Novek, Joel and Karen Kampen. 1992. "Sustainable or unsustainable development? An analysis of an environmental controversy." Canadian Journal of Sociology 17 (3): 249-273.

Summary:

The authors suggest that "...the relationship between economic expansion and environmental preservation remains fundamentally contradictory" (p. 250). The controversy surrounding two pulp and paper megaprojects (ALPAC, the Japanese-owned Alberta-Pacific mill to be sited on the Athabasca River in northern Alberta and the expansion of the Repap mill in The Pas of northern Manitoba) is analyzed with respect to these fundamental contradictions. According to the authors' analysis, there are three reasons for conflict:

1) The information society model fails to provide a panacea for non-polluting, non-depleting growth in the industrial world; specifically, the predictions of a paperless information society is representative of a technocentric ideology. The information society requires paper products at increasing rates pressuring pulp and paper industries to increase their material production. The subsequent levels of pollution and resource depletion creates a conflict between economic expansion and environmental preservation.

2) The globalization of world trade has transformed distributional conflicts over environmental costs or externalities. The authors argue, "the geographical separation of consumption from resource harvesting masks the distributional and environmental consequences of a globalized economy" (p. 256-7). Poorer countries tend to pay the price for economic expansion in terms of resource extraction, pollution and other environmental costs. Poorer countries also tend to pay in terms of job loss. The inclusion of foreign industry in the competition for a limited resource base threatens the traditional economic activities of native people.

3) Finally, the authors argue that the state and state institutions are in a contradictory position as promoters of economic development and as environmental regulators. The environmental assessment and review process is the state's primary mechanism in meeting both these objectives. The state's commitment to environmental protection, however, is often times compromised due to a long-standing loyalty to economic development. In the case of the two pulp and paper mills, public concern forced the state to attend to environmental concerns.

Keywords: ecological, economic and social sustainability; neo-classical economics; globalizationinternational and intergenerational equity; participatory democracy