Sustainable development and ecological modernization – the limits to a hegemonic policy knowledge

The implementation problems of effective global environmental politics have essentially to do with the fact that approaches to and the knowledge about sustainability remain sectoralized. There is a gap between the dominant or even hegemonic forms of environmental policy knowledge which are embodied in the concept of sustainable development, on the one hand, and the socially dominant forms of environmental knowledge concerning the appropriation of nature on the other. Until now, the policy knowledge of sustainable development has not been able to question the main assumptions and to shape existing practices of dominant forms of the appropriation of nature. This is shown along five crucial dimensions; of particular importance is the existence of the so-called valorization paradigm. Theoretically, the article is informed by the theory of societal relationships with nature and it focuses on the role of knowledge in social reproduction, innovation, and transformation.