Globalisation, Ecological Modernisation and New Labour
| Published date | 01 December 2004 |
| Author | John Barry,Matthew Paterson |
| Date | 01 December 2004 |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2004.00507.x |
| Subject Matter | Original Article |
Globalisation, Ecological Modernisation
and New Labour
John Barry
Queen’s University Belfast
Matthew Paterson
University of Ottawa, Canada
Ecological modernisation (EM) provides the principal framework within which environmental
policy reform projects are understood. However, writers using the approach, neglect to explain
the political contexts within which it is possible to pursue such projects. Specifically, they ignore
how discourses of globalisation structure the attempts of states to introduce environmental policy
measures consistent with EM agendas. Through an analysis of the UK government’s attempts to
introduce policies consistent with an EM approach, we show that New Labour’s discourse of glob-
alisation acts to create opportunities for EM in some policy arenas and hinder them in others. We
examine the development of a renewable energy strategy, the case of genetically modified foods,
and transport policy. By specifying conditions under which EM may be pursued, the analysis
reveals the potential, but also the limits, of this approach, which attempts to ignore the deep politi-
cal questions raised by environmental degradation.
Ecological modernisation (EM) is a discourse that has emerged since the late 1980s
and that argues against a simplistic dichotomy between economic growth and envi-
ronmental sustainability. Writers adopting this approach focus on the forms of
economic and social restructuring that could help overcome such a dichotomy.
Although much of the literature in this field is explicit in suggesting that it is states
that drive, or at least facilitate, EM processes, there is little analysis of the political
dynamics through which states might be able to implement elements of an EM
agenda. In particular, analysts of EM make almost no reference to the processes
and politics of globalisation.
In this paper, we will attempt to fill this gap by examining the connections between
EM and globalisation in the policies of the Labour government elected in the UK
in 1997. Labour under Blair has been very clear about the importance of globali-
sation to their understanding of the context within which the British polity and
economy has to operate. At the same time, Labour leaders have attempted to
portray their policies as more committed to an environmental agenda than the out-
going Conservative government. Although they have not clearly articulated this in
terms of the discourse of EM, their environmental policies are best understood as
an attempt to implement something like an EM agenda.1 Our central argument is
that it has only been possible for advocates of environmental policies and com-
mitments to advance any policies fitting within an EM agenda to the extent that
such policies can be understood as consistent with how New Labour understands
© Political Studies Association, 2004.
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J O H N B A R RY A N D M AT T H E W PAT E R S O N
the constraints and opportunities that economic globalisation presents for the
British polity and economy.
We will start with a brief overview of EM discourse and then show how EM writers
have neglected questions concerning the politics of globalisation. After that, we
will show how globalisation has a pivotal position in New Labour’s understanding
of what constrains and shapes the possibilities for policy intervention in general.
We will then look at how New Labour has gradually taken on elements of an EM
agenda. We will outline the application of elements of this agenda in three policy
fields: renewable energy, genetically modified (GM) foods, and transport. We will
show how EM is, at times, enabled by, but in many instances constrained by, New
Labour’s primary commitment to globalisation as Labour leaders understand it. We
will conclude by discussing the implications of this for debates about EM, and also
for the possibilities of pursuing environmental policies in the UK.2
Ecological Modernisation (EM) Discourse
The basic tenet of EM is that the zero-sum character of environment–economic
trade-offs is more apparent than real. EM challenges the idea that improvements
in environmental quality or the protection of nature are necessarily inimical
to economic growth, the core debate that dominated responses to the ‘environ-
mental crisis’ in the 1970s. In this earlier debate, the Green position was that a
steady-state economy, in conjunction with zero population growth, was the only
economy–ecology metabolism that could ensure long-term ecological sustainabil-
ity. Conversely, many businesses and economists assumed that developing envi-
ronmental policies and regulations would negatively affect economic growth and
profitability. In opposition to this idea, and in part as a development of and attempt
to operationalise the more nebulous concept of ‘sustainable development’, EM
suggests that economic growth is not incompatible with environmental protection.
There is much debate about the different understandings of EM. A contrast is fre-
quently drawn between ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ forms of EM (Christoff, 1996). For
some (Mol, 1996, 2001; Hajer, 1995) it represents a techno-bureaucratic state-led
and -initiated ‘greening’ of certain key sectors of the economy. This ‘weak’ form
of EM is contrasted with ‘stronger’ forms in which a central element is the exten-
sion of democratic decision-making procedures, a more thorough restructuring of
the economy, and also with a broader sort of social change that might be called
‘reflexive modernisation’ (Christoff, 1996; Beck et al., 1994). The strong form,
entailing as it does the potential for more far-reaching social change and a
properly political account of EM processes, is perhaps more interesting, but it is
the weak form that has driven shifts in discourse about environmental policy
more directly – so we will concentrate here on that version.3
Key to this weak notion of EM is separating economic growth from rising energy
and material throughputs. The approach is principally technical in orientation,
focusing on three principal areas: efficiency in the use of energy and materials,
technological innovation, and the creation of new markets for ‘environmental’
goods and services. On the first of these, it is frequently claimed that the potential
for radical efficiency gains in the way that energy and materials are used in
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industrial, domestic and transport sectors is very considerable (Hawken et al.,
1999). Such gains can be realised largely with existing technologies, but at the same
time if overall growth is not to outstrip efficiency gains then continued gains are
dependent on continued high levels of technological innovation. One important
element of such innovation is to create ‘closed-loop’ production, whereby waste
materials are minimised and wastes themselves then become inputs to other indus-
trial processes. Finally, the development of new markets, new commodities and
services is crucial to creating the possibility of continued accumulation while other
markets are being restricted. This efficiency-oriented approach to environmental
problems is central to understanding how EM is attractive both to state and to busi-
ness elites and managers.
But at the same time, for most writers, EM processes tend to require significant
state intervention. For some, there is a reliance on a notion of an ‘environmental
Kuznets curve’, whereby the ecological impacts of growth go through a process
where they increase, but beyond a certain point of economic output start to
decline.4 For most, this is not likely to occur – except in relation to certain mea-
sures of environmental quality – without significant state intervention to enable
shifts in economic behaviour (Ekins, 2000). It is thus not perhaps an accident that
EM discourse has arisen principally in social democratic countries in continental
Europe where corporatist policy styles are still well established. EM as a ‘policy
ideology’ has largely been developed in government programmes and policy styles
and traditions, particularly those of Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Japan
and the European Union (Weale, 1992, pp. 76–85; Dryzek, 1997, pp. 137–41). And
although in the European countries where some of the policy outcomes associated
with EM strategies – notably voluntary agreements or public–private partnerships
– are often regarded as elements in a ‘neoliberalisation’ of those countries, their
development still occurs within a style of policy development and implementation
that is corporatist.
Corporatist arrangements are therefore usually regarded to be the most conducive
political conditions for successful environmental policy reform (see, for example,
Young, 2000; Dryzek, 1997; Scruggs, 1999). On this view, the state policy elites act
as brokers and prime movers in encouraging interest groups, trades unions, indus-
try, consumer groups and sections of the environmental movement to accept the
agenda of EM. What then becomes interesting in the UK case that we will develop
below is the way that globalisation acts to create potential for EM strategies in the
absence of corporatist political arrangements. One argument similar to EM but
couched in language more common in neoliberal countries such as the UK and US
was popularised in an influential article by Porter and van der Linde...
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