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Contribution long abstract

This presentation aims to challenge the prevailing image of environmental governance as a cohesive techno-scientific field, revealing it instead as a battlefield marked by deep epistemic fractures. It examines contemporary environmental polarization through the political construction of the imaginary of social sustainability, driven in large part by the activism of environmental professionals specialized in the participatory processes. This reflection seeks to illuminate how professional practices situated at this intersection challenge the myth of a unified corporate environmental science. By navigating tensions between managerial models and participatory ideals, these actors constitute an overlooked form of social activism within environmentalism, redefining expertise from within the field. Drawing on ethnographic research with environmental impact assessment practitioners in Brazil and Canada, the analysis recenters attention on these pivotal mediators. Challenging their stigma as neoliberal co-optees, I argue they are resilient agents whose strategic agency is obscured by a simplistic tripartite framework—corporations, communities, state—that renders mediation invisible. In an era marked by polarized environmental extremes, their nuanced negotiations offer a critical counterpoint. Far from passive, these professionals deploy sophisticated tactics to reshape the environmental field. Their resistance is most visible in advocacy for more authentic participatory practices, contesting market-driven norms and redefining sustainability beyond narrow ecological and economic metrics toward a more humane environmental capitalism. Rather than a binary of co-optation or rejection, they pursue a nuanced path: the moralization of deliberative processes. Through ordinary and silent resistance, everyday professional practice becomes a key site for reimagining sustainable expertise in contemporary environmental politics.