Nature, State and Economy: : A Political Economy of the Environment

This is an ambitious book, aiming to integrate a scientific understanding of the environment with our understanding of society and state. More precisely

the heart of this book … is not environmental problems but rather the conditions that lead to their production and the constraints on collective action in the search both to solve current problems and to ensure that new ones do not appear (p. 13).

It is also a pessimistic book which highlights the constraints to achieving the commitment to sustainability expressed by the 1987 World Commission on Environment and Development. These constraints are not so much grounded in our lack of scientific understanding, although Johnston highlights the complexity and interdependence of ecological systems, as in arrangements for production and governance. Johnston reviews the environment and environmental issues, production and resource use, and the modern state. He concludes that the role of the state in sustaining the mode of production precludes it from resolving environmental problems: “a sustainable relationship between people and nature is very unlikely to be achieved within the political economy which now predominates in almost all of the world” (p. 241).

Ron Johnston is well‐placed to pursue the integration of environment, production and politics. He is a distinguished geographer whose contributions range authoritatively across a number of fields, including resource use, urban development, and political economy. Since the 1970s he has observed the transformation of the state and the political and electoral systems which underpin it. His empirical emphasis has been on Britain, but the scope and relevance of his work is much wider.

The first edition of Nature, State and Economy was published in 1989. This, the second edition, reflects the greater profile of the environment, in large part attributed to the Earth Summit of 1992 and the increasing pressure confronting it. It offers an even gloomier prognosis.

While the aims of the book are more relevant than ever, and the constraints it outlines real, the criticism can be made that the bulk of substantive literature covered is aged. Despite some updating, the book draws heavily on the theoretical literature of the 1970s and earlier. This may be defensible in the light of the basic nature of much of the content, introducing rather than exploring the relevant fields. This means that such things as the changing nature of the state, and questions over its role in a global political economy, local governance in an increasingly managerial milieu, and the impact of the current information revolution on the capacity for collective action are not dealt with in any depth.

The book works systematically through the relevant subject‐matter. The natural environment is dealt with by explaining the systems approach that physical geographers are familiar with, highlighting the inter‐connectedness, complexity, and fragility of ecosystems, and the capacity of human activity to disrupt them (Chapter 2). Chapter 3 deals with modes of production as the basis for examining the nature and behaviour of human societies, and the way in which they interact with the environment. Chapter 4 deals with concepts central to the analysis of resource and land use, confirming the potential for resource use to impact on the environment. Like much of the book, it provides more by way of overview and background than new insights.

The following two chapters contain the substance of Johnston’s argument. Chapter 5 deals with the nature of the state, and the different ways in which it may interact with and contribute to both capitalist and socialist modes of production. It outlines the role of the state in public life and the capacity of different forms to undertake the collective action necessary to deal with the complexities of environmental problems. While Chapter 5 deals with principles underlying the state, Chapter 6 focuses on its operations and, particularly, on the conditions for raising environmental issues on the political agenda. Johnston highlights the difficulty of shifting priorities in a direction which might threaten short‐term profitability, given the role of the state in promoting accumulation, and the vulnerability of those in power to the influence of interest groups.

Governments must tread a fine line between policies which might create a rationality crisis, by prejudicing productivity and profitability, and those which might create a legitimation crisis, by prejudicing the welfare of individuals. Environmental movements could do both, threatening the immediate welfare of business and the individual. In part, this dilemma is resolved by dealing with the former at the centre and the latter at the local level. The resulting spatial and hierarchical separation of responsibilities contributes to the frustration of environmental movements.

Johnston discusses the sorts of political actions environmental movements might take, documenting their relatively limited success in the face of the bureaucratic nature and short‐term focus of the state, and in the light of the complexity and indeterminacy of many environmental problems.

The actions available to the state to address environmental issues are outlined, including education, regulation and pricing. Success stories are limited. Statutory land use planning is perhaps the most obvious and entrenched area of “environmental” legislation, although even this is ambiguous if it can be construed as an instrument of development (see, for example, Memon, 1993, dealing with the New Zealand context prior to 1991). Problems which require international collaboration remain the most complex, the most contested, and potentially the least amenable to resolution (other than through statements of protocol and treaties of principle).

Johnston’s review leads, not surprisingly, to a disconcerting conclusion. Having described the limited capacity of our political institutions to respond to environmental challenges, Johnston is obliged to canvass alternatives to the ascendant, conservative, liberal democratic model of governance. The lack of popular credibility of the alternatives ‐ such as O’Riordan’s (1981) new global order, centralised authoritarianism, authoritarian commune, or anarchist solution ‐ and the failure of green political alternatives to be taken seriously, mean that we must address the capacity of capitalism itself to change. Herein lies the core dilemma, and the fount of this book’s pessimism:

the creation of environmental problems is a necessary outcome of the dominant mode of production, and their resolution is difficult because the only institutions which might be mobilised to promote sustainable development exist to promote the interest of those who benefit from the status quo (p. 255).

The book operates at two levels. First, it introduces and surveys the disciplinary domains which must be embraced to understand the intractability of environmental problems, and for us to make progress towards breaking that down. It makes a useful contribution, and provides clear conclusions, even if unable to offer a “blueprint for the future”. This substantive contribution, however, is somewhat simplified by the second level at which it works. This is as an introductory, inter‐disciplinary text relevant to the environmental challenge. It outlines key ideas from a range of mainly social science disciplines. True, it contains a bias towards the endeavours of geographers which may be distracting to other disciplines. This should not be the case, however. This bias serves several purposes. It does highlight the role geographers have played in assembling, exploring and, on occasion, extending the domains of both natural and social sciences. Precisely because he pursues this tradition, Johnston succeeds in making introductory material available in a form which will serve undergraduates in a range of applied science and social sciences.

The book also reveals the difficulties geographers have had in grappling with the explosion of knowledge, ideas, and speculation when drawing on other disciplines to interpret the world about them. This, in turn, demonstrates the difficulty of painting the bigger picture against a postmodern tendency to academic fragmentation. It would be a shame, however, if this precluded use of the text in relevant programmes, in the environmental sciences, for example, in economics, or sociology. Indeed, academic preciousness, when translated into a limited capacity to cross disciplinary boundaries, may itself be a significant constraint on resolving environmental dilemmas.

In New Zealand, where the government has mandated sustainable management of the environment as a national priority through the Resource Management Act (1991), the weak interface between physical scientists and policy analysts has been a major frustration. Johnston’s work demonstrates the progress that might be made in our understanding of environmental issues if we can rise above our disciplinary conceits. Unfortunately, Johnston focuses on the failings of liberal democracy under late capitalism, without addressing the relative failure of the academic and scientific communities to penetrate the policy and investment arenas sufficiently to modify perceptions, values and decisions in favour of the environment.

Academics do a disservice to society when they fail to explore in an accessible manner the multi‐disciplinary character of nature, society and state. Johnston’s book goes some way towards redressing this failure. While laudable, it does so at the cost of some simplification. For example, lack of exploration of postmodernism and its implications for production, society and environment limits the contribution to any debate on relevant structures for environmental regulation. Lack of depth of discussion on the rapidly changing role of technology in the mode of production constrains his thoughts for the future (Castells, 1996).

The bleakness of Johnston’s conclusions may have been tempered by an exploration of the potential for reshaping democracy in a world in which the global and the local may jointly come to mean more than the national state, and by some consideration of the capacity of capitalism to transform itself in the face of crisis. The answer to the environmental crisis may lie not so much in the resilience, or otherwise, of ecosystems, but in the resilience of the capitalist mode of production as it shifts from a materials to a knowledge base.

Overall, the book is very clearly written, an excellent introduction to a number of important areas. It will be valuable as a supplementary text in a range of undergraduate programmes. Nature, State and Economy also provides a useful starting‐point for those embarking on inter‐disciplinary studies of environmental problems, and clarifies at least why the answers to some of the critical questions of the day remain unsatisfactory.