The Compromise of Liberal Environmentalism

by Steven Bernstein

The most significant shift in environmental governance over the last thirty years has been the convergence of environmental and liberal economic norms toward "liberal environmentalism"―which predicates environmental protection on the promotion and maintenance of a liberal economic order. Steven Bernstein assesses the reasons for this historical shift, introduces a socio-evolutionary explanation for the selection of international norms, and considers the implications for our ability to address global environmental problems.

The author maintains that the institutionalization of "sustainable development" at the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) legitimized the evolution toward liberal environmentalism. Arguing that most of the literature on international environmental politics is too rationalist and problem-specific, Bernstein challenges the mainstream thinking on international cooperation by showing that it is always for some purpose or goal. His analysis of the norms that guide global environmental policy also challenges the often-presumed primacy of science in environmental governance.

330 pages, Paperback

First published September 11, 2001

Reviews

[Jooseppi Räikkönen · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot of impressive stuff. I agree with the idea that too many theories treat interests as exogenous, and I am sympathetic to the methodological critiques of many IR-theories. I do not, on the other hand, quite understand the brushing aside of Gramscian hegemony theory, nor do I like the method by which "norms" are herein investigated, which seems to be largely on explicit linguistic content available to the researcher.

Most useful when offering taxonomies of various epochs of governance paradigms for environmental problems, least when having to say what changes in those paradigms amount to.