Special issue introduction: ecological modernization

Abstract

Nowadays, there are more and more critics who ask what ‘ecological modernization’ offers that distinguishes it from the ‘business as usual’ of contemporary capitalism. Is ecological modernization merely a cornucopian concept, which promises with hollow ringing optimism that more efficiency and new technology will save us from the environmental crisis? Like the concept of sustainable development, ecological modernization has risen to political prominence. But has efficiency in resource and energy use, as well as technological innovation, not always been a standard operating mechanism of a freemarket economy? Former European Commission President, Jacques Delors, and his think-tank Cellule de Prospective were soon to integrate ecological modernization ideas into the 1993 White Paper on growth, competitiveness and employment (CEC, 1993). Furthermore, international financial institutions, including the World Bank, have eloquently expanded their vocabulary to include new green buzzwords. With little doubt, the present crisis for concepts such as sustainable development and ecological modernization is a result of their heuristic and sometimes flagrant uses, which have caused a steady erosion of the specificity that was once linked to them. The pragmatic use of these concepts—not only among actors with mixed political motives, but also by many environmental agencies and institutions—have blunted our senses for their potential analytical sharpness and significance, and they threaten to turn them into empty phrases, a contemporary form of ‘greenspeak’. It is against this background that we should judge the possible value of the academic debate that has developed in recent years and that recently has evidenced an upsurge of interest in ecological modernization ideas (Hajer, 1995; Mol, 1995; Mol & Sonnenfeld, 2000; Murphy, 2000). Although Buttel (2000) may be right in pointing out that it is daring to speak of an ecological modernization theory per se, it is hard to deny that there has been a marked discursive orientation towards researching the implications of ecological modernization, internationally as well as within the sectors of advanced industrial economies. As Anthony Giddens states in his The Third Way, ‘there is no doubt that ecological modernisation links social, democratic and ecological concerns more closely than once seemed possible’ (Giddens, 1998, pp. 57–58). The contributions to this special issue of the Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning stem from an international conference on ecological modernization that took place at the Department of Social Policy of the University of Helsinki, Finland, in late 1998. They have been selected, among other reasons, for their possible contribution to conceptual understanding and clarification. While recent publications have explored the implications of ecological modernization in different settings (Mol & Sonnenfeld, 2000), here we try to put the concept under the microscope again, in the hope of clarifying and restoring its meaning and justification for the environmental debate. In the first contribution, Joseph Huber, one of the originators of the ecological modernization idea, explores the different perceptions of sustainable development that have developed in the course of the Brundtland report. He argues that the ecology movement sticks to a tradi* Correspondence to: Department of Political Science, Aarhus University, Universitetsparken bygn. 331, DK-8000 Arhus C, Denmark. Tel: +45 8942 1133; fax: +45 8613 9839; e-mail: andersen@ps.au.dk