Different ways of knowing: a communicative turn toward sustainability

Despite the urgency of the ecological crisis the steady continuation of env ironmental degradation suggests that new ways of interpreting problems and acting with environmental integrity may need to be considered. This paper d raws on a broad range of contemporary theory to argue that the conventional conceptualization of environmental problems has remained a largely discipl inary-based exercise that has relied on abstracting the environmental issue s from their real-world complexity. A practical articulation of the main en vironmental narratives reveals self-referential discourses whose disciplina ry-based practices have insulated these approaches from a broad range of co ntemporary theorising and different ways of knowing. The dominance of these approaches in environmental policy development has led to the continued ac celeration of environmental degradation despite widespread political and so cial interest in its abatement. This paper provides a critique of methodolo gies derived from the assumptions of instrumental rationalism, and contempl ates the potential for alternative 'communicative' approaches and strategie s for dealing with environmental policy development and implementation. It is argued that a communicative approach to planning for sustainability repr esents a more appropriate strategy for mobilising a currently impotent envi ronmental movement. A communicative approach by explicitly dealing with the assumptions and motivations of contested positions in the sustainability d ebate, it is argued, offers the most pragmatic way of developing change str ategies to deal with the complex issues surrounding environmental policy de velopment and implementation. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights res erved.