Environmental problems and the limits of environmental policy

Abstract

The concern about the effectiveness of environmental policies has been increasing in face of their unsatisfactory results, the public acceptability of environmental threats to societies and species and to be facing great complexity problems. Based on literature, this article addresses how the characteristics of environmental issues can influence the political treatment of this field, contributing "intrinsic" and partly to the intricate process of formulation and implementation of environmental policy. Features such as multidimensional and multidisciplinary nature, complexity and uncertainty, irreversibility and the social interest conflicts concerning environmental problems make environmental sustainability issues a new questioning front to the institutions built in modernity. Institutions such as the State, market, democracy and environmental policy face serious epistemological and political constraints to deal with environmental problems, since they fragment and simplify these constraints and largely subordinate them to the logic of capitalist social organization. Thus, the low effectiveness and the cosmetic nature of environmental policy, or beyond it, the environmental crisis, must be tackled both in politics and in how it recognizes and forwards new and traditional demands of the State and society.