It is to the credit of the green movement within and outside parliaments that ecology has become one of the main arenas of politics. There is hardly another subject which, within the last 30 years, has been thus transformed from the concern of a few scientists, activists (often thought of as "nutters") into a topic of world conferences.

On the other hand, already the 1997 UN summit Rio+5 produced a sobering account of the state of sustainable policy: Almost universally the agenda of ecological change has been displaced by the agenda of globalization. In the current neoliberal trade-regime, the environment is rather seen as an obstacle to free trade than an asset.