What is environmental integration?
Although environmental integration lies at the heart of the environmental challenge, the concept itself is not commonly used. In the prevailing environmental discourse, people usually refer to the need for environmental protection, or for (stronger) environmental policies or regulations. My aim here is to clarify what I mean by environmental integration. Given the paucity of comprehensive, theory-based studies in this field, there is a need, first of all, to reflect on the “essence” of environmental integration and to establish benchmarks. Clarifying environmental integration is not just about providing definitions, though conceptual clarification is an important step in building knowledge and understanding. It is also about identifying the main tasks and challenges inherent to the idea of environmental integration.
It is perhaps superfluous to point out that environmental integration does not refer to the environment itself, but rather to the challenge humans face. In broad terms, it refers to the need for humans to increase their environmental awareness and act on it to minimise their environmental impact. The need stems from the ecologically unspecialised nature of human beings and the fact that, unlike other species, humans do not naturally adapt to their environment but instead intervene in and change it to suit their own needs and wants. Disregarding and often unaware of their connections to and dependence on ecosystems, they collectively act in ways that can bring about the collapse of the environmental basis on which their well-being, civilisation, and even existence depend.[1] Consequently, to prevent and mitigate environmental damage, humans, individually and collectively, need to find their proper place in the environment, from the local to the global level. The question is what “proper” means in this context.
To integrate, in common terms, means to “combine (parts) into a whole” or to “complete (an imperfect thing) by the addition of parts”.[2] In the context described above, environmental integration means that humans need to add an environmental component or dimension to their knowledge and awareness, actions and behaviour, and to the social institutions that guide them. Moreover, as they add this component, individually and collectively, in different contexts and ways, they do not necessarily combine into a whole. Individuals, groups and societies develop different, often conflicting, views on the environment and how it should be considered in their actions and behaviour. How people interact with and intervene in the environment differs widely, especially in modern, pluralist societies. Consequently, environmental integration involves two challenges: integrating an environmental dimension (or component) into all spheres of human thinking and action that potentially impact the environment, and ensuring coherence and consistency across these efforts.
Both challenges can be seen as the two sides of the same coin or as two dimensions of environmental integration, which I refer to as external and internal. Integrating environmental considerations assumes some idea of what needs to be considered and integrated (from the “outside”, hence “external”). And to ensure consistency across integration efforts, there must be a common, coherent basis for integration (internal integration). In other words, environmental integration presumes the existence of a common framework for guiding integration efforts, but is incomplete as long as there are areas of human activity (that impact the environment) that have not been incorporated into that framework. In more graphic terms, external integration adds pieces to the environmental integration puzzle, while internal integration provides the picture used to guide putting the pieces together and identifying which are still missing.
As noted on the environmental challenge page, one way to make this challenge more manageable is to examine the different, yet interconnected, dimensions of what we understand by management. Broadly speaking, management refers to how humans interact with their environment. This is based on three elements or aspects, labelled the cognitive, policy (or practical), and institutional dimensions or domains. The cognitive domain relates to the cognitive frameworks on which management is based, the policy domain to the sphere of collective decision-making and action, and the institutional domain comprises rules and organisations. Each dimension is an integral part of all management, as it requires some kind of knowledge basis (including assumptions), some decisions (about what to do and how to do it) and is guided by some (formal or informal) rules that guide what should or must be done (or not done). The three dimensions, or domains, are interrelated and influence one another. Cognitive frameworks provide a basis for collective action and for institutions or institutional change. Policies can be aimed at maintaining or changing cognitive frameworks and/or institutions. And institutions can provide a basis for entrenching cognitive frameworks and policies for the long term and may stand in the way of cognitive and policy change.
However, at a collective level, there is not necessarily consistency within and between the three management domains: within the cognitive domain, a diversity of views exists, even though some may dominate; in the policy domain, a wide range of policies co-exists that are likely to contain conflicting or even incompatible goals, objectives and courses of action; similarly, within the institutional sphere, rules and organisations do not necessarily add up and may serve different purposes, many of which have been inherited from the past. As a result, prevailing cognitive frameworks, policies, and institutions may not be mutually supportive but contain differences and tensions that are the subject of conflict, political struggle, and potential change. This may result in changes in one domain but not necessarily in the other two domains, possibly creating new tensions and conflicts. For instance, governments may adopt a policy to reduce climate change emissions, at the same time, not make any changes to the institutions (rules and organisations) that contribute to increases in emissions, such as those laid down in the mandates of government departments that promote economic growth, the building of new motorways, or the expansion of the dairy industry. Moreover, within the policy domain, governments may increase inconsistency and conflict between policy areas, for instance, by spending more on motorways.
As these examples indicate, there is considerable scope for conflict within and between these three management domains. But a collective, comprehensive, and enduring response to environmental issues requires integrating at least compatible, ideally mutually supportive, environmental components across each domain. Doing so requires two things: first, agreement and clarity on what needs to be integrated. This assumes the existence of, or the development of, an overarching view of what is needed to protect or enhance the environment. The second concerns making changes across the various domains to accommodate these requirements. As noted above, these two requirements constitute the internal and external dimensions of environmental integration. The internal dimension relates to the need for guidance, based on a comprehensive environmental view of what environmental principles, imperatives, goals, or rules or ‘considerations’ need to be integrated, whereas the external dimension relates to how these are to be integrated into what are commonly considered non-environmental areas of thinking, behaviour and action, and non-environmental institutions.
Although there are (many) different and often conflicting views on the environment, the internal dimension of environmental integration implies the creation of some degree of collective agreement about what is required to protect the environment. While full agreement on this front may never be reached, environmental integration requires (greater) recognition of the interconnectedness of the environment and the links between environmental problems. Otherwise, environmental problems will continue to be addressed (if at all) on a one-by-one basis, and to little effect, as has been the experience thus far. Enduring progress is unlikely if environmental integration efforts are not guided by a broad vision of the environmental challenge and what is required to address it, even if knowledge on that front is imperfect and there is no full agreement. Without such a vision, there is no basis for advancing coherence and avoiding counterproductive efforts in greening non-environmental cognitive frameworks, policies, and institutions. Without internal integration, external integration efforts are unlikely to add up to much, at best. Without external integration, internal integration will be of little if any consequence. Both are needed and are essentially two sides of the same coin.
The environmental integration matrix
Having identified three management domains and two dimensions of environmental integration, we can distinguish six areas in which environmental integration needs to occur in mutually supportive or at least compatible ways. Together, these six areas or sub-challenges of environmental integration constitute what I refer to as the environmental integration matrix, presented in the table below. For each area, particular foci for advancing environmental integration can be identified.
Environmental integration matrix
| Domain Dimension | Cognitive domain | Policy domain | Institutional domain |
Internal dimension | Overarching cognitive framework: cognitive capacity and a collective vision | Green planning (including implementation) | Strong and enduring overarching environmental institutions |
External dimension | Greening of non-environmental cognitive frameworks: economic thinking and thinking about the role of science and technology | Greening of non-environmental policies: economic, energy, transport, agriculture, and urban development | Greening of non-environmental institutions: greening of government, economic and sectoral institutions |
Environmental integration in each of these areas raises different questions, issues, and obstacles. However, all six sub-challenges are logically and practically interconnected, implying that none of them can be ignored. Rather, as noted above, they must be addressed together in complementary, mutually supportive, or at least compatible ways. Yet, in practice, as discussed on the environmental performance page, governments’ environmental integration efforts have often been skewed towards one or two of these sub-challenges, thereby limiting their effectiveness and creating new frictions and tensions. If governments are to address the environmental challenge more effectively, they must strengthen their capacity and efforts to address all six sub-challenges in a concerted way.
Within each area, a variety of means or tools have been developed to promote environmental integration. leading to differences in approaches. The aim here is not to elaborate on the various means or tools used to pursue environmental integration. I have done so elsewhere.[3] The effectiveness of all these means and tools has been limited, in part because each tool has its limitations and/or because they have been applied in isolation rather than in a coherent manner, and in part because they have been deliberately designed and implemented to have limited effectiveness, influenced by the political-institutional context in which they have been developed and introduced.
In the following sections, I will discuss some of the issues in each of these six areas or sub-challenges of environmental integration.
Overarching cognitive environmental framework: knowledge and a collective vision
Approaching the environmental challenge more comprehensively begins with developing an overarching cognitive framework comprising two main elements: cognitive capacity and a collective vision.
Cognitive capacity relates to the need to understand how the environment ‘works’ and how humans impact it. Given the complex and interconnected nature of the environment, and the multiple and interconnected sources of human impact, determining the overall impact of humans on the environment, and whether or to what extent this impact adversely affects the complex ecological basis on which life (including humans) and societies depend, requires the development of comprehensive and reliable knowledge and understanding. This need applies not just to a country’s domestic environment, but also to the interactions with the global environment.[4]
Throughout history, (indigenous) societies developed local knowledge of their environments and their impacts through experience and observation. While local knowledge remains invaluable (as environmental impacts often manifest themselves locally), in modern societies and highly modified, especially urban, environments, with far more people and numerous and diverse activities and technologies that impact the environment, often far beyond the local environment, there is a need for developing a much more extensive knowledge basis. In many countries, this has been recognised, as reflected in the adoption of state-of-the-environment reporting and the creation of agencies responsible for collecting data and developing environmental knowledge and understanding. Increasingly, this has also become a matter of international concern, given the transboundary and global nature of many environmental issues, as demonstrated, among others, by the establishment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Science and scientists play a crucial role in developing knowledge and understanding of the environment and its human impacts. Without scientific research, humans and societies may remain largely unaware of many of the environmental impacts of their actions, practices, and technologies and/or develop no good understanding of the proximate sources or causes of environmental problems. This has been illustrated from the early days when environmental concerns entered the public and political agendas, for instance, with the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. But it also applies to the discovery of the hole in the ozone layer, the growing concerns about climate change, the effects of many pollutants on humans and ecosystems, and numerous other environmental issues. Based on scientific analyses and models, we can identify planetary boundaries for a range of crucial biophysical systems and processes that have been or are at risk of being crossed by human interventions.[5] Science and scientists, therefore, often function as crucial allies in bringing environmental problems to light and in providing environmental advocates with a solid knowledge basis for their concerns and arguments.[6]
However, the contributions of science to developing a comprehensive and integrated understanding of environmental problems are limited. Much research on environmental issues, like much of science, is focused on particular problems or aspects of the environment, such as climate change or biodiversity decline. However important the latter issues are, they can and should be seen as symptoms of the broader environmental challenge with deeper sources and causes that are often ignored by scientists. All too often, scientific analyses of environmental issues stop at the proximate sources or causes, such as greenhouse gas emissions, which then serve as the basis for identifying solutions to the problem(s). The political, economic, social, philosophical, and ethical aspects or causes of the environmental challenge are often ignored. This is understandable given the scientific worldview, the reductionist nature of the scientific approach and methods, and the way scientists have been trained. But it means that science, on its own, cannot provide an overarching cognitive framework for understanding the environmental challenge.
This issue also relates to the second focus of developing an overarching cognitive framework to guide environmental integration: the development of a collective vision.[7] On its own, even the most reliable knowledge and understanding of the biophysical environment and the human impacts thereon cannot tell us how much value we should assign to environmental protection, and what we should or must do to protect the environment. Decisions on such questions are inherently value-laden and political. The answers given to these questions depend on socio-cultural and political-ideological perspectives and are influenced by people’s interests and positions in society. Even among environmental philosophers and advocates, there is a wide range of views on how humans should interact with the environment, from deep ecological or ecocentric perspectives to more pragmatic, human-centred ones.[8] In highly pluralistic societies, characterised by a high diversity of worldviews, many of which hardly give any (explicit) recognition to the environment or recognise its importance, reaching collective agreement on such questions arguably poses an even bigger challenge than creating a high level of scientific agreement on how the environment works and the human impacts thereon. Yet, if we accept that environmental integration is a collective challenge and that the attitudes, behaviour, and practices of even relatively small groups of people can have big consequences for a society (or the world) as a whole, we cannot allow the diversity of views and interests to be used as an excuse for collective paralysis. Somehow, a collective vision that informs and guides the behaviour and practices of all people and organisations must be created if environmental integration is to be pursued in complementary ways.
That this is not impossible is demonstrated by the fact that, in many countries, governments have adopted the idea of sustainability or sustainable development as an overarching cognitive framework that, at least notionally, assigns an important status to environmental values and that is often used as a basis for integrating such values into non-environmental frameworks, policies and institutions. Sustainability, as a principle, has also been adopted by many businesses and societal organisations, even to the point that it can be said to have become the dominant environmental discourse at the local, national, and global levels and possibly already the prototype for a new cognitive paradigm.[9]
However, sustainability and sustainable development have been interpreted in many different, often self-serving ways, leading to much debate over their usefulness and how these concepts should be understood.[10] While many of the critiques are valid, it would be unwise, even if this were possible, to discard these concepts. For one, they are by now well and truly entrenched in public discourse, alongside other normative concepts like democracy, liberty and justice, which cannot simply be recalled or suppressed. Second, there is scope to translate these concepts into more specific and even quantifiable terms, especially regarding the biophysical boundaries of what can be considered ecologically sustainable, as exemplified by the case of climate change, where thresholds for emissions have been specified to avoid global warming from reaching dangerous levels. As noted above, it is possible to determine (even if roughly and tentatively) the planetary boundaries for a range of crucial biophysical systems and processes.[11] Similarly, there is potential to quantify resources and the extent to which they are exploited and consumed, with implications for their long-term availability, and to examine claims to resources by different groups and countries, based on the notions of environmental space and material flows.[12] The concept of the ecological footprint can help make explicit the extent to which human activities and resource consumption exceed the limits of what can plausibly be considered biophysically or ecologically sustainable, while also revealing inequalities in resource claims.[13] Such analyses, although science-based and quantitative, can also provide a basis for raising normative issues, including equity, about resource consumption and can be incorporated into broader views of what constitutes a desirable or good society (and world).[14] Ultimately, it is the combination of a collective vision that provides normative guidance and the reliability of its empirical knowledge basis that determines the potential effectiveness of an overarching cognitive framework.
In this context, it must be recognised that even a sustainable and safe world is not necessarily socially, economically, or politically desirable. Even if ecosystems continue to operate within ecological boundaries, pollution is minimised, urban/modified environments do not cause physical harm to people and are aesthetically pleasing, and resources are being used sustainably, this does not mean that human well-being, justice, equality, and the many other things (including public goods) that make for a ‘good society’ will have been achieved. A sustainable society may co-exist with high inequality, unemployment, discrimination, low job satisfaction, political oppression, and many other social, economic, and political ills. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, inhabited by seemingly happy people, could be environmentally sustainable, but it remains nonetheless a dystopian nightmare. Hence, an overarching view of a sustainable society needs to be incorporated into a vision of what constitutes a good or desirable society as determined by its citizens.
The greening of non-environmental cognitive frameworks
As noted in the preceding section, in modern societies, developing a collective societal vision that recognises the importance of the environment poses a major challenge, given the diversity of socio-cultural and political-ideological perspectives that incorporate different, and often conflicting, environmental perspectives.
Here, I will briefly elaborate on the rationale for efforts to green non-environmental cognitive frameworks. One might take the view that changing socio-cultural and political-ideological perspectives to integrate environmental concerns may be a near-impossible task, not one for governments to undertake. Rather, some may argue, governments must treat the diversity of socio-cultural and political-ideological perspectives in their societies as a given and, as much as possible, accommodate these different views in their decisions and policies. This is, arguably, indeed the stance that most governments have taken. They have done little, if anything, to change the views, ideologies, and management philosophies or frameworks of the ‘non-environmental’ sectors to integrate environmental concerns, leaving this to businesses, groups, and individuals themselves. But this has been another main reason why the collective efforts of governments and societies aimed at environmental protection have failed. If a collective vision of what is deemed a sustainable and desirable society (as discussed in the preceding section) is to be taken seriously, it must be incorporated into the views or cognitive frameworks that govern or guide the behaviour, actions, and practices of individuals and groups across society.
Arguably, most, if not all, human behaviour and practices have some environmental impact. Humans cannot avoid using some natural resources to meet their needs, but the nature and scale of these impacts vary depending on a range of factors, including population size, which resources are used and in what amounts, and the type of technology used for exploitation, production, distribution, and consumption.[15] But, it can be argued that by far most environmental problems and pressures find their sources in what could be referred to as the economic sphere, which comprises production, distribution and consumption activities (including industry, agriculture, energy, transport), and in which scale and the type of technology used make a big difference. Nonetheless, other areas of human activity also have significant environmental impacts, such as urban settlement (development and planning) and defence and security. The relative importance of these non-environmental sectors and their environmental impacts varies from country to country. But to identify the proximate (more immediate) sources of environmental pressure and make a start on greening them by integrating environmental concerns or imperatives, looking at these sectors is useful.
As noted above, many, if not most, environmental impacts originate in the economic sphere. This is understandable as it is through this sphere that humans meet (most of) their material needs, which inevitably involves using resources. Traditionally, which and how many resources were used, and how, was circumscribed by the local or regional (biophysical) environment as well as by the cultural frameworks and technology developed by a group, tribe, or society, with relatively little trade with outsiders. These societies did not have or recognise a separate economic sphere, and the way they used resources (their economic activity) was embedded in the beliefs, culture, values, and norms of society. By contrast, in modern societies, economic activity has been largely disembedded from societies and has progressively been guided by economic thinking, ideas, ideology, and theories, a sphere or domain that has become increasingly professionalised and the basis for how governments manage the economy. These ideas influence or shape government economic policy and (economic) institutions.
Which economic ideas, ideologies, and theories guide government economic policy-making and institution formation is largely a matter of politics and political economy. What is important to note here is that the cognitive economic frameworks that have guided governments (and business sectors) have, by and large, ignored the environment beyond its role as a pool of (virtually infinite) resources and a sink for waste generated by economic activity. By implication, dominant economic ideology and theory have been based on the assumption of the possibility (and desirability) of infinite economic growth. These ideas have also underlain and informed government policies for all the sectors of activity mentioned above. Increasingly, they have also influenced government policies on science and technology. Although each of these sectors has its own rationale for existence, the policies and institutions in each sector are largely circumscribed and influenced by the broader cognitive economic framework (or paradigm) that guides governments and businesses.
Hence, the importance of greening this economic paradigm and way of thinking. However, most governments have barely begun to recognise this need (sub-challenge), let alone take it seriously. Although many governments talk about greening the economy, green economics, and ‘green growth’, they continue to accept and operate within the dominant capitalist (neo-liberal) economic paradigm, which, I argue on a different page, is fundamentally incompatible with meaningful and long-term environmental protection. As most sectors of economic activity also operate within this paradigm, moves towards greening have also been quite limited, reflecting their main underlying rationales. Although more recently, many governments have indicated their commitment to greening the energy, transport, industry, agriculture, and urban and spatial development sectors, among others, these efforts are largely confined to technological and managerial ‘solutions’ that, at best, mitigate the environmental impacts of these sectors. But they do not question the underlying rationales of these sectors, nor the ideology, theories and assumptions on which the economic and sectoral institutions and policies (including science and technology) are based.
As governments and mainstream economists have shown little interest in this area, it has mostly fallen to ‘green’ economists to develop ideas and proposals. Boulding, Mishan, and Daly were among the first economists to point out the failings of mainstream economic theory to give proper consideration to environmental concerns.[16] One of the fundamental shortcomings of the prevailing economic paradigm that Daly pointed out is that it treats the environment as a subsystem of the economic system, whereas, in reality, the economy is only a subset of the ecosystem.[17] This leads to the environment being seen as an infinite source of natural resources and dumping ground for waste rather than as a biophysical system with interactions and processes that need to be recognised and respected if environmental and resource conditions are to remain conducive to the flourishing of life, including human life and societies. Ecological economics, which aims to integrate biophysical reality and ecological considerations into the core of economic thinking and theory, has emerged as an important alternative school of economics.[18] Although the number of economists advocating a major change in economic thinking (also for environmental reasons) has been growing, they have yet to bring about a shift in the dominant economic paradigm under which both governments and businesses operate. In part, this may be attributed to the considerable diversity and disagreement among alternative economic thinkers.[19] But a more important reason for governments’ failure to develop and adopt a cognitive economic framework grounded in environmental fundamentals lies in the political-economic realm, which is discussed on a separate page.
Thus, the greening of the cognitive frameworks that influence and shape government policies and institutions in the areas of human activity that have the most impact on the environment, the realm of economics, including all its different sectors, as well as science and technology and urban and spatial development, remains a largely unmet challenge.
Overarching environmental policy
Not surprisingly, given the difficulties of constructing an overarching cognitive framework that can serve as a basis for environmental policy integration, adopting a comprehensive policy that converts that framework into government policy is also a major challenge. The lack of agreement on what constitutes a ‘good society’ or even a good environment has a corollary in the messy and conflict-ridden world of politics and policy.
Inherent to the notion of policy is the assumption that people, individually and collectively, have certain ideas about what they want to achieve in the future (the intentional component). Such ideas (goals) can be broad and vague or very specific. They are not necessarily mutually complementary but may conflict with each other, even at the individual level (sometimes we have to choose). Goals are usually assigned different degrees of importance and priority. As public policy theorists have argued, government policy development seldom results from a rational (comprehensive) approach. Given the diversity of interests, values and goals associated with most, if not all, issues, it is not surprising that policies are usually developed in a fragmented, incremental, and often incoherent and inconsistent manner, depending on the particular constellation of political forces operative in different issues, policy areas, and contexts. Apart from the political obstacles to comprehensive policy development, it also faces informational and theoretical-analytical requirements that are difficult to meet. Such policies are very demanding in terms of the amount of data and information needed, and they assume knowledge about connections and interactions between variables that may not exist and that involve advanced, but not necessarily realistic, modelling. Moreover, there is concern that, given the diversity of values and interests in the political arena, comprehensive policy almost inevitably leads to the disregard or even suppression of that diversity and, hence, is likely to be undemocratic. Given these objections and obstacles, the rational model of policy development has been dismissed as unrealistic and even undesirable by various public policy theorists, largely because of the same objections raised above regarding the development and adoption of an overarching cognitive framework.[20]
Yet, there are good grounds for arguing that environmental policy integration can be guided by an overarching, comprehensive policy that assigns a crucial role to environmental considerations, and that it should not be dismissed a priori as unrealistic or even impossible, for three main reasons. First, there are different views on what a rational (comprehensive) approach to policy development entails. Second, the extent to which comprehensive policy development is possible or difficult may vary across types of political systems and institutions. Third, comprehensive policy development that assigns an important place to environmental considerations has, at least to some extent, already been a practice in many countries, though with variable degrees of success and continuity.
First, it can be argued that the rational-comprehensive model of policy development, as portrayed by some policy analysts, such as Herbert Simon [21], is a straw man or an ideal easy to knock down. In practice, policies can and are being developed with varying degrees of comprehensiveness, depending on the nature of the issue(s) being addressed (broad or specific), the extent to which issues or policy areas are being linked (for instance, straddling economic policy and other policy areas), and the importance assigned to certain goals or principles (such as user-pays or the devolution of responsibilities to lower levels of government or the market). In many cases, there are no a priori theoretical reasons why policies cannot be developed in a less fragmented and ad hoc manner, for instance, by expanding their information basis and analytical frameworks, by changing decision rules to require consultation with or input from a wider range of parties, and/or by broadening the mandate of agencies responsible for policy development.[22]
Second, the extent to which (more) comprehensive policy development is possible and practised also depends on the political system, political culture, and the traditional policy style or tradition in a polity. Obviously, in political systems where planning was, or has been, a common or even predominant tool in policy development, such as in the previously ‘really existing’ socialist countries and in many Western European countries until the 1980s, comprehensive policy development was practised. Even though assessments of the effectiveness of such policies may differ, what is possible and realistic depends to a large degree on the existing political institutions and the prevailing views on the role of government.[23]
Third, related to the discussion of the notion of sustainability above, many countries already have experience developing comprehensive policies that assign an important, if not central, role to environmental considerations. These policies came with a variety of labels, such as Sustainable Development Strategies and National Environmental Policy Plans, collectively referred to as green planning. Following the publication of the Brundtland report,[24] many governments adopted such policies, plans, or strategies. It even became a norm or expectation following the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in 1991, which, among the recommendations in Agenda 21, called upon governments to adopt such plans. These green planning efforts varied considerably in scope, specificity and the extent to which they received practical follow-up, notably concerning the greening of non-environmental policies and practices.[25] Some countries, notably the Netherlands, were considered leaders in this field.[26] But it must be admitted that most of these efforts have been one-off symbolic exercises, and that the more serious commitments in this area have floundered in the 1990s under the growing influence of neo-liberal ideology on governments.[27]
That a comprehensive approach to policy is possible is also illustrated by how neoliberal ideology and principles have effectively functioned as a basis for policy integration, influencing and shaping with a remarkable degree of consistency a wide range of policy areas, including health, education, housing, social welfare, urban development, and environmental policies (for instance, leading to the introduction of emissions trading). It is important to note that even if such policy changes were not presented or included in a comprehensive plan (as planning is a dirty word in neoliberal ideology), they effectively constituted a rational, comprehensive policy approach. If environmental principles had been substituted for neoliberal principles, this would have gone a long way towards environmental integration. Neoliberal ideology and principles have effectively been integrated into and captured all three domains of management: cognitive, policy, and institutional.
The question, then, is not so much whether governments can adopt a more or less comprehensive policy approach, but rather which overarching policy intentions, principles, and goals they choose as their dominant or guiding policy, which effectively serves as a basis for policy integration. The experience with green planning demonstrates that governments can adopt a comprehensive environmental policy as a basis for environmental integration, even though, in most countries, these efforts have not been pursued and implemented with much, if any, vigour, were overshadowed by economic goals, and ultimately fizzled out. But this does not mean that, at some stage, the idea and practice of green planning could not make a comeback. Ultimately, whether this happens is a matter of politics.
The greening of non-environmental policies
As discussed above, there is growing recognition that addressing environmental problems effectively requires greening commonly regarded non-environmental policy areas or sectors, including energy, transport, industry, and agriculture. Many environmental pressures and problems find their immediate sources or drivers in these sectors. But as I have pointed out above, what is happening in these sectors is largely circumscribed by broader economic considerations and imperatives, and is influenced by economic policies. Hence, the greening of economic policy (based on a green economic theory or framework) has also been a subject of debate and some, albeit very limited, government efforts. In this section, I will briefly discuss the rationales for greening economic, energy, transport, and agricultural policies, as well as the weak government efforts in these areas.
That prevailing economic theory largely ignores the realities of the biophysical environment has already been noted above. The environment is simply treated as a pool of resources and a sink, not as a system on which all life depends. This is reflected in the economic policies of governments and the economic decisions, practices and behaviour of most producers and consumers. Continuous economic growth is the overriding goal of the economic policies of most, if not all, governments,[28] promising ever higher standards of living and full employment while providing also (tax) revenue that enables government spending on public goods like health, education, infrastructure, and environmental protection. When economic growth stagnates or the economy shrinks, as measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP), governments are usually held responsible and in trouble politically. Restoring economic growth then becomes an even greater priority, as reflected during the Covid-19 pandemic, which, in many countries, led to the largest economic contraction since the 1930s.
However, as noted already, economic growth is also regarded as one of the most important drivers of environmental pressures, problems, and degradation, while the claim that it leads to ever-rising human and societal well-being has come into doubt.[29] Economic growth is being held responsible for the growing scarcity of non-renewable natural resources, unsustainable pressure on renewable resources, rising levels of energy use and GHG emissions, many forms of pollution and ill-health linked to industrialisation, technology, the destruction of ecosystems and the decline of biodiversity, increasing waste streams, fostering unhealthy materialism and the erosion of ‘social capital’, and many other ills of modern societies.[30]
It has long been argued that, given environmental limits, infinite economic growth is physically impossible.[31] In the 1970s, the environmental debate was often cast as environmental protection versus economic growth. However, from around the mid-1970s, the idea that economic growth and environmental protection can be made compatible started to receive more support.[32] This became the dominant view after the publication of the Brundtland Report, which put forward an interpretation of sustainable development that implied environmental limits were flexible and that, with technological innovation and better management, economic growth could continue within them.[33] Such optimism was supported by a raft of further studies, pointing to the potential for higher levels of resource efficiency and developments towards the greening of production and consumption systems (‘ecological modernisation’),[34] while the contention that the environment was getting worse was also questioned.[35]
Many governments jumped on this bandwagon and adopted the notion of ‘green growth’, continuing their commitment to economic growth whilst claiming that the environmental effects thereof could and would be ‘decoupled’ from increases in GDP. Economic policies did not change fundamentally and continued to be pursued based on the neoliberal ideology and principles that most governments adopted during the 1980s and 1990s. To the extent that environmental problems were considered, they were translated into monetary values, ‘natural capital’, quantified and addressed by the introduction of (modest) green taxes and/or markets in environmental commodities (such as carbon, water, and pollution rights). These policies amounted to a form of reverse environmental integration, implying the economisation and monetisation of the environment, which could then be managed within the prevailing economic frameworks, rather than the greening of economic thinking and policies. This shift has been supported by a growing body of environmental and resource economics, which, unlike ecological economics, does not take biophysical reality as its basis but instead relies primarily on assigning monetary values to environmental commodities.[36]
The limitations and shortcomings of the main measure of value produced by economic activity, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), have long been recognised, and a variety of other ways of measuring that value and changes to human and environmental well-being have been proposed.[37] However, although some countries have introduced a form of green, resource, or well-being accounting, these have had no impact on the economic policies governments pursue, which continue to be driven by a commitment to economic growth and neoliberal prescriptions.[38] Hence, although these ideas offer a different way of thinking about economics, they have thus far had little, if any, impact on governments’ policies and/or businesses’ decisions and practices.
As mentioned before, the need for policy-external environmental integration also extends to a range of other policy areas, including industry, energy, transport, and agriculture, which harbour many of the immediate sources of environmental pressure and problems. Given the more immediate and often visible or noticeable nature of the problems generated by these sectors, they have become a much greater focus of demands for greening than economic policy. The higher profile of greening efforts in some of these sectors (notably energy and transport) can be attributed to the mounting concern about climate change, as well as to their mostly technological nature, which is tangible and speaks to people’s imagination. They fit in well with the paradigm of technological progress and the creation of ‘better’ societies. But perhaps the most important reason these have become the focus of attention for greening the economy is that they are compatible with the dominant economic paradigm and are seen as, and promoted as, new areas for significant ‘green’ economic growth.
However, it is highly questionable whether societies can grow their way out of the environmental crisis through the development and large-scale adoption of new technologies, including so-called renewable energy technologies, electric cars, and hydrogen-fuelled aeroplanes. For a start, the main rationale for adopting these technologies is the need to reduce CO2 emissions, the main contributor to climate change. However, climate change is just one (very important) environmental problem, and CO2 emissions are only one proximate cause of it. This approach fails to place the problem of energy use and policy in the wider context of the environmental challenge and its connections with many other environmental issues and their common, underlying drivers and causes. Some critics have cast doubt on the green credentials of renewable energy technologies and some of their advocates.[39] Even if, on balance, the lifecycle savings in greenhouse gas emissions associated with these assets may be positive, this is no reason to ignore their many other significant environmental effects.[40]
But defining the greening of energy use and policy solely in terms of a need to shift to renewable energy sources becomes even more problematic if it is promoted as a means of boosting economic growth, an argument often put forward by advocates of ‘Green New Deals’. The shift has indeed the potential to create many new jobs, which is no doubt a positive argument, especially in times of economic decline or crisis. It also offers new investment and profit-making opportunities for capital. But if this shift amounts to an increase in material production and consumption (‘throughput’), it will not lead to an overall reduction of environmental pressures; on the contrary. There is a strong possibility that the production of ‘environmentally friendly’ energy will trigger a rebound effect, increasing energy consumption, as it is seen as no longer problematic despite its ecological and material implications. Moreover, what needs to be considered is the amount of energy required to produce a unit of usable energy (the energy return on energy invested, or EROEI). As fossil fuels are energy-dense and pack a lot of energy in a small volume, their EROEI is very high, though it has declined over time as the more easily accessible fields have been exploited first. And although the EROEI of renewable resources varies depending on the resource involved, it is not as high as that of fossil fuels in the past. This means that, if energy demand were to keep rising, ever higher investments in renewables will be required, with concomitant increases in resource exploitation for their production, and the environmental effects thereof.[41]
To genuinely promote green energy use and policy, therefore, requires considering the full spectrum of its environmental effects, as well as recognising environmental limits or boundaries. Given the severe environmental degradation already occurring worldwide, there is a need to reduce total energy consumption, particularly in high-income (high-consumption) countries. Also, while there is scope for significantly increasing energy efficiency, the gains will steadily decline after the “low-hanging fruit has been picked” and will be negated if economic growth is allowed to continue. Ultimately, to put a halt to, let alone reverse, energy consumption, will almost inevitably require the imposition of a quota system that limits the amount of energy that can be consumed.[42] Admittedly, such a policy seems unlikely to be adopted in, and most probably is incompatible with, the prevailing political-economic systems.
Similar assessments can be made of efforts to green the transport sector and other sectors that rely primarily on technological innovation to mitigate or reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Most, if not all, of these efforts are based on a narrow definition of the problem and do not question the rationales underlying sector policies. They continue to assume that continued expansion and growth are both feasible and desirable. For instance, in the transport sector, the dominance of private transport (and car ownership) is taken for granted and continues to be held up as desirable. Fuelled by advertising, car ownership has become associated with social status and the idea of individual freedom.[43] It has become an important aspiration and sign of material achievement, driving the rapid expansion of passenger car production worldwide, which rose from less than 10 million per year in the 1950s to more than 70 million in 2014, while the world’s light vehicle fleet passed the one billion mark in 2012.[44] At the same time, largely driven by changes in transport policies, there has been a decline in public transport and a shift in the transportation of goods from rail to road, further contributing to the sector’s emissions and other environmental impacts.[45] One does not have to be a genius to figure out that continuing to produce 70 million or more cars each year, even if they are electric, will further increase the already enormous environmental pressures and destruction, even if, on balance, these cars would generate lower CO2 emissions than their fossil-fuelled equivalents.
The story is arguably even less encouraging in agriculture, which has been described as “the single largest threat to biodiversity and ecosystem functions of any single human activity on the planet”.[46] Agriculture accounts for 40 per cent of total land use [47] and is responsible for about 69 per cent of global freshwater withdrawals.[48] Agriculture is also a major source of water, soil, and air pollution, as well as of methane and nitrous oxide emissions.[49] Agricultural practices have also come under scrutiny for their adverse effects on the health and well-being of farm animals. Altogether, agriculture has become a major source of environmental pressure in many countries and internationally.
As in the transport sector, policy integration efforts in agriculture are not guided by a clear framework or interpretation of what constitutes greening. Although some governments have adopted sustainable agriculture as a goal, this notion is as open to interpretation as the concept of sustainability. Another concept that is sometimes used, ‘multifunctional’ agriculture, provides possibly even less guidance on how agriculture can or should integrate environmental concerns, beyond implying that these should be considered alongside economic and social imperatives. Although countries and cultures differ in the prevailing views on the (desirable) role, values, and functions of agriculture, and the extent to which natural values and the protection of landscapes, rural settlements and communities are seen as important,[50] most governments continue to support the industrial model of agriculture that has been responsible for large-scale environmental destruction around the world.
To conclude, while it is imperative to green all policy sectors and areas with major environmental impacts, government efforts on this front have been largely weak and ineffective. In contrast, broader economic policies have remained virtually unchanged and continue to ignore or deny the reality of environmental limits. Hence, policy-external environmental integration remains a daunting sub-challenge. To increase the effectiveness of these efforts, they need to be based on a clear overarching policy framework (a ‘green plan’) that translates environmental (sustainability) imperatives into a coherent set of specific policy goals for all major policy sectors and areas. Moreover, they must be adequately supported in the institutional realm.
Overarching environmental institutions
As discussed in the preceding section, environmental integration requires greening policies in non-environmental areas that drive many environmental pressures and problems. But the effectiveness of environmental policy integration, within and across sectors, depends in large part on whether and how such efforts are backed up by rules and organisations (institutions).
Environmental integration requires the creation or amendment of institutions that give formal status and power (“teeth”) to the environmental principles and/or imperatives that have been identified in the overarching cognitive framework, and that are, through more or less comprehensive policy (green planning), integrated into and across all policy areas that (potentially) significantly affect the environment. Institutional-internal environmental integration refers to the creation of overarching environmental institutions that support environmental integration across the cognitive and policy spheres and guide the greening of non-environmental institutions.
As the experience of green planning in many countries makes clear, what governments do to advance environmental integration is often half-hearted, non-committal, and short-lived. If a society (and the world as a whole) wants to ensure that environmental integration is pursued seriously and in a more enduring fashion, it will need to create a supportive institutional framework that makes it a formal and continuous requirement of the highest order. If environmental considerations are to be taken seriously and enduringly in the behaviour and practices of individuals and organisations, they need to be institutionalised, for instance, in the form of laws and regulations, backed up by sanctions. Moreover, as many existing rules and organisations allow, encourage, or prescribe behaviour and practices that (potentially) have significant adverse environmental effects, such institutions need to be changed to address (mitigate or ideally eliminate) such behaviour and practices.
Before the 1970s, in many countries, organisations, rules and regulations were already in existence for the management and protection of a range of resources (notably forests, land, and water), for instance, to protect some species that were threatened with extinction or to promote hygienic conditions and human health by the provision of sanitary services. But it was only in the early 1970s that, in many countries, organisations and rules were created or amended specifically to protect the environment. Over time, governments introduced a wide range of institutional changes aimed at protecting the environment, including environmental legislation, the creation of environmental ministries or departments and/or other agencies with environmental mandates, and advisory bodies such as Sustainable Development Councils. Many governments also introduced environmental rights and/or responsibilities, often laid down in their constitutions.[51] While variable in efficacy, many governments around the world can be said to have considerably strengthened their country’s institutional capacity to address environmental issues and/or to advance sustainable development.[52] These complexes of environmental rules and organisations have become so extensive that they are sometimes referred to as the ‘environmental state’.[53]
The broad rationale for building state environmental capacity is that the interconnectedness of environmental problems requires a more comprehensive and integrated approach, and that the state is the main, or even the only, institution capable of doing so collectively and legitimately. However, notwithstanding the changes referred to above, the institutional facilitation of such an approach remains weak and problematic almost everywhere. In many countries, environmental agencies have been saddled with hands-on responsibility for specific environmental problems rather than being given high-level responsibility to develop comprehensive, integrated, and long-term environmental policy (green planning). Nowhere have they been given responsibility for coordinating the implementation of such a policy across other agencies, and/or for bringing about institutional change in non-environmental organisations to ensure the integration of environmental imperatives and priorities within those agencies. Most government environmental agencies are focused on and swamped by day-to-day environmental problems of a particular nature (often pollution-related), especially those that are high on the public and government agendas. They usually have little time and capacity, or simply no interest in, and/or responsibility for, what I have referred to as green planning. As a result, much of what they do is ad hoc, reactive, fragmented, and incremental, unguided by an overarching environmental policy. Not surprisingly, this situation allows non-environmental government agencies (such as ministries of energy, transport, and agriculture) to continue pursuing their own non-environmental goals and priorities, paying lip service to environmental considerations at best.
In many countries, rather than assigning overarching responsibility for environmental integration to a core government agency, governments have created advisory bodies, often labelled Sustainable Development Councils, to guide on environmental and/or sustainability issues. However, while such agencies may be useful for debating issues among representatives of the business sector, environmental organisations, and government officials, their effectiveness in influencing policy development (whether in the form of a green plan or the development or amendment of existing policies) is questionable.[54] Although the significance of such bodies for cognitive-internal integration, by promoting public debate on environmental and sustainability issues aimed at reaching broad agreement, should not be dismissed [55], the institutional context within which they operate imposes considerable constraints on their effectiveness. Given these constraints, a case can be made for establishing far more powerful (citizens’) bodies that take responsibility for ensuring that environmental imperatives are integrated across the whole of government. This idea is discussed on a separate page.
To a large extent, whether and how overarching environmental institutions are, or even can be, established, and how effective they can be, is intertwined with the rationales and relative importance of non-environmental institutions. As noted above, environmental institutions have been created relatively recently. Most non-environmental (political, economic, and social) institutions that guide human behaviour and practices, within governments and societies, have existed for much longer and serve rationales that predate environmental concerns. To the extent that the importance and power of those institutions exceed that assigned to environmental institutions, and their rationales are incompatible with environmental needs or imperatives, creating a powerful overarching environmental institution may be very difficult indeed.
The greening of non-environmental institutions
As noted above, most institutions that guide human behaviour and practices predate the modern environmental era and lack an environmental rationale at their core. While the creation of new institutions specifically aimed at advancing environmental concerns has been an important step in addressing environmental problems, their effectiveness has been and will continue to be constrained by non-environmental institutions as long as these promote and protect ideas, behaviour and practices that are not compatible and in conflict with environmental interests. Whether and how prevailing non-environmental institutions can be greened remains one of the most vexing questions of the environmental integration challenge, and the subject of much doubt and debate. In this section, I will only briefly touch on this sub-challenge, as the issues it raises are linked to the systemic obstacles to environmental integration that are elaborated on other pages.
As discussed above, by and far, governments have created weak and fragmented environmental states. The mandates and efforts of environmental government agencies are mostly confined to what are considered to be environmental matters, such as nature conservation, pollution control, waste management and recycling (the “environmental sector”). While they may play a role in advising governments on so-called non-environmental areas like energy, transport, and agriculture, they usually have no formal responsibilities or power in those areas. While some governments have at some stage indicated their commitment to greening the whole machinery of government, these commitments have not led to demonstrable changes in sector policies.[56] Sectoral departments and agencies have generally retained that responsibility, and while they may claim to be concerned about the environment and committed to sustainability, their efforts have been almost exclusively modest policy changes aimed at mitigating the effects of the sector’s practices. Meanwhile, the basic rationales for which they have been created remain unchanged, and so do their mandates and the requirements imposed on the (specialised) staff employed by these organisations.
The economy is arguably responsible for most environmental impacts. Yet, economic policies have remained largely untouched by environmental concerns and demands, with high (infinite) economic growth remaining the overriding goal (while keeping inflation and, if possible, unemployment, down). With the rise of neoliberalism from the 1980s, in many countries ‘free trade’ became the holy grail for economic growth, pursued not only through the promotion of exports (export-led growth) but also through the reduction or elimination of obstacles to imports and foreign investment worldwide. At the same time, neoliberalism promoted shifting ownership and control of assets from governments to the ‘free market’, leading to the privatisation of previously state-owned enterprises across most sectors of the economy, including those that played a key role in energy, communications, and transport. It also prescribed the deregulation of the financial sector, the free movement of capital across countries, and the floating of currencies. Another key plank of neoliberal institutional reform was the creation of ‘independent’ Central Banks to remove monetary policy from the political sphere. Broadly, neoliberalism involved minimising government ‘interference’ in the economy, based on the claim that leaving economics to the ‘free market’ would lead to the best outcomes for society and in the most efficient way.
Here, I will not elaborate on these claims and the political-economic aspects of neoliberalism, as these are discussed on other pages. The main reason for mentioning it here is that the adoption of neoliberalism led not only to a comprehensive (some argue revolutionary) reform of economic institutions and policies that had serious social, environmental, and political consequences, but also made the greening of economic institutions and policies even more problematic. It made it virtually illegitimate for governments to create rules and organisations that would require economic actors to assign priority to environmental and/or social values, goals, or imperatives. At most, it allowed for the use of economic instruments (including taxes and tradeable ‘pollution rights’) that were claimed to be most efficient in advancing such goals. More fundamentally, it relegated the idea that governments (and politics, or societies) have a key role to play in economic matters to the fringes of economic thinking.
Thus, the primacy of the ‘free market’ and export-led economic growth has been institutionally entrenched, with significant environmental, social, and political consequences. If or when these concerns are addressed, they are tagged onto economic institutions and policies, without changing their dominant rationales. This is a far cry from the creation of economic institutions based on environmental and social imperatives (for instance, laid down in a green plan or a societal vision), with economic policies being designed to meet the goals and objectives of a society. Although governments have long been instrumental in ‘dis-embedding’ the economic sphere from societies and the environment, after the neoliberal revolution, the sphere of government and public policy has now been embedded into what could be referred to as a ‘sovereign economic sphere’ that circumscribes or even dictates what governments can, must and should do (or not do). This also implies that, unless states (or rather, the people) reclaim their sovereignty, the prospects for greening economic institutions are virtually nil.
This statement indicates that achieving meaningful environmental integration in the institutional realm is, fundamentally, a political-economic challenge. Transforming the state’s and society’s economic institutions will require a new counter-revolution that restores the right and capacity of societies, and their governments, to determine economic, social, environmental, legal, ethical, and other goals, standards, rights, obligations, and requirements that are considered to be (most) important. Economics needs to be embedded within the sphere of democratic politics if societies, rather than the most powerful and unaccountable economic actors, are to steer towards a future of their choosing.
Conclusion
This page has explained the notion of environmental integration and its six sub-challenges. These comprise the integration of environmental considerations into the cognitive, policy and institutional domains of collective management, each with two dimensions (internal and external). The internal dimension (referred to as environmental-internal integration) concerns clarifying which environmental principles, goals, imperatives, bottom lines, limits, rules, or other factors should be integrated. This assumes the creation of a cognitive environmental framework of some kind, the development of a comprehensive and integrated environmental policy, and the existence or creation of core environmental institutions in support of the former two. The external dimension refers to the need to incorporate these environmental principles, goals, etc., into non-environmental cognitive frameworks, policies, and institutions.
The main argument advanced here is that environmental integration needs to occur in all six areas in mutually consistent and complementary ways to be (more) effective and enduring. Absent or weak integration in one area has (logical and practical) implications for integration in the other areas. Environmental principles and imperatives derived from an overarching cognitive framework need to be translated into policy to become more than mere rhetorical statements. Given the fickle nature of politics and policy development, environmental integration in the policy realm needs to be supported by an enabling and supporting political-institutional framework to ensure that such efforts have ‘teeth’ and an enduring character. Without such an institutional framework, environmental policy integration is likely to remain limited to what is commonly regarded as within the realm of environmental issues (such as integrated pollution and waste management), without addressing the sources of environmental problems located in other policy areas or sectors (such as economic, agricultural, energy and transport policies). However, on its own, institutional environmental integration, not accompanied by serious environmental policy integration efforts, is likely to remain symbolic and insufficient to bring about significant changes in behaviour and practices.
Meeting all six sub-challenges in a concerted way is a requirement for more effectively addressing the environmental challenge. Yet, doing so is no easy task, as the discussion may have indicated. While many countries will have undertaken steps in one or more of these areas, very few have made serious efforts towards a comprehensive, integrated approach necessary to address the environmental challenge effectively.
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[3] Bührs, Ton (2009), Environmental Integration: Our Common Challenge. Albany: SUNY Press.
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[5] Folke, Carl (2013), “Respecting Planetary Boundaries and Reconnecting to the Biosphere”, in E. Assadourian and T. Prugh (eds.), State of the World 2013. Is Sustainability Still Possible? Washington: Island Press, 19-27; Rockström, J. et al. (2009), “Planetary Boundaries: Exploring the Safe Operating Space for Humanity”, Ecology and Society, 32, http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol14/iss2/art32; Steffen, Will, et al. (2011), “How Defining Planetary Boundaries Can Transform Our Approach to Growth”, Solutions Journal. Vol. 2, No.3, https://thesolutionsjournal.com/2016/02/22/how-defining-planetary-boundaries-can-transform-our-approach-to-growth/.
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[7] Ibid., Chapter 6.
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[11] Folke, Carl, “Respecting Planetary Boundaries and Reconnecting to the Biosphere”; Rockström, J. et al. (2009), “A Safe Operating Space for Humanity”; Rockström, J. et al., “Planetary Boundaries: Exploring the Safe Operating Space for Humanity”; Steffen, Will, et al., “How Defining Planetary Boundaries Can Transform Our Approach to Growth”, Solutions Journal, 3, http://www.thesolutionsjournal.com/node/935.
[12] Spangenberg, Joachim H. (2002), “Environmental Space and the Prism of Sustainability: Frameworks for Indicators Measuring Sustainable Development”, Ecological Indicators, Vol.2, No.3, 295-309; Committee on Material Flows Accounting of Natural Resources, Products, and Residuals, Board on Earth Sciences and Resources, Committee on Earth Resources, Division on Earth and Life Studies, National Research Council of the National Academies (2004), Materials Count. The Case for Material Flows Analysis. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press.
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[15] The I=PAT formula, where I stands for environmental impact, P for population, A for affluence, and T for technology), was first put forward by Ehrlich and Holdren in the early 1970s and is a useful shorthand for capturing the main proximate causes of environmental pressure. But it can (and has been) contested as a model for explaining why or how these causes vary, as well as the underlying factors.
[16] Daly, Herman E. (1973), “Introduction”, in H. E. Daly (ed.) Toward a Steady-State Economy. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman and Company, 1-29; Mishan, E. J. (1967, Pelican 1969 ed.), The Costs of Economic Growth. London: Staples Press; Boulding, Kenneth E. (1966), “The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth”, in H. Jarrett (ed.) Environmental Quality in a Growing Economy and Society. Baltimore, MD: Resources for the Future/Johns Hopkins University Press, 3-14.
[17] Daly, Herman E. (1996), Beyond Growth: The Economics of Sustainable Development. Boston: Beacon Press, 49.
[18] Daly, Herman E. and Joshua C. Farley (2004), Ecological Economics: Principles and Applications. Washington: Island Press; Costanza, Robert and Lisa Wainger (1991), Ecological Economics: The Science and Management of Sustainability. New York: Columbia University Press.
[19] For different views and contributions on this front, see Martinez Alier, Joan and Roldan Muradian (2015), “Taking Stock: The Keystones of Ecological Economics”, in J. Martinez Alier and R. Muradian (eds.), Handbook of Ecological Economics. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 1-25; Spash, Clive L. (2017), “Social Ecological Economics”, in Routledge Handbook of Ecological Economics: Nature and Society. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 3-16; Raworth, K. (2017), Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist. Random House; Jackson, Tim (2009), Prosperity without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet. London: Earthscan.
[20] Wildavsky, A. (1979), The Art and Craft of Policy Analysis. London: Macmillan Press; Lindblom, Charles E. (1959), “The Science of ‘Muddling Through'”, Public Administration Review, Vol. 19, No.2, 79-88; Lindblom, Charles E. (1990), Inquiry and Change: The Troubled Attempt to Understand and Shape Society. New Haven, Yale University Press.
[21] Simon, Herbert A. (1945), Administrative Behaviour. Glencoe, Ill: Free Press.
[22] Bartlett, Robert V. (1990), “Comprehensive Environmental Decision Making: Can It Work?”, in N. J. Vig and M. E. Kraft (eds.), Environmental Policy in the 1990s: Toward a New Agenda. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Press, 235-254.
[23] Leontief, Wassily (1981), “The Case for National Economic Planning”, The Journal of Business Strategy, Vol. 1, No.4, 3-7; Devine, Pat (1988), Democracy and Economic Planning. Oxford: Polity Press.
[24] World Commission on Environment and Development (1987), Our Common Future. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.
[25] Jänicke, Martin and Helge Jörgens (1998), “National Environmental Policy Planning in OECD Countries: Preliminary Lessons from Cross-National Comparisons”, Environmental Politics, Vol. 7, No.2, 27-54; Dalal-Clayton, D. B. and Stephen Bass (2002), Sustainable Development Strategies: A Resource Book. London; Sterling, VA: Earthscan; Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development; United Nations Development Programme.
[26] Johnson, Huey D. (1995, 2008, 3rd ed.), Green Plans: Blueprint for a Sustainable Earth. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
[27] Bührs, Ton (1996), “Green Plans: A New Generation of Symbolic Environmental Policies?”, Paper presented at ECOPOLITICS X Conference, Canberra, The Australian National University, 26-29 September; Bührs, Ton (2000), “Green Planning in Australia and Canada: Dead or Alive?”, Environmental Politics, Vol.9, No.2, 102-125.
[28] One of the few exceptions is the government of Bhutan, which has made the pursuit of “Gross National Happiness” a core goal, even including it in the country’s constitution. See Drexler, Madeline (2014, Kindle ed.), A Splendid Isolation. Lessons on Happiness from the Kingdom of Bhutan. madelinedrexler.com.
[29] Mishan, E. J. (1967, Pelican 1969 ed.), The Costs of Economic Growth. ; Booth, Douglas E. (1998), The Environmental Consequences of Growth. Steady-State Economics as an Alternative to Ecological Decline. London and New York: Routledge; Hickel, Jason (2019), “Degrowth: A Theory of Radical Abundance”, in E. Fullbrook and J. Morgan (eds.), Economics and the Ecosystem. World Economics Association, 88-112; Raworth, K., Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist.
[30] Many of these multifaceted effects of economic growth, comprising physical-environmental, social, political, and psychological dimensions, are indirect outcomes that may have been produced by interaction with other variables, which makes such claims contestable. But inasmuch as economic growth is defined in terms of increased physical or material “throughput”, many of the physical-environmental effects can be attributed directly to economic growth.
[31] Meadows, Donella H., Jørgen Randers and Dennis L. Meadows (2004), Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update. White River Junction, Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing Company; Meadows, Donella H., Dennis L. Meadows, Jörgen Randers, William W. Behrens (1972, 1974, 2nd ed.), The Limits to Growth. A Report for the Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind. New York: New American Library; Daly, Herman E. (1973), “Introduction”, in Daly, H. E. (ed.) Toward a Steady-State Economy. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman and Company, pp.1-29; Boulding, Kenneth E., “The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth”.
[32] Some influential publications supporting this view were Kahn, Herman, et al. (1976), The Next 200 Years: A Scenario for America and the World. New York: Morrow. Simon, Julian, Lincoln and Herman Kahn (1984), The Resourceful Earth: A Response to Global 2000. Oxford: B. Blackwell.
[33] World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, Chapter 2.
[34] Weizsäcker, Ernst von, et al. (1997), Factor Four. Doubling Wealth – Halving Resource Use. St. Leonards, NSW, Australia: Allen & Unwin; Hawken, Paul, et al. (1999), Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution. Boston: Little, Brown and Company; Jänicke, Martin (2000), Ecological Modernization: Innovation and Diffusion of Policy and Technology. Berlin: Forschungsstelle für Umweltpolitik (FFU), Freie Universität Berlin.
[35] Lomborg, Bjørn, The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press.
[36] For further discussions on this approach, see Stavins, R. N. (2000), “Market-Based Environmental Policies”, in P. R. Portney and R. N. Stavins (eds.), Public Policies for Environmental Protection. Washington D.C.: Resources for the Future, 31-76; Tietenberg, Tom (2002), “The Tradable Permits Approach to Protecting the Commons: What Have We Learned?”, in E. Ostrom et al. (eds.), The Drama of the Commons. Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 197-232; Arsel, Murat and Bram Büscher (2012), “Nature™ Inc.: Changes and Continuities in Neoliberal Conservation and Market-Based Environmental Policy”, Development and Change, Vol. 43, No.1, 53-78.
[37] Daly, Herman E., et al. (1989), For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy toward Community, the Environment, and a Sustainable Future. Boston: Beacon Press; Victor, Peter A. (2008), Managing without Growth: Slower by Design, Not Disaster. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar; Waring, Marilyn (1988), Counting for Nothing. What Women Value and What Women Are Worth. Wellington: Allen & Unwin; Atkinson, Giles (1995), “Greening the National Accounts: U.S. Congressional Budget Office”, Environment, Vol. 37, No.5, 25-28; New Economics Foundation (2004), Chasing Progress: Beyond Measuring Economic Growth. London: New Economics Foundation.
[38] Bührs, Ton, Environmental Integration: Our Common Challenge, 159-163.
[39] Jeff Gibbs and Michael Moore, in a film titled Planet of the Humans, provided a highly critical assessment that was labelled by some environmental advocates as misleading to the point that they wanted to have the film banned from YouTube. But although the film may contain some inaccurate information, the documentary’s general argument cannot simply be dismissed and deserves to be heard: on their own, renewable energy resources are not going to solve the energy problem, let alone the environmental challenge. Gibbs, Jeff (2020), Planet of the Humans, Producer: Michael Moore; Wikipedia (2020), Planet of the Humans, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_of_the_Humans (Accessed: 19 October 2020).
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[42] For a discussion of the limitations of renewable energy technologies and the likelihood that a reduction of overall energy consumption is needed, see Heinberg, Richard and David Fridley, Our Renewable Future: Laying the Path for 100% Clean Energy.
[43] Paterson, Matthew (2007), Automobile Politics: Ecology and Cultural Political Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[44] Worldwatch Institute (2015), Vital Signs 2015. The Trends That Are Shaping Our Future. Washington: Worldwatch Institute, 40-43.
[45] O’Meara Sheehan, Molly (2001), “Making Better Transportation Choices”, in L. R. Brown, et al. (eds.), State of the World 2001. New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 103-122.
[46] Clay, Jason W. (2004), World Agriculture and the Environment: A Commodity-by-Commodity Guide to Impacts and Practices. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, viii. For a recent discussion of the role of agriculture in the ongoing decline of nature and biodiversity in the EU, see European Environment Agency (2020), State of Nature in the EU. Results from Reporting under the Nature Directives 2013-2018, Copenhagen. The report notes that “current agricultural practices are by far the most dominant driver affecting habitats and species” (p.72).
[47] Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2001), Environmental Indicators for Agriculture. Volume 3. Methods and Results. Paris: OECD, 18.
[48] Clay, Jason W. (2004), World Agriculture and the Environment: A Commodity-by-Commodity Guide to Impacts and Practices. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 55.
[49] Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Environmental Indicators for Agriculture. Volume 3. Methods and Results. Paris: OECD, 278.
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[51] For a discussion of a variety of forms of institutional-internal environmental integration, see Bührs, Ton, Environmental Integration: Our Common Challenge, Chapter 7.
[52] Jänicke, Martin (1997), “The Political System’s Capacity for Environmental Policy”, in M. Jänicke and H. Weidner (eds.), National Environmental Policies – a Comparative Study of Capacity Building. Berlin: Springer, 1-24; Jänicke, Martin (2002), “The Political System’s Capacity for Environmental Policy: The Framework for Comparison”, in H. Weidner and M. Jänicke (eds.), Capacity Building in National Environmental Policy. A Comparative Study of 17 Countries. Berlin: Springer, 1-18; Lafferty, William M. and James Meadowcroft (2000), Implementing Sustainable Development: Strategies and Initiatives in High Consumption Societies. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.
[53] Duit, Andreas, et al. (2016), “Greening Leviathan: The Rise of the Environmental State?”, Environmental Politics, Vol.25, No.1, 1-23; Meadowcroft, James (2012), “Greening the State?”, in P. F. Steinberg and S. D. VanDeveer (eds.), Comparative Environmental Politics. Theory, Practice and Prospects. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 63-86.
[54] Maurer, Crescencia (1999), Rio+8: An Assessment of National Councils for Sustainable Development. Washington, D.C.: World Resources Institute; Rosenberg, Jonathan and Linus Spencer Thomas (2005), “Participating or Just Talking? Sustainable Development Councils and the Implementation of Agenda 21”, Global Environmental Politics, Vol. 5, No.2, 61-87; Bührs, Ton, Environmental Integration: Our Common Challenge, 195-198.
[55] Niestroy, I. (2005), Sustaining Sustainability, a Benchmark Study on National Strategies Towards Sustainable Development and the Impact of Councils in Nine EU Member States. Background Study No. 2, EEAC Series 76 (1958). No. 2. The Hague: European Environment and Sustainable Development Advisory Councils (EEAC).
[56] For a discussion of such initiatives, see Bührs, Ton, Environmental Integration: Our Common Challenge, 149-157.