Paper short abstract:

Against green capitalism, many organizations propose a Green New Deal. We will discuss the strengths and limits of these proposals, leaning on traditions from open/autonomist marxism, anarchism & popular ecology, and the actual struggles in Latin America for a radical socioecological transition.

Paper long abstract:

As the climate crisis worsens, the debate on how to confront it grows. While dominant classes propose a move towards Green capitalism, sociopolitical organizations from diverse veins have begun talking about a Green New Deal, or an EcoSocial Pact in the south. Green capitalism includes full commodification of nature (eg., carbon markets, green taxes) and technological solutions (eg., bioengineering) to the mounting costs of environmental degradation. On the contrary, the Green New Deal push for greater State intervention in the (capitalist) economy. These proposals presume that the problem is neoliberalism’s irrationality, but not capitalist social relations. Thus, they emphasize the need for State planning, nationalization of key enterprises, redistribution of income, and also greener taxation as the solutions.

But who will sign this New Deal: social movements or reformist NGOs? How can the capitalist State make good of these promisses? Is the climate crisis a consequence of neoliberalism, or a capitalist by-product? Can we tax-away this crises without further commodifying life and nature? How can we transition to a greener world if we don’t do away with dependency and imperialist rule?

In this article we will discuss the strengths and limits of these proposals, while sketching how real alternatives for socioecological transformation are actually leading the struggles for (anti)postcapitalist social change. We will lean on theoretical traditions from open/autonomist marxism, anarchism and latinamerican popular ecology to engage in a debate the includes the actual socio political struggles in Latin America for a radical socioecological transition.

Paper long abstract:

Green finance has become a game changer. The Sustainable Development Goals have set an ambitious agenda, which has fundamental implications for the shape and structure of development finance. The shift from Washington Consensus to “Wallstreet Consensus”(Daniela Gabor) requires establishing new political and financial instruments, which aim at maximizing contributions from the private sector.

Recently, ‘de-risking’ has advanced as a new political technology that aims at creating attractive level playing fields for incoming FDI, with international banks offering special insurances and stepping in as lenders of the last resort. Derisking has become a powerful tool for rendering states and economies accessible to foreign investors and for creating green economies literally from scratch, whilst creating new economic and political dependencies. De-risking activities have seldom been subject to critical research, and especially the role of green funding structures promoted by inter- and transnational institutions and insurance companies (African Trade Insurance, Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau, Munich RE) has scarcely been acknowledged.

My paper discusses the (anti)political and neo-colonial qualities of ‘derisking’ instruments for renewable energy transitions in Sub-Saharan-Africa, based on empirical research done in Zambia between 2015 and 2019. I take Zambia’s renewable energy transition as an example of green postcolonial statehood that resembles the concept of a “de-risking state2, whose local financial systems are re-organized according to the global de-risking agenda. For doing so, I combine three strands of thought: postcolonial finance (LHM Ling, Branwen Gruffydd Jones), subordinate financialisation (Philipp Mader, Daniela Gabor, Bruno Bonizzi) and green governmentality (Tanja Murray Li, James Ferguson).

Paper short abstract:

Drawing on comparative research on subaltern protests against the expansion of coal fired power plants in the Sundarbans in Bangladesh and against bitumen mining in the Athabasca tar sands, this paper interrogates green new deal ideologies in relation to ongoing environmental justice struggles.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing on my comparative research on subaltern protests against the expansion of coal fired power plants in the Sundarbans in Bangladesh, against bitumen mining in the Athabasca tar sands and coal mining in the Rocky Mountains in Canada, this paper interrogates the political imaginary articulated by various proposals for a green new deal in terms of environmental justice protests against development dispossession. I argue that our current conjuncture, locally and geopolitically, is characterized by racial-capitalist class projects of green passive revolution (and its derivative, fascism redux). Examining the making and moving of commodity frontiers (whether fossil or “renewable”) as extractive intermedia environments of historical nature and accumulated violence allows us to analyze the global trajectories of the “herculean” nexus of financial, proprietorial and state-based class power through which the political-ecological Global South remains subordinated during an organic crisis of the inter-state system. A multiple colonialisms framework drawing on subsistence perspective and social reproduction feminism, world-ecology and intermedia theory enables us to articulate critical perspectives on green new deal ideologies that are grounded in popular struggles against interlocking oppressions and unpack critically hegemonic green capitalist climate emergency discourses. Comparing local Indigenous and other subalternized perspectives on subsistence and regeneration, this paper assesses degrowth theory’s endeavours to advance a pluriversal critique of climate capitalism, green development and green growth.

Paper short abstract:

This paper historically analyses dominant framings of climate change vulnerability, focusing on Pacific Islands. I argue that colonial discourses of islands as endangered paradise have persisted in institutional climate change politics, naturalising violent consequences for islands and islanders.

Paper long abstract:

Climate change effects are widely understood to be differentially distributed, both among states, and between social groups. This distribution is explained in the literature through the concept of ‘vulnerability’, and those who are affected are described as ‘the vulnerable’. An indexing project of ranking states according to their vulnerability to climate change has developed in response to calls for knowledge production from the UNFCCC and the IPCC. This positivist approach has had a depoliticising effect, obscuring the actions and choices that create vulnerability, and forcing the concept into a developmental framework.

This paper uses an historical analysis to show how colonial discourses that portrayed islands as inherently fragile and islanders as weak and doomed to extinction, are perpetuated in climate change institutional knowledge creation. I argue that the consequences of this have been violent, allowing the perpetuation of a global adaptation approach to climate change, using the language of development to prioritise protection of the current global political economy and minimise the importance of mitigation.

I also discuss the continued resistance to the dominant logics of vulnerability that have come from islanders themselves, both in the academic work of scholars such as Epeli Hau’ofa and Teresia Teaiwa, and in the activism of groups such as 350 Pacific. I therefore conclude by ‘islanding’ the concept of vulnerability, drawing on this work. This paper therefore aims to island climate change vulnerability by providing a critique of the dominant discourses, and a reimagining of vulnerability through feminist and islander resistance discourses.