Gastvortrag – Dr. Ingmar Lippert: Environmental management matters

Does environmental management matter? And if so, how does it come to matter? Here are three sites in which we meet environmental management (EM). First, Rio, Brazil, 1992. Follow Ambassador-at-Large Tommy Koh, chairing the Earth Summit and delivering an agreement: EM as a solution. Here EM matters as a promise. Second, Durban, South Africa, 2002. Visit a contested landfill site, sustained by the emerging carbon market. The ‘solution’, translating the atmosphere into a market, matters on the ground. Third, 2009, Western Asia. Join Nick, a facility manager employing simple math to bring into being a global carbon footprint of a transnational corporation. Nick’s EM work shapes the matter of carbon emissions. Analysing these stories together allows identifiying how environmental management matters: as promise, as material infrastructure, as practice. Across the sites, EM emerges as skilfully achieved but also problematic. Beyond staying with EM’s troubles, what we can take away are modes of questioning – for scrutinising the practices and politics of environmental management across scales.