Dr. Ingmar Lippert

Managing the environment
13th September 2012, Thursday, 6.00pm

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Abstract:

Since the 1970s governments increasingly attended to so-called environmental problems. Within the last two decades companies joined this movement to gain more attention. In the early 1990s discussion of so-called sustainable development emerged within global policy discourse. In this historical context we can identify that both nation states and corporations institutionalised environmental protection and sustainable development. Ministries formed, agencies were founded, firms employed corporate environmental managers. Environmental work needed to be done by particular people. Here they are: agents who are supposed to bring about sustainable development; some frame their project as the greening of capitalism. I study their day-to-day work practices. This talk surveys the work of environmental managers in corporations or nature reserves. What generalizations can we make from these cases?