Ecological modernization

Ecological modernization is a school of thought that argues that both the state and the market can work together to protect the environment.^[1] It has gained increasing attention among scholars and policymakers in the last several decades internationally. It is an analytical approach as well as a policy strategy and environmental discourse (Hajer, 1995).

Origins and key elements

Ecological modernization emerged in the early 1980s within a group of scholars at Free University and the Social Science Research Centre in Berlin, among them

David A Sonnenfeld

(Mol and Sonnenfeld, 2000; Mol, 2001).

One basic assumption of ecological modernization relates to environmental readaptation of economic growth and industrial development. On the basis of

labour productivity and capital productivity. This includes increases in energy and resource efficiency as well as product and process innovations such as environmental management and sustainable supply chain management, clean technologies, benign substitution of hazardous substances, and product design for environment. Radical innovations in these fields can not only reduce quantities of resource turnover and emissions, but also change the quality or structure of the industrial metabolism. In the co-evolution of humans and nature, and in order to upgrade the environment's carrying capacity

, ecological modernization gives humans an active role to play, which may entail conflicts with nature conservation.

There are different understandings of the scope of ecological modernization - whether it is just about techno-industrial progress and related aspects of policy and economy, and to what extent it also includes cultural aspects (ecological modernization of mind, value orientations, attitudes, behaviour and lifestyles). Similarly, there is some pluralism as to whether ecological modernization would need to rely mainly on government, or markets and entrepreneurship, or civil society, or some sort of

world-system theory

, others don't.

Ultimately, however, there is a common understanding that ecological modernization will have to result in innovative structural change. So research is now still more focused on environmental innovations, or eco-innovations, and the interplay of various societal factors (scientific, economic, institutional, legal, political, cultural) which foster or hamper such innovations (Klemmer et al., 1999; Huber, 2004; Weber and Hemmelskamp, 2005; Olsthoorn and Wieczorek, 2006).

Ecological modernization shares a number of features with neighbouring, overlapping approaches. Among the most important are

the concept of sustainable development
the approach of industrial metabolism (Ayres and Simonis, 1994)
the concept of industrial ecology (Socolow, 1994)

Additional elements

A special topic of ecological modernization research during recent years was sustainable household, i.e. environment-oriented reshaping of lifestyles, consumption patterns, and demand-pull control of supply chains (Vergragt, 2000; OECD 2002). Some scholars of ecological modernization share an interest in industrial symbiosis, i.e. inter-site recycling that helps to reduce the consumption of resources via increasing efficiency (i.e. pollution prevention, waste reduction), typically by taking externalities from one economic production process and using them as raw material inputs for another (Christoff, 1996). Ecological modernization also relies on product life-cycle assessment and the analysis of materials and energy flows. In this context, ecological modernization promotes 'cradle to cradle' manufacturing (Braungart and McDonough, 2002), contrasted against the usual 'cradle to grave' forms of manufacturing - where waste is not re-integrated back into the production process. Another special interest in the ecological modernization literature has been the role of social movements and the emergence of civil society as a key agent of change (Fisher and Freudenburg, 2001).

As a

car corporations in Germany are required to accept back cars they manufactured once those vehicles have reached the end of their product lifespan); and in some cases as an institution that is incapable of addressing critical local, national, and global environmental problems. In the latter case, ecological modernization shares with Ulrich Beck (1999, 37-40) and others notions of the necessity of emergence of new forms of environmental governance, sometimes referred to as subpolitics or political modernization, where the environmental movement, community groups, businesses, and other stakeholders increasingly take on direct and leadership roles in stimulating environmental transformation. Political modernization of this sort requires certain supporting norms and institutions such as a free, independent, or at least critical press, basic human rights of expression, organization, and assembly, etc. New media such as the Internet

greatly facilitate this.

Criticisms

Critics argue that ecological modernization will fail to protect

sustainable growth', and in reality this is not possible because growth entails the consumption of natural and human capital at great costs to ecosystems

and societies.

Ecological modernization, its effectiveness and applicability, strengths and limitations, remains a dynamic and contentious area of environmental social science research and policy discourse in the early 21st century.

References

^ Mol, A.P.J, G Spaargaren, and D.A Sonnenfeld. “Ecological Modernization Theory: Taking Stock, Moving Forward.” In Routledge International Handbook of Social and Environmental Change, 31–46. Routledge, 2013.