SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AND ECOLOGICAL MODERNIZATION…kmacd/GGRB20/eco modernization.pdf · theory of reﬂexive modernization, which presents a kind of self-correcting mechanism

Sustainable DevelopmentSust. Dev. 6, 1–7 (1998)

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENTAND ECOLOGICALMODERNIZATION: A RADICALHOMOCENTRIC PERSPECTIVE

David Pepper

Oxford Brookes University, UK

The commonly discussed forms of‘strong’ sustainable development arerooted in either ecocentric oranthropocentric perspectives. Botheco-socialism and social ecologyconstitute anthropocentric (or‘homocentric’) strong sustainability: beingessentially humanistic but also embracingstewardship of nature, environmentallybenign but centred on social justice. Thebases of this development model arereviewed. Its desirability is argued fromthe perspective of a socialist critique ofthe alternative anthropocentrically-grounded version of ‘sustainability’ thatis widely supported today, known as‘ecological modernization’. It is arguedthat ecological modernization is at bestonly weakly sustainable. Indeed,contemporary Marxist readings ofcapitalism’s inherent contradictionssuggest that this development model isnot sustainable at all in the long run.Global modernization, whetherpurportedly ‘ecological’ or not, is likelyto foster continued attempts at

displacement and externalization of bothenvironmental and social costs. Currentcorporate reactions against bothenvironmentalism and social democracyare therefore unsurprising. ? 1998 JohnWiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

Accepted 11 September 1997

STRONG SUSTAINABILITY

S ome recent commentators on sustainabledevelopment (SD), notably Pearce et al.(1993), have differentiated between ‘weak’

and ‘strong’ forms. There is sometimes a tendencyto assume that strong SD inevitably carries ‘arequirement to preserve intact the environment aswe find it today in all its forms’ (Beckerman, 1994;194). In Beckerman’s understanding this meansthat strong SD would not allow the substitutionof human for natural capital: gains in humanwelfare at the expense of radical transformationof the ‘natural’ environment are not to becountenanced.

Such a stance would be unreservedly ‘eco-centric’; that is, based on a green theory of value(Goodin, 1992) which holds that nature has avalue in and of itself—an integrity which isnot compatible in any way with the goals ofdevelopment as modernization. Pearce et al.(18–19), however, basing their typology onO’Riordan’s (1989) classification of environmen-talism, characterize such a stance as ‘extreme’, andbased on deep ecology’s preference for bioethical

Correspondence to: David Pepper, Department of Geography,School of Social Sciences and Law, Oxford Brookes University,Headington, Oxford OX3 0BP.

CCC 0968-0802/98/010001–07 $17.50? 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

preservationism. They identify an alternative formof strong sustainability which is ‘communalist’.

This alternative would indeed accept thatsome, at least, natural capital cannot be regardedas substitutable by human capital if developmentis to be sustainable, but it also holds that a form ofdevelopment should be possible which would be,to use Dobson’s (1996) definition, based not onlyon obligations to nature but also equally on therequirements of human welfare (material andaesthetic). In essence it believes that both thehuman and non-human needs of present andfuture generations could be secured if a radicalalternative to present arrangements for securingeconomic and social welfare were established.

Such an approach to strong sustainability isanthropocentric rather than ecocentric (indeedDobson argues, probably correctly, that any con-cept of SD must be fundamentally anthro-pocentric), but it is not, in Merchant’s (1992,61–81) terms, ‘egocentric’: that is, to be equatedwith the goals and methods of development asmodernization under capitalism. Rather, it is‘homocentric’: that is, impelled by humanisticgoals alongside a notion of stewardship fornature, and owing much of its theoretical perspec-tive not only to the utilitarians but also toMarxism. A homocentric ethic ‘sets up the fulfil-ment of human needs as a priority, but gives fullconsideration to nonhuman nature in the pro-cess’ (Merchant, 1992, 73). Both social ecologyand eco-socialism would be included under theumbrella of homocentric environmentalism—eco-socialism here is regarded most emphatically asnot being compatible with statist versions of‘socialism’, having roots particularly in early Marxand in William Morris (Pepper, 1993).

As such, the approach to SD is clearly radical,requiring far-reaching social change embodyingfundamental principles of socialism, but meldedwith environmental goals based on stewardship.My purpose here is to sketch out some basictenets of this strong, homocentric, conception ofSD, and why some consider that it is necessary:that is, why the current alternative of SD con-ceived of as ecological modernization (EM)cannot in the long run succeed and is not reallysustainable.

The radical homocentric view insists that sus-tainable development should not merely beenvironmentally benign. An essential and com-plementary dimension is that of social justice andequity, in both space and time. An importantaspect of this condition is that future generationsshould have similar options to those which our

generation enjoys: options to enjoy and knownature as we do now, in all its diversity, fecundityand beauty, as well as to use it indefinitely toderive material advantage.

CAPITALISM AND ECOLOGICALMODERNIZATION: CAN THEYPRODUCE SUSTAINABILITY?

What is ecological modernization?

Ecological modernization is a concept introducedby the EU’s Fourth Environmental Action Pro-gramme (Baker, 1997). Essentially, it describes aset of processes and perspectives whereby capi-talism is currently trying to achieve its version ofsustainable development. EM is currently replac-ing the earlier phase of crude, environmentallydamaging, industrial capitalism. For capitalism,crucially, sustainability includes the premise thatthe system of capitalism itself must be sustained.

Christoff (1996) has reviewed the concept ofEM. He describes it as a set of processes by whichthe content and style of environmental policy inthe West have changed in the 1980s, involving,for instance, the precautionary principle, a pushfor integrated regulatory approaches, voluntarismand market-based incentives. All these are seen asalternatives to regulation and force, and they haveostensibly led to greater integration of economicand environmental policy in countries suchas Germany and Japan, The Netherlands andScandinavia, whereby such countries seem tohave achieved decreased energy and materials useper unit of GNP produced.

These processes include:

• EM as a set of technological adjustments andinnovations which would anyway have beenundertaken to improve market competitiveness,and where environmental gain is incidental(fuel efficient cars); and

• EM as a ‘policy discourse’ (Christoff, 1996),where new goals are assumed in public policy,which are supposed to inform all economicpolicy and activity. An example is the Fifth EUAction Programme for the Environment, incor-porating such principles as the polluter pays,the precautionary principle, burden of proof onactors rather than the damaged party and thatenvironmental protection can be profitable tofirms. The Programme advocates that theseprinciples should underlie all EU social andeconomic policy. This discourse, says Christoff

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? 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. Sust. Dev. 6, 1–7 (1998)

2 SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

(1996, 482), is ‘utilitarian’, holding that econ-omic growth can be reconciled with resolvingenvironmental problems, and ‘allowing govern-ments to back away from regulation’. However,there are some obvious reservations about EM.

Some problems of EM

First, some of the environmental improvementwhich has been achieved has come at a cost ofdisplacing environmentally harmful activities tonewly industrialized and less developed countries.We have been receiving in the mid-1990s a risingamount of publicity about the steady flow of toxicwastes from Western countries to India, forinstance.

Second, neither the technological adjustmentnor policy discourse aspects of EM necessarilydiminish total resource consumption, which is whatradical environmentalists demand. This is in-stanced by the basic contradiction of a situationwhere the EU’s Fifth Environmental ActionProgramme runs alongside the objectives of theSingle Market. Yet the latter was set up toachieve more growth, more consumption, moretrade at a distance and more transport, leading tomore roads and pollution.

In the same way, the social justice aspects ofsustainability in the peripheries of the EU, atwhich structural adjustment programmes are nowaimed, are soon going to be offset by massivelyincreased tendencies in the Single Market forwealth to be accumulated and concentrated, notnecessarily even within the EU (profit repatriationto Japan and the US from branch plants in the UKand Ireland, for instance).

Third, EM as currently conceived is only‘weakly ecological’, says Christoff, for it is eco-nomically reductionist, attempting to monetizethe environment. This therefore makes it subjectto the objections to monetization often voicedby environmental groups (see Jacobs, 1991, forinstance). It is ‘a version of ecological sustain-ability in the wasteland of a vastly depletedbiological world’ (Christoff, 1996, 486). Further-more this makes it dependent on technocraticelites (scientific and economic experts) and statecontrol.

Fourth, it is not truly international and holistic.It does not take into its accounting the kinds ofdisplacement cost mentioned above, nor theenvironmental/social costs of so-called ‘efficiencygains’ through globalization of the economy andso-called ‘comparative advantage’ in trade. Theseoften do harm to indigenous economies and

cultures. Neither are the costs of inordinatetransport reckoned for—a 1997 World in Actionprogramme from Granada TV gave the exampleof jeans for sale in shops in Shropshire, UK, madefrom cloth actually produced in that county. Yetthe cloth had travelled to the far ends of Europe inorder to exploit cheap labour in the processes ofbeing made up. On any measure of long-term SDthis practice, which is rife in the post-GATTglobal economy is extremely irrational, andunsustainable.

Fifth, says Christoff, EM is conceived as theonly, exclusive, way to ‘development’ and ‘sus-tainability’, ignoring the diversity of possibilitiesraised by different cultures and approaches toeconomics. In other words, it is part of, not acounter to, the mainstream modernization model.This model carries with it the disembedding ofpeople from social systems (Giddens, 1990) andrisks of a new order of impact and scale, e.g.Chernobyl, global warming.

These risks may produce a ‘reflexivemodernization’ process, according to Beck et al.(1994), whereby, in reaction, it is recognized bypeople disenchanted with the older industrialmodernization that over-production must cease,that our relationships to nature and each othershould be re-embedded in locality and place andthat local cultures and knowledge systems, differ-ent from the universal industrial modernizationmodel, should be encouraged. Essential to theirperspective is economic localization in order toachieve true economic democracy (not merely the‘subsidiarity’ of EU programmes for development,which can often be accompanied in fact by rigideconomic control from the centre). However thistheory of reflexive modernization, which presentsa kind of self-correcting mechanism in Westernsocial and economic systems, might be said tounderstate some of the realities of underlyingeconomic processes.

For, as Christoff points out, EM is essentially apolitical strategy to try to accommodate theenvironmentalist critique of the 1970s on with the1980s deregulatory neo-liberal climate. It is capi-talism ostensibly with a greener aspect—and assuch it ‘avoids addressing basic contradictions incapitalism’.

CONTRADICTIONS OF CAPITALISM

What are these basic contradictions? Marxistanalysis seems as germane here as it ever

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AND ECOLOGICAL MODERNIZATION


3SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

was. The group of academic Marxists associatedwith the journal Capitalism, Nature, Socialism hasrecently reinterpreted the contradictions of capi-talism in environmental terms (see for instanceO’Connor, 1994).

The ‘first contradiction’

Economic sustainability in capitalism requiresprofits. Profits come from the constant accumula-tion of capital and its subsequent reinvestment toexpand production. This requires constant expan-sion of consumption. Interference with profitstherefore threatens the economic sustainabilityof capitalism. Yet capitalism threatens its ownsustainability when it drives for productivityincreases, which it must do to maintain andexpand profit. For a major part of productivityinvolves undermining the capacity of labour toconsume, because of the constant drive to lowertotal labour costs (see Johnston, 1996). So growthis constrained by limited demand—there is ademand side crisis. This has manifested itself indepression, war and Keynesianism in the Westin the 1920s to 1950s, all of which haveled to welfarism and high-public-expenditureprogrammes, further eroding profits.

The ‘second contradiction’

Faced by this demand side crisis individualcapitals have attempted in the 1980s and 1990s torestore their profits and lower their costs, butthis, in turn, has led to strategies, partly againstpublic spending, and partly against pressure tointernalize social and environmental costs, whichultimately degrade the material conditions ofcapitalist production. These strategies have under-mined the health, welfare and wellbeing of theworkforce, and they have degraded the environ-ment, thereby in the long run lowering theproductivity of the factors of labour and ‘land’.Such undermining essentially leads to ‘bottle-necks’ in production. They therefore constitute asupply side crisis, whereby sustainability of capital-ism is further threatened by its own internal logic.

According to the theory of reflexivemodernization referred to above, with increasedrisks to better informed and increasingly cynical(about modernization) populations, new socialmovements demand reforms. This can be viewedas a process whereby capitalist societies attemptto put the conditions of production back ontrack. That process ought to lead to meaningfulSD, where social and environmental costs of

capitalism would be internalized to firms. Yet, assuggested, this is inherently damaging to profit-ability, because internalization, at least in theshort run, increases costs and decreases flexibilityof accumulation.

So industry attempts to ‘rationalize’ produc-tion further, engaging in a backlash against thepressure of new social movements, including thegreen movement. Capital now demands deregu-lation and voluntarism, and the lowering oftaxation—for instance British industry’s recentstrictures against the EU Social Chapter.

Thus we have recently seen a wave of reactionsagainst internalization of social and environmentalcosts (and therefore against social justice andecological sustainability) in the West, through thediversion of resources and investment to the ‘tigereconomies’. These (including some in the existingEU, such as Ireland) boast of cheap labour costs,and many make light of the effects of currentforms of industrialization on the environment too.

Reactions against environmental regulationsand protection were seen in America by therepeal by the Reagan/Bush administrations ofenvironmental laws passed in the 1970s (Faberand O’Connor, 1989). Currently, there are theattempts by the Global Climate Coalition (includ-ing companies like Shell, Exxon, Texaco and Ford)to advance a sceptical line on global warming andundermine talks to cut greenhouse gases. Theseattempts include the funding of research fromclimatologists who question the whole globalwarming thesis. The fossil fuel lobby has spentmillions of dollars trying to persuade govern-ments not to restrict energy use. Both JohnGummer, UK Environment Secretary until 1997,and John Houghton, Chair of the UN GlobalWarming Science Working Group, have accusedthe science practised by this group of beinginadequate and definitely not independent(Observer, 9 March 1997). Moreover, althoughShell UK has been lobbied by some of its share-holders on its environmental record in Nigeria, theboard of this company has steadfastly tried toresist this lobbying. In fact we can now speak ofthe global spread of an ‘anti-environmentalism’movement. This has been documented by AndrewRowell (1996), and it consists of front groups forlarge corporations, anti-environmental PR firms,right-wing legal foundations and others, createdspecifically to deconstruct sustainability by work-ing to repeal legislation and more generallyencouraging anti-environmentalist sentiments.

Meanwhile, capitalism’s increasing failure tomeet the social justice aspect of SD is signified

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by a widening gap between rich and poor in‘advanced’ economies, where underclasses arebeing created amidst wealth by capital’s demandfor a ‘flexible’ workforce—a euphemism forundermining the workforce’s economic and socialwellbeing and security. Nineteen million people inBritain live on the margins of ‘poverty’ (an incomeof less than £105/week): fourteen per cent (8m)are totally dependent on welfare and 7.5% of alldwellings are unfit for human habitation (these areBritish Government figures reiterated in theChurches Report on Poverty in April of this year(Observer, 13 April 1997)). What has happened tothe theories of ‘trickle down’ and ‘rising tidesraising all boats’? New Zealand, the UK, Norway,Australia, the Netherlands, Japan, the US, WestGermany, France—all these had rising incomeinequality from 1977 to 1990, according to therecent Rowntreee Inquiry into Income in Welfare.Meanwhile we heard from the UN in November1996 that no less than one-third of the world’sworkforce is unemployed.

In Europe the meeting of EMU convergencecriteria by member states will continue pressuresto curtail the public and corporate expenditurenecessary to stave off these effects and to createenvironmental and social sustainability. In thelong term EMU will lower transaction and trans-port barriers to businesses, helping them tobecome more ‘efficient’ in a narrow, traditionalsense, and boosting economic growth by takingadvantages of economies of scale, but this willencourage greater spatial concentration of indus-tries, implying greater regional economic diver-gence: firms huddling together in clusters ofexcellence instead of being evenly distributed.

All this is capital doing what it must do,because any attempt to increase the real efficiencyof labour and environmental services, via properlong-term sustainability measures—which mustinclude regional equalization—would inevitablyinhibit short-term maximization of economic gain.However such short-term economic horizons areinescapable because of the primacy of account-ability to shareholders and the imperative ofshowing rapid profits and dividends, to attractshare buyers.

APPROACHES TO ECOLOGICALMODERNIZATION

Market environmentalism, welfare/interventionistenvironmentalism and market-based incentives: allthese approaches to EM share the view that the

environment must be economized in order that itshould only be used to the point where environ-mental costs are counterbalanced by welfarebenefits. Beckerman and Pearce are among thosewho have argued that this is a better disciplinethan direct government command and control.The way to do it, according to free marketenvironmentalists, is by establishing propertyrights to environmental goods and services, draw-ing them into the spheres of commodity pro-duction and circulation, and therefore securing‘efficient’ use and allocation. The inexorable ‘logic’of this is to argue, as has Beckerman, that it isacceptable to use up the environment if theresulting environmental loss is outweighed bygains in welfare: that is, natural and human capitalare more or less infinitely substitutable.

Setting aside the problems of trying to makeany meaningful calculations of the ‘true’ costs ofthe environment, about which volumes have beenwritten, this completely discounts the radicalenvironmentalist’s arguments about intrinsicvalue, existence value and any other intrinsic-ally non-monetizable value of the environment.All that is being done by present mainstreamgreen economics is to give the environment anexchange value, not a use value. The latter issomething that can be determined only politically,and by the whole community. And of coursemonetization makes the principle of sustainability,which is concerned with futurity, very difficult tooperate, for who can foretell what will be themonetary values to future generations of presentenvironmental goods and services? The com-monly used approach of using the current dis-count rate, based on interest rates, is highlyproblematical, while there are larger difficultiesinvolving commeasureability between environ-mental, social justice and economic variables (seeJacobs, 1995).

Furthermore, environmental costs and econ-omic gains tend to be calculated, in the market-based approach to sustainability, as the aggregateof individual costs and gains, so that the notion ofsocial and community costs is difficult to oper-ationalize and justify. This is the classical liberalversion of society as no more than the aggregateof atomized individuals: a version which is clearlynot appropriate for the 21st century.

The property rights strand of market basedenvironmentalism also tends to underestimate theimmense difficulties and bureaucracies potentiallyinvolved in allocating and defending those rights(Mishan, 1993): doing this these would certainly,and paradoxically for free-market environmental-




ists, put the EM process further into the powerfulhands of legal, bureaucratic and technical elites.

A RADICAL HOMOCENTRICALTERNATIVE

The aim

This must be true economic democracy, whichultimately abolishes economic power itself, exceptthrough direct citizen participation in economicdecision making. This principle is fundamental toeco-socialism and to social ecology. It alonewould enable environmental factors to be inter-nalized according to the judgement of the wholecommunity, thinking, presumably, on behalf offuture generations as well as its own, because itwould be clearly in its interests so to do.

For true economic democracy to be possible,there must be common ownership of the means ofproduction and distribution. This goes alongsidedistribution according to need, so that equality ofesteem rather than equality of opportunitybecomes the touchstone for the distribution ofenvironmental goods and services, as much as forall goods and services. The same applies forenvironmental losses. In the process of sacrificingenvironmental goods for welfare gain it is usuallywhole communities which suffer from the losses(in global warming effects, for instance). Conse-quently it is only right and sensible that the wholecommunity should share any benefits (in a mean-ingful way rather than via spurious argumentsinvolving the mythical trickle down process).

However the notion of community here isnot synonymous with the state, as it is in someforms of so-called socialism. It is localized direct,bottom-up democracy, hinging on susidiarity,which is the political form that follows from theeconomic empowerment of localities and regions.

Complementary to this is the principle thatlocal communities should try to be able to meet atleast their own basic needs, although there wouldbe trade in non-basic needs. However this latterwould be trade for mutual self-reliance, not tradeinvolving strict reciprocity based on moneyprofit, and increasing dependence of some nationson others, as at present.

None of this is to be confused with autarchy,or turning one’s back on globalization, or indeedon modernization and economies of scale whenthere really are such economies to gained on thebasis of wholistic calculations which take intoaccount as much as is realistic all members ofcommunities in time and space. For the confederal

principle should apply, whereby decentralizationand subsidiarity are set within regional, supra-regional and global confederations of interests(Fotopoulos, 1997).

Detail

There are many versions of how such principlesmight translate into practice. Some are remotefrom what we have now, except in smallcommunities or non-‘modernized’ economies.They may amount to stateless and moneylesseconomies, but, whether this is so or not, they arestrongly founded on intra- and inter-generationalequity, production for need and bottom-up com-munity structures and control. This disposes themtowards the top of the sustainable development‘ladder’, equivalent to the ‘ideal model’ of SD(Baker et al., 1997, 9). Other versions are closer tosmall-scale capitalism and ‘strong’, rather thanideal, SD.

Failing rapid revolutionary change, this eco-socialist/social ecology model would have to befounded on the spread of some existing, butminority, institutions and arrangements; suchas credit unions, local exchange and tradingsystems (LETS), community land banks, basicincome schemes, farm-to-doorstep distribution,local energy production based on renewables,municipalization of bureaucracies, communityand neighbourhood groups and collectivized,self-managing enterprises.

Transitional compromises as they all may be tosome eco-socialist purists, nonetheless theseinstitutions could have long-run revolutionarypotential. Douthwaite (1996) presents a highlypersuasive analysis and description of them inoperation today, with particular reference toexamples drawn from Western Europe.

What all versions of this development modelhave in common is that the aims of production arenot economic growth for private profit. They arecommunity defined aims, likely to incorporateenvironmental and broader social and individualgoals, including perhaps the generation of fulfill-ing and satisfying work, a sine qua non ofenhanced quality of life in strong SD.

A CONCLUDING PROBLEMIt is important to stress that none of this shouldimply a return to pre-industrial models, nor doesit mean a post-modern-style rejection of alluniversals in favour of local anarchy. Clearlysuch radical models of SD, which deconstruct

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many of the features of industrial (i.e. capitalist)modernization, nonetheless themselves requirethe tools of modernization for there to be ‘think-ing and acting both globally and locally’, ie. mediato publicize what is going on: and internationalagreements and policing.

This is not to deny that there are potentialcontradictions which might arise between theglobalization of thinking, awareness and regula-tion, and the drive for localization of economyand culture and the principle of subsidiarity inradical homocentric SD. Here is a problem thatany radical movement which opposes the globalhegemony of capitalism has to grapple with.

The Red–Green Study Group (1995) conciselysummarizes a rational and eco-socialist responseto these contradictions:

Many greens and other adherents of new socialmovements claim that both liberalism andsocialism advocate and impose universal prin-ciples in a way which fails to respect diversity,whether this takes the form of ethnic, gender,religious or cultural difference. We do notaccept that equality of access to resources,equal political rights and equality of respect areincompatible with respect for diversity. On thecontrary, they are necessary conditions fordiversity to flourish. Our guiding principlewould be: all differences are to be welcomedexcept where they threaten the equal rights ofothers to liberty of expression and self-respect. . . In the long run a green socialistperspective must envisage global rights andresponsibilities being exercised on the basis ofequal access to resources at a sustainable levelby all citizens of the planet. At the same time,we are agreed that the concept of sub-sidiarity, appropriately defined, is the best basisfor deciding which decisions should be taken atwhich level—with a bias towards the lowest,smallest, most local level that makes sense.

Despite this clear statement, it must beacknowledged that there are no easy solutions tosome of the problems that arise because of thistension between the local/culturally-specific andthe global/universal, and much of the detail ofeco-socialist/social ecology SD needs still tobe worked out. Herein, perhaps, lies a majorchallenge to socialism in the 21st century.

REFERENCES

Baker, S. (1997) The evolution of EU environmental policy.In Baker S., Kousis M., Richardson D. and Young S., The

Politics of Sustainable Development: Theory, Policy andPractice within the European Union, Routledge, London,91–106.

Baker, S., Kousis, M., Richardson, D. and Young, S. (1997)Introduction: the theory and practice of sustainabledevelopment in EU perspective, editors’ introduction toThe Politics of Sustainable Development: Theory, Policy andPractice within the European Union, Routledge, London,1–42.

Beck, U., Giddens, A. and Lash, S. (1994) ReflexiveModernisation, Cambridge: Polity.

Beckerman, W. (1994) Sustainable development: is it auseful concept?, Environmental Values 3(3), 191–209.

Christoff, P. (1996) Ecological modernisation: ecologicalmodernities, Environmental Politics, 5(3), 476–500.

Dobson, A. (1996) Environment sustainabilities: an analysisand a typology, Environmental Politics, 5(3), 401–428.

Douthwaite, R. (1996) Short Circuit: Strengthening LocalEconomies for Security in an Unstable World, Green.

Faber, D. and O’Connor, J. (1989) The struggle for nature:environmental crisis and the crisis of environmentalism inthe US, Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, 2, 12–39.

Fotopoulos, T. (1997) Towards an Inclusive Democracy: theCrisis of the Growth Economy and the Need for a NewLiberatory Project, Cassell, London.

Giddens, A. (1990) The Consequences of Modernity,Cambridge: Polity.

Goodin, R. (1992) Green Political Theory, Cambridge: Polity.Jacobs, M. (1991) The Green Economy: Environment,

Sustainable Development and the Politics of the Future, Pluto,London.

Jacobs, M. (1995) Sustainable development, capital substi-tution and economic humility: a response to Beckerman,Environmental Values, 4(1), 57–68.

Johnston, R. (1996) Nature, State and Economy: a PoliticalEconomy of the Environment, 2nd edn, Wiley, London.

Merchant, C. (1992) Radical Ecology: the Search for a LivableWorld, Routledge, New York.

Mishan, E. (1993) Economists versus the greens: an exposi-tion and critique, Political Quarterly, 64(2), 222–42.

O’Connor, J. (1994) Is capitalism sustainable? In O’ConnorM. (Ed.), Is Capitalism Sustainable? Political Economy andthe Politics of Ecology, Guilford, New York.

O’Riordan, T. (1989) The challenge for environmentalism.In Peet, R. and Thrift, N. (Eds.), New Models in Geography,Unwin Hyman, London, 77–102.

Pearce, D. et al. (1993) Blueprint 3: Measuring SustainableDevelopment, Earthscan, London.

Pepper, D. (1993) Eco-socialism: from Deep Ecology to SocialJustice, Routledge, London.

Red–Green Study Group (1995) What on Earth is to be Done?A Red–Green Dialogue, The Red–Green Study Group,Manchester.

Rowell, A. (1996) Green Backlash: Global Subversion of theEnvironment Movement, Routledge, London.

BIOGRAPHY

David Pepper, Department of Geography, Schoolof Social Sciences and Law, Oxford BrookesUniversity, Headington, Oxford OX3 0BP, UK.Telephone: 01865 483756. Fax: 01865 483937.E-mail: [email protected]




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SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AND ECOLOGICAL MODERNIZATION…kmacd/GGRB20/eco modernization.pdf · theory of reﬂexive modernization, which presents a kind of self-correcting mechanism