Ecological modernization, governance, and globalization - Epilogue

This symposium has addressed the transformation of environmental governance under conditions of globalization from a variety of disciplinary, theoretical, and geographical perspectives. Although some contributors come from a more optimistic/salutatory perspective and others from a more pessimistic/critical viewpoint, all have in common an assessment that the contemporary period is unique in terms of the constellation of social forces on national, supra-, and subnational levels that determine environmental governance. High-speed global circulation of information, goods, and services; global and regional as well as local environmental problems; emerging transnational forms of governance paralleled by so-called subpolitical arrangements; a global civil society; and the reconfiguration of the nation-state within an increasingly complex matrix of social forces-all are important characteristics of this era contributing to reconfigurations of environmental governance. What have we learned from these contributions? What pieces still are missing in our understanding of this puzzling new world of environmental governance? In this necessarily brief epilogue, the editors suggest a few general conclusions and outline a number of promising areas for further research.