Abstract
Six years after the 1992 Rio Summit, it is perhaps time that we came down from the Earth Summit, and looked around at the landscape stretching out before us.1 At the conceptual level, we see that ‘sustainable development’ has become enshrined as the working language for everyone from environmentalists to real-estate speculators. At the international level, environmental accords that were reached at Rio — the Climate Convention, the Biodiversity Convention and Agenda 21 (the extended blueprint for common international action) — have been ratified and are beginning to be incorporated into the international bureaucracy, not without some backing away from the original commitments. The international environmental movement is in substantial disarray, seemingly unable to rearticulate its vision into a new politics for the late 1990s. Nationally, environmental issues have taken a back seat to the problems of an economic system that is steadily diverging from the old certainties of growth as the promise of full employment and security for the middle class.
It is very difficult to awaken someone who is pretending to be asleep.
African proverb
Save us from single vision and Newton’s sleep.
William Blake
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Bateson, Gregory 1972, Steps to an Ecology of Mind, New York: Ballantine Books.
Bateson, Gregory 1991, in Rodney E. Donaldson (ed.), A Sacred Unity: Further Steps to an Ecology of Mind, New York: HarperCollins Publishers.
Dobuzinskis, Laurent 1987, The Self-Organizing Polity: an Epistemological Analysis of Political Life, Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press.
Finlayson, Alan C. 1994, Fishing For Truth: A Sociological Analysis of Northern Cod Stock Assessments 1977–1990, St John’s, Newfoundland: ISER, Memorial University of Newfoundland.
Giddens, Anthony 1991, The Consequences of Modernity, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.
Harries-Jones, Peter 1995, A Recursive Vision: Ecological Understanding and Gregory Bateson, Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Harris, Leslie 1990, Independent Review of the State of the Northern Cod Stock, Ottawa, Ontario: Department of Fisheries and Oceans.
Lande, Russell, Steinar Engen and Bernt-Erik Saether 1994, ‘Optimal Harvesting, Economic Discounting and Extinction Risk in Fluctuating Populations’, Nature, 372, 3, November, pp. 88–9.
Lewontin, Richard C. 1991, Biology as Ideology: The Doctrine of DNA, Concord, Ontario: Anansi Press.
Luhmann, Niklas 1986, Ecological Communication, Chicago, Ill.: The University of Chicago Press.
Manchester Guardian Weekly, 15 April 1995, p. 8.
Manes, Chris 1990, Green Rage: Radical Environmentalism and the Unmaking of Civilization, Boston: Little Brown.
Maturana, Humberto and Varela, Francisco, J. 1980, Autopoiesis and Cognition, Boston, Mass.: Boston Studies in Philosophical Science, vol. 42, in association with D. Reidel.
May, Robert M. 1994, ‘The Economics of Extinction’, Nature, 372, 3, November, pp. 42–3.
Morin, Edgar. 1977, 1980, La Methode, vol. 1: La Nature de la Nature; vol. 2: La vie de la vie, Paris: Seuil.
Naess, Arne and David Rothenberg (trans, and ed.) 1989, Ecology, Community, and Lifestyle, Cambridge (UK): Cambridge University Press.
Odum, Eugene P. 1989, Ecology and Our Engangered Life-Support Systems, Sunderland, Mass.: Sinauer Associates.
Paehlke, Robert C. 1989, Environmentalism and the Future of Progressive Politics, New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Polanyi, Karl 1957, The Great Transformation, Boston, Mass: Beacon Press.
Postel, Sandra 1994, ‘Carrying Capacity: Earth’s Bottom Line’, in Lester R. Brown (ed.), State of the World in 1994, New York: Norton, pp. 3–21.
Rapport, David J. and James E. Turner 1977, ‘Economic Models in Ecology’, Science, vol. 195, (28 January), pp. 367–73.
Rodman, John 1995, ‘Four Forms of Ecological Consciousness Considered’, in Alan Drengson and Yuichi Inoue, The Deep Ecology Movement: an Introductory Anthology, Berkeley, Cal.: North Atlantic Books, pp. 242–56.
Sachs, Wolfgang (ed.) 1993, Global Ecology: A New Arena of Political Conflict, London & New Jersey: Zed Books; Halifax, N.S.: Fernwood Publishers.
Thompson, E.P. 1978, The Poverty of Theory and Other Essays, New York and London: The Monthly Review Press.
Tolba, Mostafa K. et al., 1992, The World Environment 1972–92, London: Chapman and Hall for UNEP.
Varela, Francisco, J. 1984, ‘The Creative Circle’, in Paul Watzlawick (ed.), The Invented Reality: How do We Know What We Believe We Know? (Contributions to Constructivism), New York: Norton, pp. 309–23.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 1999 The United Nations University
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Harries-Jones, P., Rotstein, A., Timmerman, P. (1999). A Signal Failure: Ecology and Economy After the Earth Summit. In: Schechter, M.G. (eds) Future Multilateralism. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-27153-5_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-27153-5_5
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-73465-0
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-27153-5
eBook Packages: Palgrave Political & Intern. Studies CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)