ABSTRACT
In pursuing the reinvigoration of capital accumulation consequent to the collapse of economic growth in the 1970s, neo-liberal ‘restructuring’ has sought to reduce the emphasis on state regulatory techniques that constrain capital while at the same time fostering the (disciplinary) role of markets. The ‘free-market’ rhetoric of economic liberalism has thus been an important element in the way that ecological issues have come to be problematised and addressed by governments. Indeed, environmental policy analysts have given little ‘serious opposition’ to economically liberal arguments, a situation that has been facilitated by the discursive marginalisation of state regulations and ‘interventions’ that are disparagingly labelled ‘command and control’ mechanisms (Dryzek 1997: 116; Rosewarne 2002: 183; Beder 2006: 9). Unsurprisingly, the neo-liberal milieu has directly shaped the way in which the challenge of sustainability has been dealt with at the international level too. The developments in environmental policy and governance are consonant with the evolution of neo-liberalism more broadly, but are in stark contrast to the initial goals and transformative plans of environmentalism. Understanding the nature of that process is therefore critically important to the development of alternative approaches to sustainability. This chapter explores the impacts of neo-liberalism on the sustainability agenda in order to understand the relative failure of sustainable development policies in terms of ecological rather than economic parameters. The first section examines the sustainable development regime instituted at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED 1992) under the rubric of ‘liberal environmentalism’, the latter being an uneasy compromise between liberal economic norms and the principles of state sovereignty (Bernstein 2001). The second section teases out some of the emergent contradictions in this
‘compromise’ and argues that recent developments aimed at their ‘resolution’ merely propel environmental governance more rapidly towards a privatised ‘environmental neo-liberalism’.
