Greening Environmental Policy

by Fischer, Frank; Black, Michael

• ISBN13: 9781853962592
• ISBN10: 1853962597
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1995-05-01
• Publisher: Sage Pubns Ltd

Summary

Sustainable development has become the primary focus of national and international environmental policy. Designed as a common global strategy for industrial and industrializing countries, some see it as offering environmental protection without sacrificing economic growth. But sustainability has become a hotly contested concept. As its critics point out, sustainable development seeks to achieve environmental protection without confronting the tough choices facing modern corporate-industrial society and its consumption-driven way of life. To what degree is the existing system itself responsible for the environmental crisis? Can we achieve a sustainable future merely by tagging environmental requirements onto the existing industrial order? Or must we address the political-economic system itself? Broadly committed to the goals and values of a green political perspective, the chapters in this book show the environmental crisis to be essentially a political-economic crisis. The pursuit of sustainability cannot proceed without significant changes in our economic enterprises, public institutions and personal lives. Reaching beyond the contradictions of sustainable development, the authors explore the kinds of political arrangements needed to throw open sustainability to wide-ranging debate, both national and international. They advance alternative environmental policy-making processes designed to forge a genuine political consensus around these questions, as well as institutional, cultural and behavioural strategies capable of translating it into effective policy solutions. Fundamental to these strategies, a progressive commitment to participatory democracy is seen to provide the surest footing for both the articulation and realization of a sustainable future.

Table of Contents

Contributors	vii
Introduction	xi
Part I Between economics and ecology: sustainability in political perspective	1	(50)
The uncertain quest for sustainability: public discourse and the politics of environmentalism	3	(18)
Douglas Torgerson
Sustainable development as a power/knowledge system: the problem of `governmentality'	21	(12)
Timothy W. Luke
Towards a sustainable future: the organizing role of ecologism in the north--south relationship	33	(18)
Hector R. Leis
Eduardo J. Viola
Part II Environmental policy-making: beyond industrial ideology and technocratic strategy	51	(76)
The unnatural policies of natural resource agencies: fishery policy on the Sacramento River	53	(13)
Michael Black
Environmental technology and the green car: towards a sustainable transportation policy	66	(21)
Lamont C. Hempel
The North American Free Trade Agreement and the environment: economic growth versus democratic politics	87	(17)
Derek Churchill
Richard Worthington
Environmental policy in Chile: the politics of the comprehensive law	104	(23)
Eduardo Silva
Part III Towards a sustainable future: environmental values, institutions and participatory practices	127	(83)
Environmental values for a sustainable society: the democratic challenge	129	(16)
Robert Paehlke
Acid rain in Great Britain: environmental discourse and the hidden politics of institutional practice	145	(20)
Maarten A. Hajer
Hazardous waste policy, community movements and the politics of Nimby: participatory risk assessment in the USA and Canada	165	(18)
Frank Fischer
Industrial and environmental crises: rethinking corporate social responsibility	183	(16)
Paul Shrivastava
Strategic management and business policy-making: bringing in environmental values	199	(11)
Jo McCloskey
Denis Smith
Appendix Global warming and the greenhouse effect: implications for international environmental policy	210	(7)
Rodney White
Index	217