Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
However, the crucial transformation that makes the notion of the growing
autonomy of an ecological rationality especially relevant, is of more recent origin.
After an ecological rationality has become relatively independent from the political
and socio-ideological rationalities (in the 1970s and 1980s), this process of growing
independence began to extend to the economic domain in the 1990s. And since,
according to most scholars, this growing independence of the ecological rationality
from its economic counterpart is crucial to 'the ecological question', this last step
is the decisive one. It means that economic processes of production and consump-
tion are increasingly analysed and judged, as well as designed and organised from
both an economic
and
an ecological point of view. Some profound institutional
changes in the economic domain of production and consumption have become dis-
cernable in the 1990s. Among these changes are the widespread emergence of envi-
ronmental management systems, environmental accountancy and environmental
reporting in companies; the introduction of economic valuation of environmental
goods via the introduction of eco-taxes, among other things; the emergence of
environment-inspired liability and insurance arrangements; the increasing impor-
tance attached to environmental goals such as natural resource saving and recycling
among public and private utility enterprises; and the articulation of environmental
considerations in economic supply and demand, for instance by eco-labels and
environmental certifi cation schemes. Within ecological modernisation ideas these
transformations are analysed as
institutional
changes, indicating their semi-perma-
nent character. Although the process of ecology-induced transformation should not
be interpreted as linear, evolutionary and irreversible, as was common in the mod-
ernisation theories in the 1950s and 1960s, these changes have some permanency
and would be diffi cult to reverse.
Some environmental sociologists and commentators in the environmental reform
tradition go even one step further. They suggest that environmental considerations
and interests not only activate institutional transformations in contemporary indus-
trial societies, but even evolve into a new Grand Narrative. The traditional Grand
Emancipatory Narratives of modernity (e.g., the emancipation of labour, the disso-
lution of poverty) place us in history as human beings who have a defi nite past and
a more or less predictable future. Now these traditional narratives have ceased to
perform as overarching 'storylines', some believe the ecology (or, alternatively, sus-
tainability) will emerge as the new sensitising concept through which modern society
orientates itself in its future development. Environment/sustainability - or rather
environmental/sustainability considerations and interests - is then the leading
notion, the structuring principle, the
leitmotiv
for a new round of institutional
transformations in what can be labelled (in a variation on Hobsbawm) the 'Age of
Environment'. That still needs to be proven.
Ecological Modernisation as Environmental Reform
Most EM studies focus on actual environmental reform dynamics in specifi c social
practices and institutions. One of the constantly returning debates with respect to
EM relates to the empirical evidence for environmental reform. It has been well
established by political scientists, geographers and others that public and private
institutions around the world have become more openly and positively oriented
towards the natural environment, at least as expressed in treaties, policies, plans,
organisations and fi nancial resources. At the same time, environmental economists
