Again this involves the further capitalization of nature, the propagation of certain
views of nature and society in terms of production and efficiency, not of respect
and the common good. This is why Visvanathan (1991) calls the world of Brundtland
and the World Bank “a disenchanted cosmos.” The Brundtland Report, and muchof the sustainable development discourse, is a tale that a disenchanted (modern)
world tells itself about its sad condition. As a renewal of the contract between the
modern nation-state and modern science, sustainable development seeks not so
much to caricature the past, as with early development theory, as to control a
future whose vision is highly impoverished. Visvanathan is also concerned with
the ascendancy of the sustainable development discourse among ecologists and
activists. It is fitting to end this section with his call for resistance to co-option: