The Limits of the Green Economy

From re-inventing capitalism to re-politicising the present

Anneleen Kenis, Matthias Lievens

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781317670209
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Sustainable Development
• Index: Economics

Projecting win-win situations, new economic opportunities, green growth and innovative partnerships, the green economy discourse has quickly gained centre stage in international environmental governance and policymaking. Its underlying message is attractive and optimistic: if the market can become the tool for tackling climate change and other major ecological crises, the fight against these crises can also be the royal road to solving the problems of the market. But how 'green' is the green economy? And how social or democratic can it be?

This book examines how the emergence of this new discourse has fundamentally modified the terms of the environmental debate. Interpreting the rise of green economy discourse as an attempt to re-invent capitalism, it unravels the different dimensions of the green economy and its limits: from pricing carbon to emissions trading, from sustainable consumption to technological innovation. The book uses the innovative concept of post-politics to provide a critical perspective on the way green economy discourse represents nature and society (and their interaction) and forecloses the imagination of alternative socio-ecological possibilities. As a way of repoliticising the debate, the book advocates the construction of new political faultlines based on the demands for climate justice and democratic commons.

This book will be of interest to students and scholars of environmental politics, political ecology, human geography, human ecology, political theory, philosophy and political economy.

Includes a foreword written by Erik Swyngedouw (Professor of Geography, Manchester University).

1 The green economy

The meaning of a new narrative

Introduction

On 20 June 2012, more than 50,000 people took to the streets in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It was the apotheosis of a nine-day event, the ‘People’s Summit’ for ‘Social and Economic Justice’, set up by hundreds of civil society organisations and grassroots movements. At the same time, the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development took place right outside the city centre, entirely dedicated to the ‘green economy’. Targeting the lack of effective policies to tackle the ecological crisis, the protests especially attracted peasant and environmental movements, women groups, indigenous people and trade unionists.

But more was at stake than the demand to take effective action and halt oil extraction in ecologically vulnerable areas or stop tar sands exploitation. ‘A água não tem dono’ (‘No one owns water’), sounded one of the slogans on the street. ‘Nature is not for sale’ was to be read on placards, next to the demand for ‘buen vivir’ (‘the good life’). ‘We reject the green/d economy’ was probably the most straightforward slogan conveyed by demonstrators. The protestors did not come merely to give support to pro-environmental politicians negotiating in the official conference. Their aim was more confrontational. ‘Green economy, the new enemy’, sounded the headline of a special edition of Terra Viva, edited by Inter Press Service (IPS 2012).

This struck more than one observer as odd. How can one be against a ‘green economy’? Was this not a moment to unite forces, especially after the dramatic failure of the important Copenhagen summit on climate change in 2009? Is calling the green economy an ‘enemy’ not completely misguided, given the challenges we are confronted with, and the urgent action that is needed? Is it really necessary to be so critical of this project in the early stage of its development? Does this not boil down to throwing away the baby with the bathwater?

For the time being, this critical attitude remains limited to a minority. At least so it seems if we consider how many government leaders, politicians from all sides of the political spectrum, high-level civil servants and CEOs are picking up on the newly developing discourse of the green economy. From Goldman Sachs, which right before the Rio+20 summit announced billions of dollars in investments in green economy projects which it considers amongst ‘the greatest opportunities for profits’ at the moment (SustainableBusiness.com 2012), via Al Gore, famously claiming that ‘the transition to a green economy is good for our economy and for all of us’ and that he has therefore invested in it (Allen 2009), to the director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Christine Lagarde, praising the green economy’s capacity to create jobs (Singleton 2013): enthusiasm on the newly emerging paradigm abounds.

The emergence of the green economy discourse has changed the terms of the ecological debate. The force field of environmental actors and movements is in full transformation. Bring some of the pioneers of the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm fast-forward to Rio in 2012 and they would probably have been stunned to see large business actors defending environmental causes and protest movements attacking environmental policies.

How to understand what is happening? How to make sense of this shift on the environmental terrain? In his 1886 novel A Dream of John Ball, William Morris wrote a phrase which sheds an interesting light on a number of contemporary phenomena, including the emergence of green economy discourse: ‘Men fight and lose the battle, and the thing that they fought for comes about in spite of their defeat, and then it turns out not to be what they meant, and other men have to fight for what they meant under another name’ (Morris 1886, quoted in Negri and Hardt 2000). This statement trenchantly uncovers part of the historical significance of the green economy discourse. One of the guiding ideas of this book is that green economy thinking, as it is currently becoming hegemonic in the environmental field, appropriates, translates and integrates (or recuperates?) critical green thinking, somehow realising green visions, but in a completely different fashion than ecological protagonists had intended during many years of protest and resistance.

Such shifts are not new. Negri and Hardt have used this quote by Morris to make sense of the emergence of what they call ‘empire’, a new type of global sovereignty that was developed as an answer to forms of conflict which threatened to overflow and subvert previous mechanisms of political control based on national sovereignty (Negri and Hardt 2000). In a similar vein, we will argue, the green economy ought to be understood as a fascinating attempt by existing political and economic institutions to reinvent themselves in response to forms of environmental conflict and contestation and to the major financial and economic crisis which erupted in 2008.¹ The result is a profound transformation of the terrain of ecological struggle, affecting the identities of the camps involved, and often turning conflictual into consensual discourses aimed at integrating environmental, economic and social concerns. The conditions under which the ecological movement was built during many decades are changing, as a result of which the very means of contestation have to be reinvented.

The emergence of a discourse

After the failure of the 2009 UN climate summit in Copenhagen, international environmental talks were in tatters, so it seemed. Yet, about a week later, on 24 December 2009, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution which launched the preparations for the Rio+20 summit. This international meeting would consecrate an ideological development that was already making headway during and before the Copenhagen summit: the rise of so-called green economy thinking. Since then, this notion has gained centre stage in the international conversation on environmental policies, rapidly filling the gap left by the failure of Copenhagen. The green economy, so the messages goes, would be good for the economy, for jobs, for the environment, and for us all. Importantly, it opens a sphere of activity and initiative for private actors such as companies, banks and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Solving global environmental problems ought not only, or even not in the first place, to depend on negotiations between states, so it is suggested: other actors, such as companies, can already start experimenting with new business models, new green products and investment strategies under the banner of the ‘green economy’. The emerging green economy discourse thus epitomises a kind of bottom-up and even emancipatory promise. One no longer has to wait until the next climate summit to undertake some action and hope government leaders will arrive at an agreement. Other actors, in particular economic actors, can start ‘greening the economy’ right away.

Admittedly, the term ‘green economy’ had been used before, primarily by academics (e.g. Jacobs 1991, Pearce, Markandya and Barbier 2000) but also by some political parties and NGOs. However, until the beginning of the first decade of the twenty-first century, it was far from central in the international debate on environmental policies, and it did not yet have the specific meaning which it in the meantime has obtained. Especially from the end of that decade onwards, the term has become the linchpin of an emerging, although for the time being incomplete consensus amongst international policymakers.

Its core proposition is rather straightforward: the ‘green economy’ refers to the possibility to reconcile environmental protection with economic growth. Often framed as ‘green growth’ instead of ‘green economy’, this simple idea underpins a stream of publications of international institutions since 2009. A milestone was the United Nations Environment Programme’s voluminous report Towards a Green Economy: Pathways to Sustainable Development and Poverty Eradication (2011), which defines a green economy as ‘one that results in improved human well-being and social equity, while significantly reducing environmental risks and ecological scarcities’ (UNEP 2011, 16). The report addresses issues which have become key to the green economy debate, including the valuation of natural capital, investment in renewable energy and resource efficiency. It also outlines green investment scenarios which are supposed to create new jobs and tackle poverty.

Other influential publications include the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Interim Report of the Green Growth Strategy (OECD 2010), the World Bank report on Inclusive Green Growth (World Bank 2012), the World Economic Forum report More with Less: Scaling Sustainable Consumption and Resource Efficiency (WEF 2012) and the EU’s Roadmap for Moving to a Competitive Low Carbon Economy in 2050 (European Commission 2011). In 2010, a Global Green Growth Institute was launched, ‘founded on the belief that economic growth and environmental sustainability are not merely compatible objectives; their integration is essential for the future of humankind’.² It was established by a series of states such as the United Kingdom, Australia and Mexico, and includes the World Bank and the Davos World Economic Forum, multinational corporations such as Vestas and research institutes such as the Brookings Institution amongst its partners. NGOs such as World Wildlife Fund, lobby groups, think tanks and a number of green parties have also jumped upon the bandwagon, advocating a green economy.

The context in which these reports appeared is significant: in 2008, the biggest financial and economic crisis in more than half a century erupted, challenging international institutions to rethink their paradigms and policy recipes and to develop strategies to overcome the economic downturn. These international institutions, moreover, had been confronted with a legitimacy crisis, which was a result of both protest movements against corporate globalisation and geopolitical shifts. The latter urged institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank to redefine their role, as emerging countries became ever more reluctant to use the institutions’ financial assistance. The search for an economic recovery in the slipstream of the crisis provided an opportunity for these international institutions both to upgrade their environmental credentials and to point to new fields of economic activity, which could relaunch the global market.

The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in 2012 aimed to be a catalysing moment for the newly emerging policy paradigm. Twenty years after the UN Conference on Environment and Development, and 40 years after the UN Conference on the Human Environment, in Stockholm, the so-called Rio+20 conference was entirely dedicated to the green economy. Entitled ‘The Future We Want’, the outcome document adopted at the conference confirms a commitment to the development of ‘a green economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication’ (UN 2012).

A consensus thus seems to be emerging amongst certain international institutions, governments (the British government being one of the most active), lobby groups and think tanks around the notion of the green economy. Some have called it a new Washington Consensus, a statement which, given the obstacles the project faces in really becoming hegemonic and, especially, in being put into actual practice, is perhaps too far-fetched (Working Group on Green Economy (WSF) 2012). However, it has rapidly become a nodal point in the global discourse on environmental politics, around which a large set of actors is gathering.

Green economy, the patchwork

Although the rapid emergence of the term ‘green economy’ occurred only recently, the ideas underpinning it can be traced back to crucial debates on environmental policy over the last decades (e.g. Bernier 2012). The 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment at Stockholm, often hailed as a breakthrough in international environmental cooperation, already attempted to strike a balance between economic development and the recognition of the limits of the planet (UN 1972). However, it still recognised the importance of economic planning, thus refraining from advocating the downright market orientation currently en vogue.

Since then, a creeping economisation of the language used in the outcome documents of international summits can be observed. A turning point was the Earth Summit in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, where ‘sustainable development’ became the nodal point of international environmental discourse. This notion had gained centre stage after the launch of the 1986 Brundtland report, which advocates a reconciliation of economic development, social equity and respect for the environment. As has been pointed out in much of the academic literature, the notion of sustainable development stands on two legs: sustainability and economic development. Considering it far from evident to balance both, a number of scholars have referred to this notion as an ‘oxymoron’ (Redclift 2005, Robinson 2004, Sachs 1999).

The green economy can be seen as a further development of the debate on sustainable development, whereby economic (market) mechanisms and approaches have become increasingly predominant. Yet, the green economy comes with many varieties. This should not be surprising, as the conversation on the green economy has only recently gained real momentum. Scholars have made different attempts to distinguish between varieties of the green economy. On the basis of a qualitative analysis, Olivia Bina subdivides different variants of green economy or green growth discourses into three categories: business as usual (e.g. stimulus packages including green investments during the economic crisis), proposals to ‘green’ the economy (e.g. UNEP’s Green New Deal) and proposals for more far-reaching social and economic transformation (e.g. Degrowth) (Bina 2013). She argues that each of these categories is characterised by a specific aim, a socioeconomic paradigm and a conception of progress. Mueller and Bullard rather situate the different variants of the green economy on a political left/right axis, ranging from ‘nationalist-mercantilist’ variants (such as the Green Revolution advocated by Thomas Friedman) to a more leftist variant epitomised by the British Green New Deal Group (Mueller and Bullard 2011). Ferguson, in contrast, opposes different variants of the project in terms of the economic theoretical frame it is based upon (Ferguson 2014). He thus distinguishes green Keynesianism, with its focus on green fiscal stimuli in the wake of the economic crisis, from green growth theory, which attempts to arrive at a correct valuation of natural capital, and from a green industrial revolution, which stresses the importance of innovation for competitiveness. Undoubtedly, other categorisations and subdivisions could also be developed.

Overlooking the field, it sometimes looks as if the notion of green economy can mean anything. Throughout the different approaches, however, a common core is emerging. We can provisionally delineate four key ingredients to the emerging green economy discourse, all of which will be discussed in more detail in the remainder of this book (see also Kenis and Lievens forthcoming). The first is the most important, namely the idea that sustainability need not be incompatible with the market economy. Even stronger, not only can a sustainable transition take place via market mechanisms, but the crisis of the market could even be overcome through a new focus on sustainability (more on this later). Evidently, markets can be corrected via taxes or subsidies. But one can also create new markets, such as markets for innovative ‘green’ products (e.g. electric cars, solar panels) or markets where new, artificial products, such as emission rights, are traded. This is what sparks most enthusiasm amongst the economic actors who have discovered the environmental theme over the la...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword: Apocalypse now? From the marketisation to the politicisation of the environment
• Acknowledgements
• 1 The green economy: The meaning of a new narrative
• 2 A post-political climate
• 3 The roots of the crisis
• 4 Reinventing capitalism
• 5 Change within limits
• 6 Repoliticising the present
• Epilogue: Beyond the green economy
• Index