Dimensions of Limits to Environmental Management: Reflections Drawing on Recent Scholarship in the Field of Science and Technology Studies

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This paper explores recent studies on ecological modernisation practices in their relation to organisational and societal fields. A set of such practices are often signified as environmental management. We will develop a comparative perspective on such practices and their limits.
Often, environmental management is construed as apt to solve local as well as global environmental problems. Examples are geo-engineering, the Clean Development Mechanism, Corporate Environmental Management Systems or Natural Resource Mangement. However, also practices which are commonly not classified as "environmental management" in itself, such as recycling done by individuals or travelling to academic conferences, may be orientated towards reconciling the conflicts between capitalist dynamics and environmental protection. All such practices are socially, politically, economically, but also materially and naturally, limited. We revisit studies on a variety of limits to generate a multidimensional approach for their analysis. The paper concludes by pointing to the performativity of both environmental management as well as its limits and draws out this paper's implications for the empirical study of management of environments.