This question – what next for environmentalism? – arose from a reflection piece (which is available on the WWF-SA website) that I wrote for the Ecomodernist Manifesto (EM), which was launched in the US last year. The EM was written by 18 experts associated with the Breakthrough Institute, in California, US. The engagement with the EM document highlighted the need for a wider discussion on environmentalism.

The EM proposes a new type of environmentalism that is pragmatic and context driven, and entails new cleaner technologies that bring about long-term transformation of society and the economy but have a lower impact on the environment.

Why do the EM proponents say so? They argue that the era we are entering, called the Anthropocene Age – where humans are becoming the major force behind geological change – can be turned into a force for good. They dub it the Good Anthropocene, so we need not be so dystopian – the world is full of unprecedented promise. There are a few things that the EM emphasises, which, its proponents argue, can reduce the impacts of nature and foster better economies. The main thesis of the EM is to speed up modernisation through better technologies to “make room for more nature”. It proposes several ways of getting there: The trend towards greater urbanisation and intensification of agriculture can reduce the land mass needed to accommodate humans and the things they need for their survival. New technologies allow us to dematerialise or achieve relative and absolute decoupling. This means that we can reduce our environmental impacts for the same level of economic growth and development (gradually) and then achieve absolute decoupling by dematerialising when demand for materials peaks and, later, declines as we become more efficient in the way we produce and consume materials.

The proponents of the EM also argue that there has to be a lot more public investment to speed up the development of these new technologies. This investment will not come from the private sector. The EM proponents also propose that much of this investment must be in new-generation nuclear and other cleaner technologies.

As you will notice, the EM proponents favour technoeconomic transformation and differ from mainstream environmentaism in that their disposition is not to preach catastrophe and fear but a renewed faith in humanity and technology.

While it is intellectually important to engage the EM, this document has some weaknesses. It is a product of thinkers whose worldview is shaped by developed economies. Although the EM does not dismiss poverty and inequality, it comes short of engaging these issues in a robust manner and reflecting a nuanced understanding of the environmental and development debates in poor, emerging economies.

The EM itself runs the risk of reducing itself to being just another additional ‘faction’ within the ever-increasing groups of environmentalists who represent a multitude of fractured and always disagreeing groups.

The challenge for the EM is what thinkers like Bruno Latour and Ulrich Beck invite us to do: not to embrace more politics of nature but to focus on the shaping of a new modernity. This, I believe, entails working from within environmentalism and also working oneself out of environmentalism in the long run, as the agenda of environmentalism should be incorporated into a new kind of economic modernisation.

The EM is putting the cat among the pigeons, so to speak, as it is challenging conventional environmentalism, which is perceived as being hyperdystopian, antidevelopment and focused on single cause issues rather than the bigger picture. Proponents of conventional environmentalism are also criticised for being serial rejectionists – they reject everything without offering a way out or putting in practice what they proclaim to be the way out. If anything, people watching the serial rejectionists would be correct in their observation that environmentalists are great in deconstructing the status quo but fail to engage a messy world where hard trade-offs have to be made between environmental concerns and development.

Coming back to the EM – perhaps the reason why many environmentalists have an allergic reaction to the EM is that it holds out the promise, unlike the position of serial rejectionists, that things can be improved. If we see the brighter side of things, we will realise that, despite continued inequality and poverty, human civilisation has also made considerable progress, and this progress has been built on the modernisation of our economies.

Environmentalists are an odd mix of people whose ideologies vary from ecospiritualism to materialist outlooks on how we deal with the relation between humans and nature, and between nature and the economy. The solutions environmentalists offer vary from a values outlook to those that hold that anything that comes from the existing system – which is capitalist and technocratic – must be demolished and a new world must be created from the ashes. It is true that the system must be changed but a new system cannot be created out of thin air.

Without a rejuvenation of environmentalism, ‘what’s next’ for environmentalism is more of the same: living in its own bubble and fearing not only what is happening to nature but also the world of other humans where often tough, untidy and complicated compromises have to be made not to go backwards but to make real progress.

The future of environmentalism, in my view, lies not in more environmentalism but in working with others to reshape the character and purpose of the economy. This is where the real fight is, and this requires a broader engagement of social groups outside one’s own camp, including people who differ with us ideologically.