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Ecological modernization now suggests that environmental values can be attached to the state's core economic imperative, while Ulrich Beck's risk society thesis suggests an environmental attachment to the state's core legitimation imperative. These developments could add up to a conservation imperative of the state—the green state—though no state is yet close to this situation. Norway has entrenched ecological modernization in a moderate weak form. Germany is closest to a strong form of ecological modernization that, in combination with risk‐induced legitimation crisis, points the way to a more reflexive and democratic political economy. The US has the sort of movement that could facilitate such a transformation—but its state has moved in exactly the opposite direction, casting economic and environmental values in old‐fashioned conflictual terms. Even the UK at long last appears to be capable of taking on board some of the key precepts of ecological modernization and democratization.

Draws general conclusions from the study of the ten governmental reactions to sustainable development. It explores explanations for the different patterns of engagement displayed by the governments. Considering the governments as a group, it also provides a preliminary assessment of the quality of the implementation effort thus far. The chapter goes on to offer a more general interpretation of the overall evolution of environmental policy in the industrialized countries over the past three decades, and relates this to contemporary scholarly concern with the concept of ‘ecological modernization’. Finally, the discussion considers the potential ‘staying power’ of the idea of sustainable development, and reflects on the long‐term viability of the sustainable development agenda.

This chapter surveys and analyzes the various laws and public policies adopted by governments in various countries to promote SRI. It begins by situating the emerging SRI regulation within the evolving traditions of environmental regulation and policy debates about sustainable development. The principal legal measures examined are informational policy instruments requiring disclosure of SRI policies, proxy voting and other activities; economic instruments such as taxation incentives for responsible investment; environmental liability of lenders and investors; and investment mandates or restrictions. It finds that the most extensive SRI-directed policy reforms are being adopted in Western Europe, especially for the pension fund sector. Most SRI regulation, however, has involved light-touch controls that leave significant discretion to financiers. The implementation of these measures has tended to be perfunctory and has had limited impact in changing the behaviour of financial markets.

In Southern Europe the environment as a policy sector has evolved along four dimensions, namely, regime change, economic development and social change, cultural patterns and public awareness, and international pressures. Compared to Northern European countries, the four countries of Southern Europe have made environmental policy a priority only very recently. Across the four countries, in the long run the priority on economic growth has brought about environmental damage. Democratization has favored environmentalism, through constitutional recognition of environmental issues, new policy structures, and the emergence of environmentalist groups, but environmental concerns have not flourished to a large extent. However, Italy is more advanced than the rest of South European countries in growth of environmental awareness. The chapter analyzes four themes: the responsiveness of the democratic regimes to environmental problems, policy priorities, and the handling of environmental issues; the contribution of public concern regarding the environment to the legitimacy of new regimes; and the relationship between environmental policy and international factors.

The real and perceived conflicts among economic growth and ecological protection define one of the central tensions in environmental policy. The premise of the concept of a green economy is that it is possible at some level to transform this assumed, traditional zero-sum into a positive relationship. Although its intellectual origins may be traced to the fields of ecological economics, business greening, and ecological modernization, the green economy concept gained particular visibility in the wake of the 2009 financial crisis. This chapter argues that the green economy concept may be influential both in policy framing and as a framework for guiding and carrying out economic and political change. Three modifications in treatments of the concept would make it more acceptable and relevant for future policy debates: rethinking the purpose of growth as well as how it is achieved; shedding more light on economic inequality and its ecological consequences; and emphasizing the intrinsic as well as the utilitarian value of ecological assets and services.

Philip Brey focuses on the role technologies play in the relationship between sustainable development and consumerism in light of ecological modernization, the development practice that aims at greening production and global economy in ways that leave existing economic and political institutions intact. He agrees with critics who claim that sustainable development is incompatible with modernization’s ideal of unlimited growth. A more fundamental reform of development must also transform patterns of consumption and challenge the values and beliefs that underlie consumerism and materialism. The development of sustainable consumer products should promote sustainable behaviors and lifestyles, as well as reduce or eliminate consumer products that are unsustainable. In addition to these ecologically designed green products are persuasive technologies designed to change the attitudes or behaviors of users. But Brey worries that the redesign of technologies will be not sufficient to engender sustainable systems of consumption. Technological reform will certainly be of great help in the move towards sustainable patterns of consumption but it should be seen as part of a comprehensive strategy that also includes social and economic incentives and public debates about values, lifestyles, and the very future of the planet.

In this chapter, Caitríona Carter asks what ‘awkward knowledge’ about the governing of Europe is unacknowledged in conventional accounts of the EU’s Sustainable Development Strategy (SDS)? To answer this question, her starting point is to argue that, like Europe itself, sustainable development is not a thing. ‘Sustainable Europe’ only exists to the extent that ‘Europeans’ and others act in and on it, and are shaped through it. Through presenting empirical material on how actors have given social meaning to sustainability in European fish farming, she shows the multiple ways in which sustainability has been done and carried out. In particular, she unpacks varied actor interpretations of the meta-narrative of ‘ecological modernisation’ - which she does not treat as a single practice. She shows how, for this industry as least and contrary to conventional accounts, European sustainable development is omnipresent, not absent; is co-produced and unfinished, not natural and failed; is the result of action, not non-action; its value choices de-politicised, not ‘a-political’ and ‘technical’. The analysis provides a basis for mounting a value-driven critique of European SDS politics, rather than simply blaming ‘the EU’ for not acting.

This chapter explains why starting with the concept of the green state is politically and intellectually important. It begins by noting that many theorists from different perspectives have been very critical of state-centrism or reliance on states to solve environmental problems. Ecologists, Marxists, Feminists, Critical Theorists and Neoliberals have all articulated powerful critiques of the state. In response, theorists of ecological modernisation have defended the role or potential of the state, and authors like Robyn Eckersley and John Dryzek have formulated the notion of the green state to describe states which protect or advance environmental or ecological issues. A crucial lacuna in their work is the developing world, however, particularly in Africa. This chapter explains why this occurs, and challenges this omission through examples of variants of green states in Egypt and South Africa. It calls for green state theories which challenge the neo-Weberian assumptions of ecological modernisation.

The US Department of Defense and military supporters commonly present military-to-wildlife transitions as examples of the military's commitment to environmental protection and sustainability. While a number of military installations do commit to impressive programs to reduce waste or utilize renewable energy, the broader mission of the military remains focused on the ability to apply lethal force globally. This creates a paradox where military bases include ambitious sustainability programs while the larger institution continues to inflict unsustainable damage on people and places at multiple scales. Similarly, military lands include some of the best protected ecosystems but also some of the world's worst cases of contamination. This chapter focuses on these tensions and contradictions of militarized landscapes through the lens of ecological militarization. This concept highlights how military-to-wildlife conversions are not the simple win-win actions that supporters promote, but are also rife with asymmetries, inequalities, and risks.

The chapter examines the contribution of social theory to the understanding of air pollution by analyzing the Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution (CLRTAP)’s research on the international politics of air quality along with the achievements of CLRTAP. Various social scientific approaches of social theory, including the debate in science and technology studies (STS) literature on the scope and role of public engagement in environmental issues, ecological modernization, and Beck’s theory of the risk society, are also discussed. The role of CLRTAP in solving air quality problems is not taken up at length in the STS approach, but it helps in examining the politics of public engagement. The chapter emphasizes that the challenge before social scientists is to make the air pollution problem a major environmental hazard and to develop methods for involving citizens in the politics of air quality.

This chapter argues that the green economy concept may be influential both in policy framing and as a framework for guiding and carrying out economic and political change. The premise of green growth is that economic security and prosperity are possible within the limits of local, regional, and global ecosystems, but only if the composition of growth changes through new investments, policies, and technologies. Although its intellectual origins may be traced to the fields of ecological economics, business greening, and ecological modernization, the green growth concept gained visibility in the wake of the 2009 financial crisis. Three modifications in the concept would make it more acceptable and relevant for policy debates: rethinking the purpose of growth as well as how it is achieved; shedding more light on economic inequality and its ecological consequences; and emphasizing the intrinsic as well as the utilitarian value of ecological assets and services.

This chapter draws from the interpretive school of environmental policy analysis, especially John S. Dryzek’s The Politics of the Earth: Environmental Discourses (Oxford, 2005), to provide an overview of the environmental discourses that have historically held cultural currency around the world. It summarizes the ontological foundations of key and competing environmental discourses: the Limits discourse (Survivalism), the Promethean discourse, Democratic Pragmatism, Ecological Modernization, Green Radicalism (Eco-feminism, Environmental Justice) and Sustainable Development. Of primary interest in this overview is how the emergence of what Dryzek calls the “Promethean discourse,” an environmental discourse tied to abundance, limited government, and innovation, has been conversely related to the “Limits discourse,” which is grounded in the construct of scarcity and the “commons” and “tipping point” metaphors, and how the debate between the two has spawned a range of other, alternative environmental discourses.

This chapter examines the limitations of mainstream 1930s environmentalism. Ecological modernizationists consider environmentalism at its best when it aligns with the agenda of powerful private and public actors. For advocates of ecological modernization, questions of substantive social change explicitly don't enter the picture. Regrettably, mainstream environmentalism has moved closer toward this line of thinking over the last forty years. Incomplete and misleading stories about the New Deal and Dust Bowl conservation serve to reinforce the notion that with the right set of techniques, policies, and/or voluntary adjustments by individuals and industry, capitalism is well suited to solving ecological crises. Many see the New Deal of the 1930s as evidence that the system can be reformed and the state geared toward social and environmental improvement, even in the heart of the empire of capital. This has led to repeated calls over the years for a Green New Deal.

The two-centuries-long surge in greenhouse gas emissions that has driven climate change has had its origins in the societal transformations outlined in this chapter. A capitalist-led expansion in the global economy, coupled with human population increases, accounts for the increase in greenhouse gas emissions. There are two widely acknowledged sociological explanations for the changes in emissions: (1) a technology-focused ecological modernization perspective that emphasizes increases in energy efficiency and new technology and (2) a capitalist-focused treadmill of production explanation that emphasizes changes in the volume of production. The treadmill perspective explains the patterns of greenhouse gas emissions more adequately than the ecological modernization perspective. Just as these societal transformations have driven the increase in emissions, so policy-driven social, economic, and technological transformations should play an important role in any future reductions in emissions.