There isn't just one Green New Deal/On the Possibility of an Ecological Dialogue (original) (raw)

A People’s Green New Deal: Obstacles and Prospects

Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy: A triannual Journal of Agrarian South Network and CARES

Within the past years, the Green New Deal (GND) became the common language for Northern climate politics, offering a seeming exit path from Northern social and ecological crises while erasing an older Northern climate discourse tied to Southern demands for climate reparations and rights to development. This Eurocentric GND has become the environmental program for an equally Eurocentric social democratic renewal. This article situates the GND in world-systemic shifts, and Northern reactions to such shifts. It situates the GND as one of three possible Eurocentric solutions to the climate crisis: a great elite transformation from above; a left-liberal “reformist” resolution; a social democratic resolution. It then elaborates a possible “People’s Green New Deal,” a revolutionary transformation focused on state sovereignty, climate debt, auto-centered development, and agriculture. Within each proposed resolution, it traces the role of the land, agriculture, and peasants.

The Global Green New Deal: Strategies for an Alternative Growth: The Talanoa Dialogue and Climate Justice for a New Sustainable Development

The 6th International Degrowth Conference for ecological sustainability and social equity “Dialogues in turbulent times” Malmö, Sweden 21-25 August 2018, 2018

This paper aims to explore, from a political ecology and critical geopolitics perspective, the origins and current relevance of the concept known as "Green New Deal" in the international climate change debate, since the early days of the Kyoto Protocol to the recent strategies for the deployment of the Paris Agreement and the fairness in terms of climate justice between the Developed North and the Global South.

Bina, O and La Camera, F. (2011) Promise and shortcomings of a green turn in recent policy responses to the "double crisis", Ecological Economics, doi: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2011.1006.1021.

The paper analyses six international-scale responses to the financial and climate change 'double crisis' in order to: review how they define problems and solutions, analyse what underpins the policy choices revealed in these responses (the 'green turn'), reflect on the implications of the proposed solutions in terms of sustainability and global environmental justice, and to suggest three elements for a paradigm shift towards an 'alternative' turn embedded in ecological economics theory. The analysis reveals that responses by leading international organisations continue to appeal to the precepts of neoclassical economy. We argue that from an ecological economics perspective, policy responses under the various labels of green economy, green growth, sustainable growth, green new deal, fall well short of what is needed to fight the environmental crisis and rising inequality across and within countries. The idea of justice and equity that underpins the mainstream approach seems inadequate in terms of sustaining our environmental base and global environmental justice. Based on this critical review, we propose an 'alternative turn', centered on three elements of a paradigm shift leading to a new economy where the environmental base and global environmental justice are at the centre of the discourse.

Gengnagel/Zimmermann (2022): The European Green Deal as a Moonshot – Caring for a Climate-Neutral Yet Prospering Continent? HSR 47 (4): 267-302.

Historical Social Research, 2022

In this paper, we argue that the European Green Deal (EGD) represents a focal point for the fate of the European Union: Will the EGD highlight the EU’s critical flaws and stir social conflict, or will it revitalize the European project with a “new green spirit,” renewing the legitimacy of European market economy? Taking the EU Commission’s claim that the EGD should become “Europe’s man-on-themoon-moment” at its word, we discuss the parallels and differences between the US 1960’s space mission and the European “green mission.” By analyzing cultural infrastructures of the two monumental governmental projects, the article unpacks three underlying themes that the moonshot metaphor alludes to regarding the EGD’s societal legitimacy: 1) the contextualization of the Green Deal as a hegemonic ambition in a new “race” for the leading development of a green growth economy; 2) the evocation of capitalistic welfare that is imagined as a European Dream, just like the moon landing was closely related to and revitalized imaginaries of an American manifest destiny; and 3) the attempt to de-antagonize EGD-critical social forces. Speaking “truth to power,” social protest can become a source of legitimacy itself for liberal governmentality, like antagonists of the US space race were – in the eye of the public – converted into believers of the American Dream.