-
other, according to Jänicke (2008), is an advanced and sophisticated policy ap-
proach to EM.
21.2.3 Clean Development Mechanism as Ecological Modernisation
The previous parts of this section attempted to contextualise how the principal
presumptions of CDM concurrent with the theoretical premises of the EM per-
spective. Though Huber (2008) shows his scepticism about the Kyoto mechanisms
by citing them to be formative (rather than effective) and marred with operational
limitations, in principle, it can be argued that CDM as an instrument of climate
change mitigation conceptually emanates from the discursive boundaries of EM
framework. Huber's contentions discussed above, as clearly indicated, rather re-
volve around the practical schemes of implementation beside the supremacy he at-