During the World Summit on Sustainable Development, held in Johannesburg by mid 2001, it was clearly observed that our understandings and practices concerning sustainable development are on a dead end. This is due to the fact that the much more dynamic processes of neo-liberal globalization and of world restructuring had been ignored, including the new legitimacy of wars in the '90s. After September 11th, 2001, it was evident that we live in a non-hegemonic context with particular consequences. Nevertheless, „sustainable development'' did not emerge as a counter-discourse. On the contrary, its directions and practices were more and more compatible with dominant rebuilding processes. Sustainable development lost its critical impact through its focus on cooperation and western modern knowledge, its technocratic concept of politics, the prevailing of environmental issues over the ones of development and Nation-State as privileged areas for implementation of policies. In addition, international sustainable development organizations (in the article the Biological Diversity Convention is given as an example) takes part in nature's economic exploitation process. Finally, in a recent past, actions aiming at establishing military structure in Southern Cone countries _ justified by the necessity of sustainable development policies _ gained legitimacy. Currently, the „Rio process'' tries to reconcile globalization processes to sustainable development and, eventually, the concept of „sustainable globalization'' will emerge as a new paradigm for dominant trends and practices. At last, the authors argue that the most dynamic challenges to neo-liberal globalization and militarization arise in a different political background which is, until now, hardly linked to sustainable development policies: the so called movements of globalization criticism. From a theoretical perspective, the article reports on the regulation theory and critical theory of the State, as well as on concepts of political environmentalism and of society and nature relations.
sustainable development criticism; bio-diversity; post-Fordism; neo-liberal globalization; alternative; perspectives