PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE EUROPE? - TU Berlin

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defining it as one of two theories for environmental policy-making in industrialized
countries (Langhelle 2000). Their distinction is that while both theories ultimately
assume that there is a postive-sum game between the environment and the economy,
ecological modernization is supposedly more explicit about the assumed
complementarity of the two. However, in such interpretations, ecological modernization,
like sustainable development, remains a political and ideological concept and is not
viewed as a distinct discursive framework (Berger, Flynn et al. 2001). As noted above, in
this study, ecological modernization is identified as the key theoretical framework that,
consciously or unconsciously depending on who uses it, has guided European
environmental policy-making since the late 1980s.
In this sense, sustainable
development is a frequently used discursive concept used within the framework of
ecological modernization, but it does not constitute an alternative framework in and of
itself. In fact, the key point I want to make is that various sustainability discourses are
being used within all of the discursive frameworks, but that the term “sustainable
development” has ultimately been most successfully appropriated and re-interpreted by
the mainstream proponents of ecological modernization. This distinction becomes more
confused when researchers such as Mol and Spaargaren insist that ecological
modernization itself is as much a distinct political program as it is a theoretical
framework. 8
Whenever it comes to political rhetoric, it is still almost always the concept
of “sustainable development,” and not the more awkward-sounding term “ecological
8 Ecological modernization does, however, have political implications. We can certainly identify distinct, or
typical, policies and political programs that are the result of an adherence to the ecological modernization
framework. This different from claiming that ecological modernization itself is mainly a political program.