Ecological modernization in the UK: rhetoric or reality?

Abstract:

This paper discusses the degree to which recent trends in UK policy-making amount to a paradigm shift towards the prescriptions of ecological modernization (EM) theory. First, in keeping with EM's win-win philosophy, recent political speeches and policy documents on the environment have expressed the idea that there is no conflict between environmental protection and economic growth. Second, policies have attempted to encourage the invention and diffusion of clean technologies. Third, policy-makers have explored innovative market-based policy approaches to tackle environmental problems. These three trends suggest UK policy-makers' predilection towards EM as a policy strategy. However, there has arguably been less success in terms of a fourth key characteristic of ecologically modernized states, that of environmental policy integration. The paper concludes that New Labour's failure at greening government, combined with its economistic and technocratic policy focus, places the UK at the weak end of Christoff's (1996) weak-strong continuum of ecological modernization. As such, environmental imperatives continue to remain ideologically and politically peripheral to conventional economic goals.