The need
for Green Politics /Green State
The rise of environmental movements in the
industrialized nations usually attributed by some shift in society from
materialist to post-materialist values: as the basic needs of safety and
security have been fulfilled, people start to pursue more luxuriant causes,
such as the quality of life[1]. Hence improving the environment safety may
also improve the quality and safety of citizen’s life. For the range of threats
to modern society covers a wide range, from growing environmental stresses
(water shortages, deforestation, soil erosion to climate change), food and
energy insecurity, peak oil, rising poverty and inequalities within and between
societies, increasing passivity of citizens within democracies as well as the rise
of corporate power within and over the democratic state can be summed up as
„unsustainability” or „unsustainable development”.
Frequently, this is inspired by a sudden realization
of the environmental consequences of everyday actions – choices people make in
transportation, disposal of waste materials, etc. The developing environmental
consciousness manifests itself as guilt and then a call-to-arms over everyday
practice[2]. As environmental issues grows as a global
political issue, a common response of the individual and the state: what can I
do, and what can my state do to resolve environmental problems?
Green political theory has arisen with
environmentalism, which itself emerged in the late 1960s. After the explosive
economical growth following World War II that resulted in oligopoly forming in
the modern economic landscape, the birth of a consumer society, the
discrediting of former dominant ideologies created a series of system critique
thought – among others the various strands of Green political thought[3]. Accordingly the environmentalism posed a
sharp challenge to the traditional beliefs, that human beings had the
collective capacity to dominate nature, also the conviction that human beings
had the moral right, even responsibility, to do so.
In addition, within the next fifty years, the Earth’s
human population will probably pass nine billion, and global economic output
may quintuple. Largely as a result, scarcities of renewable resources will
increase sharply. The total area of high-quality agricultural land will drop,
as will the extent of forests and the number of species they sustain. Coming
generations will also see the widespread depletion and degradation of water
resources; the decline of many fisheries; and perhaps significant climate change[4].
The emergence of the environment as a political issue
posed an important challenge to existing party systems by introducing a new
source of potential conflict and giving rise to a new political party – the
Greens. There is growing evidence that the way mainstream parties respond to
the environmental dimension is important because parties matter[5].
Challenges
for the Nation State
Global environmental change challenges the nation
state in two ways. First, it increases the demand for proper and adaptive action,
which places additional stress on of the current nation states to promote and
protect the welfare of their populations as well as their living space[6]. Many
environmental protection policies appear to be in conflict with the traditional
policy priorities, notably with economic growth and competitiveness, in as much
as in some ways, the entire form of social movement environmentalism challenges
the power of nation states[7]. Several leading contemporary social theorists
identify environmental concern as a major factor leading to the reshaping of
nation-states during the past century. What are the factors which may be able
to contribute to the development of "state environmentalism” or other
words, state support for environmental protection?
First of all, there is recognition of the necessity to
improve environmental efficiency, promote a free market economy and also to
enhance a pluralist, democratic political system in order to achieve a
long-term economic growth. This post-industrial setting is seen as the
fundamental for the „new social movements” which include the anti-nuclear
movement and the political ecology movements and so on. In addition, there is a
lot of ideas about the policies states should pursue to resolute environmental
problems: tax a range of eco-bad activities, subsidize eco-good activities in
production, transport, energy, agriculture; strict defensible standards for
environmental quality of land, water and air; co-operate fully with
international efforts to alleviate crises associated with climate warming and
ozone depletion, etc. But what can we
realistically expect the state to act, in other words to hear and to respond to
apparent environmental imperatives?
Many analysts believe that, according to current
circumstances, and the states present form, it either cannot or will not do so
- at least not enough to address the environmental crisis in all its depth[8].
Could it be that the contemporary state is capable to perform sustainability?
Consequently, the environmental political thought faces fundamental
difficulties. „Perhaps the greatest challenge facing green political theory is
to flesh out in more detail what a green state would look like.”[9]
From a green perspective it makes much more sense to
think in terms of further democratization rather than a whole, new,
substantively different conception of the state. The green political theory has
not only refused authoritarianism and anarchism, but has also tended to
criticize liberal democracy as a form that is lacking in its capacity to respond
to environmental challenges[10].
Hence the green constitutional proposals often seek to extend the scope of
state protection beyond the liberal conception of the possessive individual, to
assign rights, or at least moral consideration, to the socially oppressed and
disadvantaged, to future human generations, and even to non-human beings[11].
What are
the expectations towards the State?
At first glance the concept of a green state might
viewed by many people as a kind of utopian idea. Does it mean a benevolent
state, presiding over an ecological utopia, simply a stuff of green dreams? Or
is it a strict regime of ecological controls and resource rationing? These
visions highlight very real divisions among environmentalists, green political
theorists, and green party followers about the proper role and future potential
of the nation-state in managing ecological problems. The environmental problems
makes the state ought to be doing in public policy suppose a more fundamental
normative theory of the proper character and role of the nation-state with its
own society and territory, likewise the society of states, global civil
society, including the global environment[12].
In practical terms, the state should order to
implement green policies for state-owned enterprises (SOEs), as well as take
action to raise mall and medium sized companies
(SMEs) awareness of environmental and energy-related issues and is
providing support to assist them implementing legislation, promoting environmental
innovation and future technology[13] .
The state should create a culture of sustainability that will pervade the
decision-making process, which will result in a combination of physical and
capital changes, moreover makes efforts in reducing our carbon footprint and
our reliance on non-renewable, carbon based sources of energy.
Enabling the constructive participation of civil
society, the state enables to contribute the Non-Governmental Organization
(NGOs) other non-state actors such as academic or research institutions, since
in the global environmental governance, the NGOs playing the most important
roles, as NGOs involved in environmental governance are highly diverse,
including local, national, regional, and international groups with various
tasks dedicated to environmental protection, sustainable development, poverty alleviation,
animal welfare, etc.[14]
In abstract terms, the green state aims at
‘sustainable development’ which means, inter
alia, the state should acts as a kind of embodiment of the higher, general
interests of a society, makes efforts to the practical realization of certain
fundamental social, political and economic ideals[15],
such as the promotion of justice and equality and the protection of basic human
rights and freedoms. Further, the state
from a green point of view should lowering socio- economic inequalities,
abolishing environmental injustices as well as ensuring the needs of the human
economy will not overcome the regenerative capacities of the eco-systems. As we
can see, sustainable development is a radical proposal, not only includes “ecologising”
or “greening” of the current political and economic order[16].
Among these reformist proposals may be viewed as
interim staging posts such as „ecological modernization” or “natural
capitalism”. The ecological modernization urged by a state suggest, that
competitiveness and growth are not incompatible with environmental protection.
Future economic prospects increasingly depend on achieving and maintaining the
relatively high standards of environmental protection.[17]
The
„green welfarism” or green social democracy be constructed as an attempt
politically to regulate a quote of production (through setting emission
standards for example and the use of market instruments, encourage
self-regulation). The „polluter-pays” legislation,
the precautionary principle, or mandatory environmental impact assessments for
instance are the key elements of the state methods to answer environmental
issues. By this reason the ecological modernization of the state can be viewed
as and ecological dimension to the modern state’s „crisis management” function,
and also marks the transformation of the state toward a „competition state”[18].
Regarding the essence of the state role to face environmental problems, the
state has to take a leading, coordinating and supporting role, by terms of
advocating the former mentioned technological innovation and higher economic
and ecologically efficient use of resources and energy.
Secondly, the extension of environmental human rights
would be a fundamental condition of a number of rights such, for example rights
to be informed of proposed developments in a particular local area, rights to
information about environmental impact assessments, rights to freedom of
assembly to facilitate protests against unwanted or harmful development, and
extended rights to self-determination including rights to participate in
decision-making forums[19].
The legal recognition of such rights would have a positive impact on the
democratic authentications of environmental decision-making procedures, which
would be able to help facilitate environmental justice, and would also promote
sustainable society.
Given that constitutional provisions are among the
most basic political structures of any society, any change in the constitution
in a green a suo placito sustainable
direction could cause a significant turn in the political order. That is the
reason why the green political thought seeking the ways of transition via the
constitutional level. The constitutional arrangements can secure the regulation
of economic actors such as corporations and legal definitions of such key
economic relations such as private property.
In other words, constitutional level political changes can alter and
redistribute political and economic power within and also between the societies.
Thus issues of environmental injustice and inequalities can be addressed by
constitutional changes, especially, in relation to the regulation of the
economy[20].
Barriers
to Green State
None the less, the state possess a certain paradoxical
or contradictory character by terms of inclusion and exclusion, emancipation
and oppression, inasmuch as environmental protection and exploitation[21]. As
for the reasons, the reality of the contemporary state can carry out rather
characterized by its complex structure struggles against the application of
both unidimensional moral principles and simple demonstrative models. Since the
state is constituted by a concentration of pressure coming from configurations
of resources that result from the active pursuit of power. Secondly, the
history and anthropology of the modern state centres on imperatives of capital
accumulation, and the coercion of military purposes. Its economic and military
functions are integral keys of the modern state's real form, and the notion of
growth is central to all development strategies[22].
Thus the public and private exploitation of the
physical environment for economic growth, for the reason of pursuit power and
military success is built into the basic nature of the state. As developing
countries will suffer most from a lack of capacities to address the social,
economic and environmental problems within their territorial boundaries, it can
be predicted that the capabilities of these states will be adjusted mostly by
global environmental change[23].
Further, environmental protection and preservation would seem to run counter to
the main imperatives constituting states: the need to secure economic stability
and growth, the need to keep social order[24].
According to most economists, certain problems arising
from the production process are “externalities”, which must be dealt with by
the state as the vehicle for compulsory collective action. The state is
responsible for “public goods”, such as the pollution control. None the less,
economic theory does not describe the “real” state, but an ideal. Yet the state is a real, historical and
anthropological entity, and not an ideal theoretical construct[25]. For this, state and state institutions are
often in a contradictory position as promoters of economic development and as
environmental regulators. New institutions, notably the environmental review
process, have been developed to legitimate the ongoing state and private
activities, that creates a public controversy surrounding the environmental
review[26].
Therefore, under these conditions, the environmental
problems dispatched to the “periphery” of international relations.[27]
IR scholars did not begin writing about the environment until the late 1980s,
when, following a general rise in public and governmental environmental concern
and the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED)[28]. The study of global environmental politics
has become the study of intergovernmental negotiations, institution-building
and state effectiveness.
Besides, the developing of international environmental
relations lead to global relations among regional and local actors rather than
the traditional inter-state relations by governments create international
agreements to resolve environmental, economic, technological, and legal
problems that they could not solve by themselves. In the absence of a
transnational government, governments of states realize that they need new
rules, multilateral institutions, and governance structures to promote
cooperation, prevent and resolve conflicts.[29]
Transnational Environmental Protection
As global relations was begun by the phenomenon of
transnational relations by further conditioning of the role of nation states.
Even where the state still preserves a principal focus, the traditional notion
of national security becomes confused, since the environment does not recognize
neither political nor territorial boundaries[30].
The state-centric focus of much international relations theory has
traditionally omitted the former mentioned roles and activities of non-state
actors –environmental movements, corporations, or even scientists for instance
– in influencing existing, and even creating their own, governance institutions[31].
Construction of transnational environmental protection
was stimulated over the past four decades through intensive international
conference diplomacy. Among others, focusing on the most significant ones,
beginning in 1972 with the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment, a
series of major United Nations-sponsored international conferences discussed on
formulating action plans for answering global environmental problems. Twenty
years after Stockholm, the above mentioned United Nations Conference on
Environment and Development (UNCED) convened in June 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, to
make governments to rethink economic development and find ways to stop the
pollution of the planet, propose renewable energy and sustainable development[32].
Although not reaching all of its aims, UNCED made
three notable success in promoting international environmental legal rules.
First, the Conference adopted the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity;
second, the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)
was designed. Third, the Conference drafted and adopted by consensus Agenda 21,
a non-binding, voluntarily implemented action plan of the United Nations with
regard to sustainable development. Agenda 21 presents a blueprint for state
action that both builds on existing laws and serves to initiate new ones. International
agreements for regulating high seas activities were negotiated by special
United Nations conferences, as well as by ad hoc multilateral arrangements. The
1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) supplies the
contemporary framework that defines the rights and responsibilities of nations
in their use of the world's oceans, establishing guidelines for businesses, the
environment, and the management of marine natural resources.
Life could not exist without the Earth’s atmosphere,
in respond to the various threats of human activities, the Vienna Convention
for the Protection of the Ozone Layer was negotiated in 1985 and the 1987
Montreal Protocol set out a schedule for the progressive phase out of
chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). The Kyoto Protocol was in 1997 and entered into
force in 2005. The Kyoto Protocol is an international agreement linked to the
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which commits its
Parties by setting internationally binding emission reduction targets. clearly
suggests that international environmental regimes
These arrangements are connected to international
networks of expertise and funding. Partnerships can, at least theoretically,
assemble a coalition of partners from a worldwide environmentally protective
organizations, national and international. That legal frameworks established
for internationally managing activities in the oceans, atmosphere, and
highlights a critical realization by governments that no state or group of
states can satisfactorily deal with these global problems alone[33].
Conclusion
Regarding the challenges for the green state, there is
a promotion of capitalist accumulation, the way in which the state is
inevitably bound up with. Second, the “democratic deficits” of the liberal
democratic state, inasmuch as the liberal state is regarded by many green
political theorists as unable to respond ecological problems in a proper
manner. According most of the green theorist, the “green state” not merely a
liberal democratic state that is managed by a green party government with a set
of programmatic environmental goals. A democratic state that made commitment to
answer environmental problems and are informed by ecological democracy rather
than liberal democracy.
The environmental change increases the mutual
dependence of nation states, to resolve environmental problems, the governments
and states realized that the environmental multilateral environmental treaties,
declarations, and international environmental standards means the only solution
the current threats. It also gave rise of the concept sustainable development
and “ecological modernization” as competitive strategies of states[34].
By facing environmental problems makes states confront
a situation in which complex transnational problems arise, that a single state
or small group of states not capable to resolve on their own, the state
according to green definition rather manifests in a transboundary democracy
than a selfish behavior protecting its territory. Thus it poses a fundamental
challenge to traditional notions and concept of the nation, of national
sovereignty, and the organization of democracy in terms of an enclosed
territorial space[35].
It requires new democratic procedures, new decision rules, new forms of
political representation and participation by extend the legal space and frame
for certain non-governmental actors, civil societies and also requires more
understandings among states and peoples. This perspective ultimately argues
that a more democratic, or participatory, vision of global governance, and may can
lead toward an environmentally sustainable world.
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