Environment

The OECD led the development of international environmental governance in the early 1970s, when the Environment Committee and the Environment Directorate were established, in the context of social upheaval and the emergence of the new environmental movements. It helped to shape the norms, principles, and administrative structures for the protection of the environment, but it was also at the forefront in the questioning of the post-war economic growth paradigm. Since then, OECD’s environment work has entailed constant balancing and mediation between no-growth and pro-growth narratives – between radical environmentalism and the organisation’s dominant discourse grounded in economic liberalism. In the present context of increasingly apocalyptic visions and global environmental threats, the OECD can once again provide the kind of non-coercive and cooperative setting for the development of needed new narratives and policy approaches that overcome the pro- and no-growth divide. Further research could explore the operation of various epistemic communities at the environment-economy interface, the role of the OECD in international environmental governance, and the OECD environment work in relation to rising non-OECD powers such as China, India, and Brazil.