GREEN TRANSITION AND THE RESTRUCTURING OF ECONOMIC RATIONALITY: THE ROLE OF ENVIRONMENTAL CONTAINMENT

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to provide theoretical substantiation of environmental containment as a systemic factor in transforming economic rationality amid the structural transformation of the world economy and the strengthening of environmentally conditioned institutional constraints. The green transition is interpreted not merely as a sectoral programme of decarbonisation but as a structural transformation of the institutional environment of economic activity that, particularly in the context of the European Green Deal, the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), and the EU Taxonomy on sustainable activities, transforms the very logic of economic rationality and determines the conditions of participation of economic agents in global production and financial networks. The study clarifies the economic content of environmental containment, determines its role in changing the criteria of rational choice, and identifies the mechanisms through which environmental standards, regulatory regimes, and resource constraints influence the behavior of economic agents and the structure of the competitive environment. The article reconsiders the classical understanding of economic rationality, which has traditionally been based on the maximization of benefits and the minimization of costs under given resource and price parameters. It is substantiated that the transformation of the world economy towards climate neutrality, resource efficiency, and technological decarbonisation alters the determinants of economic choice by integrating environmental requirements into the structure of rational calculation. It is shown that environmental parameters are gradually shifting from the category of external constraints into internal determinants of economic behaviour, defining access to markets, financial resources, technologies and institutional support.

The article distinguishes between environmental restraint as the voluntary integration of environmental criteria into the structure of economic choice and environmental containment as an institutionally conditioned system of constraints defining the boundaries of permissible economic behaviour. It is demonstrated that environmental containment shapes the institutional boundaries of economic activity and serves as a mechanism for selecting development strategies, thereby establishing a system of constraints and incentives that structures the behavior of producers, investors, and states. Under such conditions, economic rationality acquires a preventive character oriented towards long-term conformity with environmental standards and regulatory regimes that determine the conditions of participation in global production and financial networks. The role of green neoprotectionism in consolidating new rules of market access and shaping a normatively conditioned competitive environment is revealed, within which environmental compliance becomes a condition of economic expediency. It is shown that environmental containment intensifies differentiation among economic agents and creates a new configuration of the competitive space in which the capacity to meet environmental requirements determines the possibility of participation in global economic processes. It is concluded that environmental containment acts as a system-forming factor in the transformation of economic rationality, shaping a new logic of economic behaviour in which environmental compliance becomes integrated into the structure of economic choice, investment and development strategies.

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Received: 14.05.26 / Revised: 24.05.26 / Accepted: 04.06.26 / Published: 30.06.26