insufficient political will to broaden the debate, the narrow definition of issues, the inability to
question the authority of existing organisational structures, the absence of accountability, bureau-
cratic politics, lack of integrated information and absence of incentives to participate in strategies
for change Brengha 1990.
The emphasis in this paper is to provide a detailed argument of how an environmental dis-
course that recognizes and incorporates the social construction of meaning in communicative pro-
cesses can more effectively accommodate the de- velopment of pragmatic environmental policy. In
structuring this argument insights from a range of discourses will be integrated to support and ex-
tend a culturally informed approach to sustain- able policy development processes.
2. Sustainability
There is a mass of normative literature offering prescriptions for the ideal approach to sustain-
ability. Yet what is clear is that different concep- tions of sustainability tend to embody distinctive
systems of meaning which vary in respect to their foundational premises Meppem and Gill, 1998.
This is reflected in the elastic quality of the cur- rent environmental debate that results in competi-
tion among discourses and disciplines to dominate policy. The Brundtland Commission WCED,
1987: 43 attempted to unite environmental fac- tions by defining sustainable development as ‘de-
velopment that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future gener-
ations to meet their own needs’. However, ambi- guity
surrounding the
seminal Brundtland
definition of sustainability has led some to conjure up images of revolution against a wasteful pollut-
ing capitalist system or alternatively some inter- pret an image of the steering hand of technology
modulating excess and allowing ‘business as usual’ Giddens, 1990; Sagoff, 1988.
With Brundtland, a notion of sustainable devel- opment was born that accommodates both devel-
opment and environmental imperatives Verburg and Wiegel, 1998. This plunged the environmen-
tal discourse deeper into the veils of their various disciplines to find recipes and definitions to show
how this could be done and thus inherit the potential to dominate the discourse see Pearce et
al., 1989. This heightened political and academic awareness led to a conceptual shift within admin-
istrations so that environmental degradation be- came an accepted problem for governments.
Hajer 1995a uses the term ecological moderniza- tion to describe this conceptual shift where prob-
lem definitions compete for the focus of the debate. What has occurred is a confused response
leading to the promotion of power struggles about ‘truths’ and definitions that neglects consid-
eration of underlying epistemological founda- tions. As a consequence ‘[R]unning parallel with
the process of defining environmental problems and their solutions is a whole agenda of social
change that is effectively avoided by the prevailing policy making practices’ Hajer 1995a: 276.
Discipline-specific approaches, which refer to schools of thought that are largely self-referential
with a clearly bounded body of theory, have provided a huge range of innovations and tech-
niques for documenting and measuring environ- mental degradation and some creative ideas for
arresting this in certain cases. However, there is fairly general agreement in the environmental dis-
course that more needs to be done. It is generally agreed that environmental degradation is continu-
ing at an accelerating rate globally see, Korten, 1997. In addition there are severe limitations to
scientific knowledge in the area of sustainability see Blowers, 1993. Von Schomberg 1993, 21
points out that ‘in the analysis of the structure of epistemic discussions we have to establish the idea
that there should be an acknowledgment of scien- tific disagreement’. Lack of scientific consensus is
ignored by disciplinary approaches which habitu- ally favour the myth of ‘abstract certainty’.
Alternative sustainability conceptions, drawing on insights from communicative planning and
critical theory, reflect very different epistemologi- cal and ontological assumptions. Instead of the
technocratictechnocorporatist forms characteris- tic of disciplinary approaches, communicative ap-
proaches
promote discursive
process forms
Dryzek, 1990. This altered consciousness is reflected in attempts to develop the meaning of
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
