Environmental space

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The environmental space (also Umweltnutzungsraum, engl. "Environmental utilization space") designates a possible space of resource extraction and emissions, within which a society can produce and consume without exceeding the limits of the respective resource regeneration and emissions absorption.

history

The Dutch environmental economist Johannes B. Opschoor has proposed the concept of environmental space as an instrument for sustainable development in various publications since the late 1980s . He understands the earth as a complex infrastructure that makes resources available to society and absorbs emissions and waste from societal metabolism. The limits of the environmental space result from the permanent possible use of the environmental space, i.e. H. a use that leaves the environmental infrastructure intact.

The boundaries of the environmental space are dynamic: overexploitation of renewable resources can result in a reduced environmental space at a later point in time, just as high emissions and waste can reduce the absorption capacity of the environment. The environmental space instrument can, in principle, at least according to Opschoor's proposal, be used in terms of both strong and weak sustainability. The instrument necessarily presupposes the environment as a whole, but does not claim a necessary complementarity between certain resources and produced capital ; but neither does it rule out such complementarities.

application

The environmental space initially functioned as a regulatory term for various national sustainability plans; among others in the Netherlands (1992) and in Germany (1996). In these reports, the environmental space is linked to the concept of fairness of a per capita right to the same use of environmental space. Friends of the Earth (German branch: Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz Deutschland ) produced a European report in 1994; Latin American sustainability reports in Brazil, Chile and Uruguay followed in 1998 as part of the Programa Cono sur Sustenable. As in the European environmental report, another normative consideration comes into play here: the boundaries of the environmental space should not be exceeded, but the minimum use of environmental space necessary for a dignified life must not be undercut either (“linea de dignidad”). After all, at the beginning of the 21st century, the environmental space is increasingly being used for global analyzes. Among other things, it was discussed as an instrument for a global redistribution tax.

The ecological footprint, an environmental accounting tool developed by Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees, is often assigned to the environmental approach (see ecological footprint ).

criticism

The instrument was particularly sharply criticized in its use for national sustainability reports. From a communitarian point of view, it is argued that the operationalization of sustainable development through the environmental space, the identity-creating, community function of nature cannot be understood, because the operationalization is based on a liberal-individualistic concept of modernity.

According to another objection, the environmental space approach is inadequate because it does not sufficiently take into account the functional spaces in which social actors do not live as "natural beings" in the environmental space, but as employees and entrepreneurs, families or associations. The demand for compliance with environmental boundaries is therefore a “dream of an environmental space”, rather a sociological declaration of bankruptcy than an instrument for sustainable development.

From an ecological point of view, the objection is that the environmental space reduces the diversity of nature and amounts to a socially and ecologically questionable central environmental planning.

literature

  • Altvater, Elmar: “The dream of an environmental space. To the study by the Wuppertal Institute on a 'future-proof Germany' ". Sheets for German and international politics. January 1996, pp. 82-91
  • Arler, Finn: "Ecological Utilization Space: Operationalizing Sustainability." Moral and Practical Reasoning in Environmental Practice. Light, Andrew and Avner de-Shalit (eds) Cambridge, Mass .: MIT Press, 2003. 155-185
  • Buitenkamp, ​​M., Venner, H. Warms, T .: Sustainable Netherlands: Amsterdam: Vereniging Milieudefensie, 1992.
  • BUND / Misereor, eds . : Sustainable Germany: a contribution to global sustainable development . Basel: Birkhäuser, 1996. Sachs, Wolfgang, Reinhard Loske and Manfred Linz. Greening of the North. A Post-Industrial Blueprint for Ecology and Equity. London: Zed Books, 1998.
  • Haber, Wolfgang: “On the theoretical foundation of environmental planning under the guiding principle of sustainable, environmentally friendly development”. Perspectives of spatial and environmental planning: in view of globalization, European integration and sustainable development. Ulrike Weland (ed.). Berlin: Verlag for Science and Research, 1999. 63–80.
  • Hayward, Tim: " Thomas Pogge 's Global Resource Dividend: A Critique and an Alternative". Journal of Moral Philosophy. Vol. 2 (3): 317-332
  • Opschoor, Hans: “Sustainable Development, the Economic Process and Economic Analysis”. Environment, economy and sustainable development. Johannes (Hans) B. Opschoor (editor). Association of Post-Keynsian Studies. Wolters-Nordhoff Publishers, 1992.
  • Opschoor: “Ecospace and the fall and rise of throughput intensity”. Ecological Economics 15 (1995) 137-140
  • Spangenberg, Joachim, Ed .: Towards Sustainable Europe. A Study from the Wuppertal Institute for Friends of the Earth Europe. Luton / Bedfordshire, Friends of the Earth Publications. 1994
  • Wackernagel, Mathis and William E. Rees: Our ecological footprint: reducing human impact on the earth; illustrated by Phil Testemale . Gabriola Island, BC; Philadelphia, PA: New Society Publishers, 1996.