Governing an ecological transition - Ecological Governance - page 136

and public values held in places. The approach to policy implementation
that I call for recognises that policies, whilst they provide vital sources of
guidance and direction, are statements of what ought to be done rather
than of what can be achieved. They must be tempered by knowledge of
what is possible if they are to be turned into practicable strategic plans for
infrastructure development.

4.6.3 Promoting behavioural change
A major concern over the extent to which ecologically desirable change
to modern societies could be achieved is that people who have grown up
in socioeconomic systems which encourage egregious consumption and
under political systems whose primary objective has been to maximise
the ef ciency of economic growth may respond with bewilderment and

hostility to rhetoric and measures that promote restraint and require
whole populations to change their lifestyles. 108 This may, in turn, result
in the opposition which, as we have seen in discussing acceptance of
governmental policies above, may lead a government concerned with its
democratic credibility and electoral prospects to abandon proposals that
clearly go against the grain of an entrenched consumption culture.
Anticipation that action for greater environmental protection would
inevitably meet with a negative response has led some green political
theorists to view the realisation of ecological sustainability as an impos-
sibility in a democratic political system, and to advocate authoritarian
rule as the only means by which environmental degradation might be
halted. 109 However, the majority of commentators, recognising both the
impracticability and the unpalatability of this position, see the use of new
structures for governance and institutional reform as the best means of
engineering the type of cultural change through which the replacement
of wealth accumulation with maintaining ecosystem health as society s

guiding principle may come to be accepted. 110 Central to their views is
the contention that people living in a society which encourages both
their involvement with shaping the world they live in and a conscious-
ness that they are part of a wider community with shared environmental

'

108

Stallworthy, ' Sustainability, Land Use ' ,p.288.

109 Dobson,

' Green Political Thought ' ,p.105;Barry, ' Rethinking Green Politics ' ,

pp. 196 - 200.

110 Barry,

' Rethinking Green Politics ' ,pp.104 - 7, 110; Jacobs, ' Environmental Valuation ' ,

pp. 228 - 9; Smith, ' Deliberative Democracy ' ,pp.66 - 8; Stallworthy, ' Sustainability, Land

Use ' , pp. 290 - 2.