ABSTRACT
Sustainable development emerged as a powerful new concept from the Brundtland Report in 1987. Concerning the focus of the environmental debate, it pulled attention away from the classical pollution control paradigm and shifted it towards global equity, the needs of developing countries and global environmental challenges. Globalisation tends to be helpful for pollution control. Globalisation can be seen as the trend of giving markets ever more steering powers on technology and societal developments. Environmental policy became a nightmarish task because everybody’s immediate concern was to survive in the unforgiving struggles of globalisation. Protesters mostly represented the losers of globalisation. They also represented in a great variety of ways public goods such as the environment, human rights, social equity, farmers’ rights, cultural diversity, or the rights of indigenous people.
