the widely cited Brundtland definition of sustain- ability leading to a drift into approaches that
recognize multiple discourses, diversity of cultures and freedom democracy as essential elements of
the sustainability debate Myerson and Rydin, 1994. Harou et al. 1994: 15 emphasize the prag-
matics of these alternative approaches, suggesting that ‘new policies established through a consulta-
tion process which determines the values given by citizens of a given society would be reflected in
new environmental standards’. It will be argued that the meaning of sustainability represents the
contested ground between development interests and environmental concerns. So that sustainabil-
ity represents a site of conflict rather than a mediating ‘metaphor’ that accommodates all in-
terests. New participatory and communicative policy processes need to be developed for effective
environmental policy which can accommodate the idiosyncratic attributes of sustainable develop-
ment, which include: 1 the lack of a clearly defined goal for strategy; 2 the value-based na-
ture of defining strategy goals; and; 3 diverse and unclear stakeholder interest in terms of
power, representation and organization.
3. Dominant sustainability narratives
Healey 1997: 183 describes the current envi- ronmental discourse as having four main narra-
tives; 1 the environment as a ‘stock of assets’ see Glasson et al., 1994; Costanza et al., 1998;
2 environmental systems and carrying capacity see Rees, 1992; 3 the environment as ‘our
world’ see Lovelock, 1979; Naess, 1989; and 4 the environment as a cultural conception see
Blowers, 1993. The aim of promoting a reflexive grand narrative for sustainability is to promote
the consideration of the environmental debate as a contested space based on conflicting stories. A
grand narrative refers to a dominant ‘world view’ or ‘belief system’ which permeates all social inter-
action
justifying, reinforcing
and moulding
change. This encourages the broadening of the historical and theoretical context of environmen-
talism which is necessary for more effective strat- egy development Wallace et al. 1996: 27. Each
sustainability narrative is taken to represent a broad sectional interest group. This discursive
approach aims to place each narrative within a broader historical context in a bid to reveal their
underlying belief systems and value sets. These stories describe different ‘world views’ of common
concepts Dryzek, 1997. A discursive approach promotes a reflexive communicative rationality
for the development of shared meaning in sustain- ability planning. The revealed narratives of the
environmental discourse display a commonality in seeking universal ‘truth claims’ which, therefore,
overlooks much contemporary theorising.
We will consider first the stocks and assets narrative which has been the dominant frame-
work for determining trade-offs for policy deci- sions
in the
environmental discourse.
This narrative assumes that ‘social reality’ can be cap-
tured through measurement. Measurement will reveal how things work, their relative importance
and therefore how to value things. Sustainability is portrayed as a balance sheet where the positive
and negative implications of actions can be known with a high degree of certainty in advance.
Such ‘truth claims’, based on a quantifying pro- clivity, make this narrative attractive for public
policy analysts and economists. By promoting measures to describe an ‘objective reality’ the
stocks and assets narrative fits neatly with neoclassical economics. With the extension of
neoclassical theory into the ‘new terrain’ of con- tingent valuation for environmental decision mak-
ing the influence of this narrative is extended into the biosphere and beyond Analysts pursuing ‘so-
lutions’ within this narrative’s framework enforce the collapse of all considerations into a quan-
tifiable comparator measure. Such self-referential systems of thought define, extend and re-invent
themselves, leading proponents to re-orient in iso- lation from the creative potential of a broad range
of contemporary thinking. Harper and Stein 1992: 110 suggest this narrative ‘epitomizes the
application of the technocraticscientistic fallacy in its approach to public planning; focusing on
applying value-free Weberian social science to improving decision making by the State’. In prac-
tice, environmental policy decisions are endorsed and legitimized by incorporating the coordinating
agencies value criteria as the foundational premise of the analysis Meppem and Gill, 1998.
However, the central plot of this sustainability narrative posits the analyst as a value-free
methodological technician who manipulates fac- tual data, allowing the avoidance of structural
subjectivity. Such utilitarian planning processes seek to maximize the ‘public good’ which they
claim is determined exclusively in the representa- tive political domain. The homogeneity of their
quantifying applications is assured through re- course to myriad assumptions that implicitly
structure the acceptable range of ‘ways of know- ing’ open to this narrative. This posture of moral
neutrality of course reinforces and protects the value parameters of the status quo, preventing
any creative or effective environmental change strategies. Clearly, such a stance is unreflective of
its historical and social construction. This sustain- ability storyline could be described as a belief in a
quantified unitary value appraisal system which subsumes dominance over multiplicity and diver-
sity to posit a ‘world view’ that excludes effective representation, promotes top down strategies, re-
inforces hegemony and dictates acceptable ‘ways of knowing’. This narrative excludes the very
attributes that we argue here are central to devel- oping meaning in sustainability. While the quan-
tifying techniques used by those who support a stocks and assets ‘world view’ have some potential
for contributing to a more broadly defined discur- sive environmental planning process, the unreflec-
tive and exclusive application of these techniques within the bounds of the stocks and assets narra-
tive act as a barrier to effective environmental change strategies.
The environmental systems and carrying capac- ity narrative encapsulates a broad range of scien-
tifically orientated research in the environmental discourse. These narratives rely on the rhetorical
tropes of the ‘scientific method’ to assert their influence. In an argument informed by a broad
range of contemporary ideas, Haraway 1992: 6 asserts that ‘scientific practice is literary practice,
writing based on jockeying for the power to stabi- lize definitions and standards for claiming some-
thing
to be
the case’.
These sustainability
narratives are characterized by incremental steps toward a knowable ‘truth’. While it must be em-
phasized that scientific insights have been crucial in alerting ‘society’ to the nature and extent of
ecological degradation, it has not proved an effec- tive medium for social and political change to
contain this degradation. In one sense it has as- sisted to polarise the sustainability debate through
it’s own internal lack of unity.
Scientific environmental disciplines have not been explicit in recognising the implications for
science emanating from the sociology of science, in particular the notion of a scientific paradigm as
popularized by Kuhn 1962. These insights posit scientific ‘truth claims’ within their broader social
context Jacobs, 1996. Mostly instead, a complex environmental issue is shrunk into a computer
simulation by an environmental systems and car- rying capacity story of the issue. This simulation
then becomes a ‘world view’ that reinvents itself. Policy advice on sustainability enjoined by this
narrative does not recognize the interconnected nature of social, environmental and economic
considerations and is therefore dislocated from the
issues-integrated complexity.
Baudrilland 1975 proposes the impossibility of escaping this
simulated reality which is reinforced by media ‘bites’ that entrench and at the same time define
the arguments. So that simulation defines the boundaries of the sustainability problem, which is
only an abstraction from the problems’ social complexity. Without the effective integration of
simulations in the political, socio-cultural policy process, through the explicit recognition of the
interplay of power and knowledge Gale, 1998, a communicative position is supportive of Bau-
drilland regarding the simulations’ potential to effect
societal change
and, therefore,
sustainability. Additionally, contemporary science has ‘leap
frogged’ the positivist, essentialist epistemology characteristic of environmental science through
the discovery of chaos and quantum physics see Prigogine and Stengers, 1984; Bohm and Peat,
1987; Funtowicz and Ravetz, 1993, 1994; Capra 1997. Conventional environmental simulations
used as foundations for policy have not been able to incorporate the implications from these altered
‘world views’. Mainzer 1996: 8 reminds us that
‘[c]alculations and computer assisted simulations of non-linear dynamics are limited in principle’.
These contemporary scientific insights recognize and emphasize relationships and set aside predic-
tion, thus displaying transdisciplinary characteris- tics. This has led Mainzer 1996: 8 to additionally
assert that in so doing ‘personal subjectivity is saved’. This statement reflects a recognition that
many scientific concepts, for instance, the criteria for a healthy ecosystem, are essentially value
judgements Norton, 1992: 35. Tacconi 1998 in a far reaching essay points out the complementar-
ities between post-normal science and construc- tivist methodologies and highlights the need to
further explore this potential in ecological eco- nomics. This consideration is completely over-
looked by much of today’s environmental science which ‘has become increasingly utilitarian and
reductionist in nature’ Wallace et al., 1996: 22. So that a communicative policy stance argues that
the potential of the environmental systems and carrying capacity narrative to contribute to sus-
tainability planning becomes dependent on their adherents internalising a broader range of con-
temporary thinking to couch their simulations within a broader societal framework see Holling,
1978; MacIntyre, 1984.
The ‘our world’ narrative is supported by those in the environmental debate with a pre-disposition
toward metaphysics and eco-religion. This narra- tive supports the idea that there is something
outside us with cognitive capacity, a ‘truth claim’. In doing so, this narrative displays an essentialism
that neglects diversity in ‘ways of knowing’. Much of postmodern philosophy, especially the work of
Derrida 1981, has focused on the deconstruction of Western metaphysics to reveal the socially and
linguistically mediated nature of meaning. Rather than drawing on the linguistic turn in philosophy
the ‘our world’ narrative draws on pre-Enlighten- ment thought characterized by religious domina-
tion
of societal
interaction to
promote environmental awareness. Additionally, this sus-
tainability narrative is informed by unreflective modern philosophy through its reliance on the
ability of the existence of the objective observer describing ‘objective’ physical phenomena, while
not caught up in the milieu of their times. Thus the ability for pure thought uncontaminated by
cultural conditioning operates in the domain of the conventionally ‘modern’. This purity of
thought in turn informs the construction of a ‘nature’ uncontaminated by human influence.
Deleuze and Parnet 1987 describe attempts for such a ‘return to nature’ as a ‘grotesque’ gesture.
‘Deleuze clearly holds that all of nature, including its human elements, is in constant flux and there is
no essential, foundational, or sacred state of na- ture to be found’ Hayden, 1997: 197. The ‘our
world’ sustainability narrative is doomed to be assigned ‘cult’ status without the ability to more
effectively draw out the underlying values es- poused by this position. Essentially the values,
until explicitly articulated in a particular context, cannot be effectively incorporated in discursively
orientated environmental policy development pro- cesses. Rather embedding these values within the
veils of ‘eco-religion’ makes them inaccessible in a broader socially constructed environmental policy
context which then allows the values of more dominant sustainability narratives to maintain
their hegemony.
The final sustainability narrative to be de- scribed supports the environment as a cultural
conception. This moral aesthetic concept pro- motes how we should think about environmental
issues and thus displays a modernist liberal or Marxist position, depending on the value set be-
ing promoted. This narrative purports to occupy a strategic panoptic vantage point from which to
view societal interaction. The positions taken by those supporting this narrative capture a broad
range of opinion makers in the environmental discourse. As Healey 1997: 184 posits, it is an
extension of the ‘humanitarian socialist project’. The various ‘truth claims’ espoused by this sus-
tainability narrative are once again exclusive and limit ‘ways of knowing’. The moral stance taken,
with unsurfaced value sets, promotes normative definitions for sustainability that abstract from
current cultural complexity, and in doing so sub- vert the potential influence of their underlying
values in structuring effective environmental strategies. By ignoring cultural complexity with its
attendant political and social relationships the implicit values of many environmental commenta-
tors have limited influence in defining contempo- rary environmental problems in policy processes.
This critique of the dominant environmental narratives is informed by a discursive approach
that categorizes sustainability narratives in an at- tempt to reveal the implicit politicalcultural de-
bate in environmentalism as being a barrier to effective policy development. These narratives are
shown to be competing for authority in a complex web of relationships woven together by the use
and abuse of power and knowledge see Foucault, 1980. Using a discursive construction of these
phenomena additionally leads us to see that ‘any given arrangement is non-essential except within a
particular sociohistorical regime of practice,’ Sampson, 1993: 1223. The result being that
while the sustainability narratives of the environ- mental discourse have ‘captured’ much of the
policy agenda the confusion emanating from con- tradictory narratives and value laden assumptions
has led to an impotent politics. This has led Rein and Schon 1993: 145 to ask, ‘what can possibly
be the basis for resolving conflicts of frames dis- ciplines, narratives, worldview when the frames
themselves determine what counts as evidence and how evidence is interpreted’, and how success is
evaluated. Here we look to the common reflective criteria of critical theory and communicative plan-
ning with their transdisciplinary orientations for insight. These approaches promote processes for
the articulation of shared meaning as a prelimi- nary and ongoing part of sustainable development
activity see Brown, 1997. Disciplinary-based rec- ommendations remain largely inactivated or inef-
fective because these have inadequate processes for
developing socially
shared meaning
of sustainability.
These alternative sustainability narratives select and highlight different features of the contested
issue. Hajer 1995b provides a valuable insight into the way environmental policy narratives de-
velop. The political agenda is challenged to facili- tate
processes to
grapple with
the deeply
embedded desire of the search for shared meaning which the sustainability concept implies. Without
this, ‘technofix’ is largely left as the dominant environmental policy option as it appeals to the
uncontested values of the dominant sustainability narratives. Even amidst the more widespread
recognition of the need for creative innovation, the environmental discourse is still dominated by
calls for ‘solutions’ based on ‘objective quantified data’ and ‘rational’ decision making. Myerson
and Rydin 1996a,b have termed such thinking the ‘answer culture’ and support the argument
that this orientation relies on outmoded problem structuring epistemology. Without the potential to
deal with complexity, arising from a range of transdisciplinary discourse insights which are in-
clusive of cultural diversity, the ‘answer culture’ perpetuates an impotent environmental politics.
The traditionally dominant sustainability narra- tives are predominantly insensitive to cultural infl-
uences, which has led to sustainability being a largely confused and inoperable concept. This oc-
curs due to the perceived need to work within a framework to make problems manageable. The
dominant instrumental rationalist approaches to sustainability are motivated by a desire to gain
more knowledge within the bounds of a particular culturaldisciplinary framework. Such approaches
neglect the importance of cultural diversity in sustainability
planning. Essentially
these ap-
proaches become increasingly isolated within their own cultural context leading to little opportunity
for their effective integration into sustainable de- velopment activity see Brown, 1997.
The general failure of policy to deal with sus- tainability has led to an increasing socialcultural
emphasis in the discourse see Daly and Cobb, 1989;
Francis, 1993;
Glasser et
al., 1994;
Bookchin, 1994; Myerson and Rydin, 1996b; Pa- padakis, 1996; O’Hara 1996; Dryzek, 1997; Nor-
ton et al. 1998; Meppem and Gill, 1998. Sustainability viewed as a non-essentialist grand
narrative promotes representative communicative styles of policy engagement, namely, the promo-
tion of ‘discursive community’ to enable the de- velopment of shared meaning. The promotion of
reflexive communication oriented toward shared meaning defines a process for the development of
effective environmental policy strategies. This ori- entation is pragmatic and context dependent. The
focus on deriving shared meaning of practical issues through communicative processes is neces-
sary to embrace a philosophical position that
incorporates diversity. This non-essentialist grand narrative
of sustainability
rejects theoretical
frameworks as the basis for a problem definition; instead attention is focused ‘on the arguments
that are reasonable and persuasive to the partici- pants in the relevant communities of inquiry’
Hoksbergen 1994: 686. These communities of inquiry, of course, include the diverse array of
stakeholders
that have
been identified
here through the revealed sustainability narratives, as
well as others that fall outside this particular categorization. These ‘discursive communities’
more imply an orientation for action that pro- motes diversity in participation than requiring
certain representative groups. Sustainability ‘calls for open communication and decision-making,
community and organizational learning, and co- operative approaches to management that cross
jurisdictional boundaries’ Wallace et al., 1996: 18. Recognition of the importance of language is
essential as it ‘is a representation of the culture in which we live and, as such, frames the possibilities
and meanings that are available to us’ Murphy, 1995: 212. This is the non-essentialist ‘grand nar-
rative’ of sustainability whose quest is the contin- ual enhancement of processes for culturally
defining meaning as a way of articulating the effective and efficient development of environ-
mental strategies.
4. Transdisciplinary sustainability
