PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE EUROPE? - TU Berlin

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metabolism, implies major or basic technological innovations, as being different from
incremental efficiency increasing change.
Part of the reason that its original promoters presently apparently attempt to
rescue the concept for themselves by means of the use of a new term is that the term
“ecological modernization” has since undergone constant refinement and reinterpretation.
Most importantly, although it would be incorrect to speak of an ecological
modernization theory per se (also see Buttel 2000), the overall concept of ecological
modernization has nevertheless become the dominant discourse in mainstream
environmental policy-making. Researchers have differentiated between “weak” and
“strong” versions of the concept (Christoff 1996).
Nevertheless, most view it as a
coherent view and attach high hopes to it. Massa and Andersen (2000a) even quote
Giddens (1998:57-58) as remarking that “there is no doubt that ecological modernisation
links social, democratic and ecological concerns more closely than once seemed
possible.” 6
Taking a more historical approach, Hajer (1995:94-96) provides four main
reasons for the rise of ecological modernization in the 1980s: 1) the economic recession
of the late 1970s where environmental issues began to lose out against concerns over
inflation and mass unemployment, 2) changes within the environmental movement
including professionalization and a restructuring among NGO elites, 3) the emergence of
environmental problems such as acid rain or the greenhouse effect, which he interprets as
6 Albert Weale (1992), however, maintains that it is an incoherent and ultimately ill-formulated ideology
that often has to operate in rather different contexts. In his study, he compares British and German
approaches to acid rain, finding that only in the German case did there develop a synthesis between
adherents of the ‘clean air’ and the ‘economic feasibility’ coalitions. Maarten Hajer’s later study on The
Politics of Environmental Discourse also focuses on the issue of acid rain, this time comparing acid rain
campaigning in Britain and the Netherlands.