Abstract
This chapter explores the theoretical critiques that environmental politics attracted since the 1990s onward. Among them, building upon political ecology critique, post-environmentalist theory gained a prominent role and claimed that green diplomacy, business, and large NGOs determined a de-politicization of environmental issues in the pursuit of establishing a widespread consensus on the mainstream strategies for global environmental governance. The origins and development of post-environmentalism are described in the chapter, with particular attention devoted to the differences between the realist perspective of US scholars (most notably Michel Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, authors of the pamphlet “The Death of Environmentalism”) and the European scholars, advancing a constructivist interpretation of the end of environmentalism under the name of post-ecologism.
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- 1.
See for instance the Inshore Fisheries Aggregating Devices, WWF Australia project in the Solomon Islands (WWF 1995). This process is called essentialisation.
- 2.
However, different from political ecology scholars, Schellenberger and Nordhaus’ analysis is deeply connected to the US social and political context. Their aim is to revitalize progressive and liberal political forces by including environmentalism amongst them (while liberalism in other countries, especially across Europe, is at best understood as social democratic force rather than progressive). There is in fact a certain convergence among political scientists on the idea that environmentalism cannot be anything other than liberal (Arial Maldonado 2012).
- 3.
Following other Critical Thinkers, Blühdorn uses the world “ecologism.” Despite the fact that he does not devote particular attention to the difference between ecologism and environmentalism, the difference is actually defined in other relevant literature (Castells 1998; Hayward 2003). Political philosopher Andrew Dobson states that environmentalism proposes “a managerial approach to environmental problems, [and affirms] that they can be solved without fundamental changes in present values or patterns of production and consumption [while ecologism holds that] a sustainable and fulfilling existence presupposes radical changes in our relationship with the non-human natural world, and in our mode of social and political life” (Dobson 2003a, 365). For the purposes of this book, such differences are not very relevant, and the definition of environmental thinking is adopted to include the variegated world of those concerned with environmental issues.
- 4.
As already mentioned, the terms ecologists and ecologism, rather than environmentalists and environmentalism (as preferred in this book), are adopted here to reference Blühdorn. The differences, however, are not relevant in this context, and the terms can be used synonymously.
- 5.
Blühdorn’s indistinct use of the word ecology, instead of environment, leads to the paradoxical affirmation that post-ecologism was an ecology without identity. Post-ecologism (or post-environmentalism) is clearly not an ecology because ecology is a natural science with its own status, heuristic processes, paradigms, and objects of research.
- 6.
For Ecuador, this was comparable to 19 years of carbon emissions and the production of 107.00 barrels of oil per day for at least 13 years of full exploitation (Government of Ecuador 2011).
- 7.
CGYs are also sold to private investors that develop projects in line with the Clean Development Mechanism guidelines, as established by the Kyoto Protocol under conditions not to exceed the total quota of annual emission permits. However, because market-based revenues from the sale of certificates of avoided emissions are not currently recognized in the carbon market, a dedicated agreement is required.
- 8.
The post-Kyoto regime derives from the recognition of the marginal results actually achieved in the implementation of Kyoto protocol, and the considerable criticism that followed. This new regime proposes stricter measures, particularly the UN Reducing Emission from Deforestation and Degradation (UN-REDD) Programme. Nevertheless, it too has been severely criticized, especially by indigenous groups for not clearly taking into account human resources and social issues (Larrea and Warnas 2009).
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Certomà, C. (2016). Is This the End of Environmentalism, as We Know It?. In: Postenvironmentalism. Palgrave Pivot, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50790-7_3
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