Sustainable development and ecological modernisationOne problem is that many people will be unable to participate because
their basic needs are not being met. Social justice issues are prominent in
thesustainable development literature precisely because, as noted above,
most environmental issues involve distributional questions that can rarely
be resolved without winners and losers. As Hajer ( 1995 : 35) observes, it may
be rather naive to believe that ecological modernisation can avoid address-
ing basic social contradictions (see Reitan 1998 ).
Indeed, with a few exceptions, ecological modernisation is strangely silent
on North–South issues. It is not hard to envisage a scenario in which large
transnational companies operate along ‘ecomodernist’ lines in the North,
with efficient clean technologies and products, while locating their more
polluting activities in developing countries where environmental regula-
tions are weaker (Christoff1996b;Goldfrank et al. 1999 ). Perhaps ecological
modernisation requires a large periphery of poor countries to act as a waste
tip for the polluting activities of a rich core of nations?
Thirdly, furthermore, concerns about its relevance to the developing world
have contributed to the specific criticism that ecological modernisation is
‘Eurocentric’ (Blowers 1997 ), which if true would rather limit its global
appeal as a feasible national-level environmental reform programme. Not
surprisingly, as Mol ( 2003 : 66) notes, several critics question whether in an
increasingly globalised world of economic interdependence, global political
interactions and the standardisation of science, technology, production and
consumption, there is sufficient scope for developing countries to develop
their own ‘ecologically sound development path’. Some observers have also
suggested that ecological modernisation has limited applicability outside
thecore pioneer states of Northern Europe, particularly in the USA and
Canada (Cohen 1998 ). Although several recent studies have demonstrated
that elements of ecological modernisation are operating at the local level
in the USA (Gonz ́alez 2002 ;Scheinberg 2003 ), this questioning of the geo-
graphical reach of ecological modernisation has inspired a debate about the
kind of state in which it can flourish (seenext section).
Finally, in its attentiveness to production and the message that pollu-
tion prevention pays, ecological modernisation generally understates the
importance of consumption, especially the overalllevel of consumption
(Carolan 2004 ). The implicit assumption seems to be that greening the
production process allows consumption to be infinite. Despite its name,
ecological modernisation is only superficiallyecologicalbecause it largely
ignores the integrity of ecosystems and the cumulative impact of industri-
alisation on them (Christoff1996b: 486). Its technocentric view of nature
recognises no limits to growth and assumes that all problems are open to
solutions. Yet even if businesses do adopt every available ecologically sound
technique, the environmental benefits are likely to be offset by economic
growth. If, for example, ecological modernisation leads to the replacement of
8million fuel-inefficient cars with 10 million more fuel-efficient cars, then,
contrary to the decoupling thesis, the overall impact on the environment