From the Environmental State to the Sustainability State? Conceptualization, Indicators, and Empirical Examples

The so-called environmental state is an established concept in comparative environmental politics that describes states with a considerable capacity to address (domestic) environmental issues with new institutions and policies. At the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, the environmental discourse joined forces with the development discourse, politically facilitating the paradigm of sustainable development that calls for a socially, economically and environmentally integrated development that "meets the needs of the present without compromising the abilities of future generations to meet their own needs" (Brundtland report 1987). Agenda 21 and follow-up agreements such as the 2030 Agenda call upon the signatory states to adapt their governance structures and policies to this new paradigm, for instance through developing national strategies for sustainable development and relevant steering committees. The literature is undecided whether sustainable development can be addressed within the environmental state, or if it would be more adequate to speak of a "sustainability state" on its own right from a conceptual and empirical perspective. After reviewing the relevant literature, the paper argues that the sustainability state is not just a development stage of the environmental state, but that it is institutionally layered on other state core functions, going clearly beyond – but not necessarily replacing – the environmental state. The paper offers a descriptive-analytical conceptualization of the sustainability state and develops formal indicators of a developing sustainability state. It analyzes how new administrative and political, regulatory and policy, financial, and knowledge structures can address different governance principles for sustainable development, such as horizontal and vertical integration, participation, reflexivity, and intergenerational equity. Formal indicators include, inter alia, interdepartmental governmental steering committees, stakeholder councils, and parliamentary committees for sustainable development as administrative and political structures; framework laws, impact assessments and national strategies for sustainable development as regulatory and policy structures; SDG implementation budgets and sustainability criteria for national budgets as financial structures; and monitoring systems, scientific advisory councils as well as dedicated research and education programs as knowledge structures. All indicators are illustrated with empirical examples. Next to this conceptual work that reinforces the argument that the sustainability state overstretches the concept of the environmental state, the paper also reflects on the challenges of the sustainability state that partly mirror limits of the environmental state: The sustainability state might be confined to a sustainability bubble with little impact beyond this very bubble, and the global perspective implied in the sustainable development paradigm might be addressed less successfully than domestic sustainability. It remains to be determined whether the formal indicators of a developing sustainability state indicate a credible, substantial political commitment towards sustainable development, or a confined area of political activity within the larger legitimacy-seeking political organization of the state. While the former would imply that the guiding principle of sustainable development is indeed (intended to be) mainstreamed in all state activity, the latter would imply that the sustainability state is in fact decoupled from core state activity and serves primarily symbolic purposes.