Beyond ecological economics, the construction of niches of sustainability

Abstract

Based on the analysis of environmentalism from the perspectives offered by different discourses on sustainable development, the authors argue that in a local application level, in communities and specific projects, niches of sustainability can be generated, although they recognize the extreme difficulty of this challenge; they compare old and new proposals for achieving sustainability, such as sustainable development, natural capitalism, the decrease or sustainable environmentalism of the poor. Finally, they present two cases with different characteristics, in which poor communities are resisting the Raubwirtschaft or dominant industrial economy of prey, to find the niche construction of a local sustainability and commonality, through a territorial communitary order, democratic governance and participatory planning.