Debating Green Economy Agendas: NGOs’ divergent rolesin framing social in/equity

Les Levidow Development Policy and Practice, Open University

DSA conference, 1 November 2014

'Green economy' context• The 'green economy' agenda has been recasting or even displacing

‘sustainable development’ as the main global concept for debating feasible, desirable futures.

• ‘Green economy’ has been widely promoted, especially by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in preparing the Rio+20 Summit in 2012. Concept was meant to link resource-protection, social equity and social inclusion (UNEP, 2011).

• Despite the latter emphasis, the 'green economy' agenda has been seen as a regression from the earlier social aims of sustainable development. As a novel feature, a ‘natural capital’ framework assigns economic values to natural resources through new financial instruments. In parallel with the 2012 Summit, NGOs advertised an alternative event with the question: ‘Green Economy: The New Enemy?’

• Questions• How have ‘green economy’ agendas framed social equity? • How have NGOs done so in their interventions? • How do those frames relate to various concepts of justice?

Analytical perspectives: Advocacy networks

• Transnational advocacy networks encompass diverse actors – research groups, local social movements, foundations, the media, unions, etc.

• They can influence issue-creation, agenda-setting, institutional procedures, policy and state behaviour.

• By contrast to some issues, environmental degradation results from structural forces lacking a human face.

• Thus environmentalist advocacy networks devise strategies to place blame on powerful actors who can be targeted (Keck and Sikkink, 1998).

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Analytical perspectives: NGOs’ diverse roles

• Some global conservation bodies have supported schemes treating local people as a problem.

• Some NGOs have joined multi-actor efforts, especially public-private partnerships to implement global frameworks. Towards ‘global solutions’, NGOs and corporations jointly developing the infrastructure for carbon markets (Andonova and Hoffmann, 2012).

• By contrast, the concept ‘justice’ reframes the issues: ‘NGOs and their allies have sought to bring about a fundamental rethinking of how the goals of conservation and effective resource management can be linked to the search for social justice for historically marginalized peoples’ (Brosius et al., 2005).

• Some NGOs have built transnational alliances strengthening local-national social movements to protect natural resources and people’s access to them; this agenda ‘focuses closely on questions of power, equity and representation’ (e.g. Schwartzman et al., 2010).

• UNEP’s overall definition: A green economy results in ‘improved human well-being and social equity, while significantly reducing environmental risks and ecological scarcities’. It is ‘low carbon, resource efficient and socially inclusive’ (UNEP, 2011).

• The green economy seeks economic growth with ‘significant decoupling from environmental impacts’.

• A green economy ‘creates jobs and economic progress, while at the same time avoiding considerable downside risks such as the effects of climate change, greater water scarcity and the loss of ecosystem services’.

• The new focus on a green economy reflects the ‘growing recognition that achieving sustainability rests almost entirely on getting the economy right’ (UNEP, 2011).

Green economy agenda for poverty alleviation

A ‘right economy’ = ?

• Correctly valuing natural resources, especially ecosystem services, so that economic activity more wisely manages them to benefit the poor (UNEP, 2011).

• According to this diagnosis, the same market remedies can protect ecosystem services and the poor alike.

• Promotes public-sector dependence on the private sector: ‘active participation of the private sector can contribute to the achievement of sustainable development, including through the important tool of public-private partnerships’ (UN, 2012).

‘Green markets’ for poverty alleviation

• Financial instruments• REDD+ linked with social equity & livelihoods• New instruments, e.g.

Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES)• Biodiversity offsetting• Water credits

• Financialisation processNew instruments have been elaborated so that credits can become universal and tradable by third parties.

Natural Capital accounting: controversy• The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) for Business

Coalition has encompassed the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and others.

• WWF initiated the Natural Capital Project, whereby NGOs become incorporated into the process. Its promotional film asks the question, ‘What is nature worth?’, whose answer requires metrics.

• Natural Capital Declaration (2012) was a commitment by finance sector CEOs to account for natural capital in their balance sheets. As a problem-diagnosis, ‘Neither these [ecosystem] services, nor the stock of Natural Capital that provides them, are adequately valued compared to social and financial capital.’

• Declaration ‘calls upon the private and public sectors to work together to create the conditions necessary to maintain and enhance Natural Capital..’

• BankTrack (NGO coalition) said: the Declaration ‘is based upon a fatally flawed understanding of the root causes of crises (imperfect valuation of ‘Natural Capital and Ecosystem Services’) and proposes an equally flawed solution to them (proper pricing)’.

Green Economy Coalition

• Coalition of transnational NGOs and conservation groups attribute inequality to social exclusion from capital, which therefore must be shared more equitably:

• ‘Growing inequities and unemployment rates, particularly among the young, wastes human capital and hinders innovation… the prospect of a green economy offers potential for alternative ownership models that will share natural and financial capital more equitably’ (Green Economy Coalition, 2012).

• Invokes ‘the justice principle’ for more equitable access of many kinds. • Such proposals overlap with aspects of UNEP, which sponsors the

Coalition. • Some members (IUCN + WWF) also play leading roles in the Natural

Capital Project.

Transnational advocacy NGOs(People’s Summit Declaration and WSF)

• Attacked UNEP's involvement in the financialisation agenda. • For alternatives they linked food sovereignty with commons: • ‘Where markets seek to take power away from the people

and distribute resources according to the participants’ ability to pay, a commons-centred approach treats nature, the environment, food, water and other vital aspects of our lives as something we all share rights to and a responsibility for. Food and energy sovereignty are part of this rapidly developing, commons-centred, alternative view of how we should run a truly green global economy’ (WDM, 2012).

People’s Summit 2012• Reiterated the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth,

while also denouncing the UNEP agenda: • Here commons link cultural and natural diversity:

‘The diversity of nature and the cultural diversity associated with it are the basis for a new paradigm of society… For the peoples’ sovereign control of the commons, and against the attempts at commodification’, and ‘For Life and commons, social and environmental justice’.

• Denounced ‘unequal power relations established by capitalism, in which the dominant economic and political powers have taken control of natural resources, territories, populations, and their knowledge’.

• Financialisation agenda was again attacked at the World Social Forum (WSF) in March 2013.

NGOs’ dilemma

• NGOs face a strategic dilemma about whether or how to reclaim the ‘green economy’ concept.

• Diverse versions proliferate, some overlapping with UNEP’s framework.

• Some NGOs seek an alternative concept for linking resource struggles in the global North and South.

• As a related dilemma, NGOs seek greater public-sector responsibility for public goods against commoditisation and privatisation, but such an agenda has no reliable champion in the leadership of major political parties.

NGOs’ divergent alliances, frames and roles in ‘green economy’ debate

Problem-frame Cause of social inequity and envtl degradation

Solution/ justice concept

Relation to UNEP agenda

Alliance

Natural Capital Project: Finance sector, nature- conservation groups (e.g. IUCN, WWF), TEEB for Business Coalition, etc.

Invisibility of natural capital (as stocks) in economic valuations

Natural capital accounting (& ecosystem pricing) to be considered in decisions on financial products and services

Vanguard of green markets via public-private networks

Green Economy Coalition: Transnational NGOs, e.g. IUCN, WWF, IIED, IISD, Consumers International, ITUC + UNEP sponsor

Communities’ inequitable access to financial and natural capital

Justice principle: communities’ greater access and control over capital for the global public good

Complementary or supplementary

People’s Summit +WSF: Transnational advocacy networks linked with social movements, e.g. FERN, GJEP, BankTrack, WDM, Re:Common, etc.

Commoditisation undermining commons and communities that protect them

Environmental Justice: global networks resisting enclosures by linking commons, communities and resource sovereignty

Oppositional

Conclusion 1: NGOs’ divergent roles • 'Green economy' debate provides a window into divergent roles of

transnational NGOs. • They have elaborated various approaches to social equity, corresponding to

diverse concepts of justice, either implicitly or explicitly. Likewise they diverge in where/how they place blame for environmental degradation (Keck and Sikkink, 1998).

• The ‘natural capital’ framework promotes the dominant liberal-individualist framework of justice (Caney, 2005, Armstrong, 2013), seeing resources as stocks which can be quantified and traded, thus facilitating a neoliberal agenda.

• This has been elaborated by transnational public-private networks, led by nature-conservation groups, e.g. WWF and IUCN. Their incorporation illustrates how nature is neoliberalised by commoditising more resources, facilitated by the state and civil society groups (cf. Castree, 2008).

• Through the Green Economy Coalition, various NGOs invoke ‘the justice principle’ for more equitably sharing natural and financial capital through community initiatives. This re-interprets natural capital. This coalition has some members who also play leading roles in the Natural Capital Project.

Conclusion 2: • ‘Environmental justice’ has linked transnational advocacy networks

with social movements in the global South. Their perspective identifies unequal power relations as the fundamental problem. Their alternative agenda promotes community protection and responsibilities for natural resources.

• While the dominant agenda conceals and undermines commons, the concept ‘environmental justice’ makes them more visible. NGO advocacy networks aim to make visible the sources of injustice, as a basis to transform unsustainable practices of production and consumption (cf. Martin, 2013, Schlosberg, 2004, 2013; Fraser, 2008).

• As the dominant agenda depoliticises power relations, social movements have been ‘attempting to make something visible that was previously invisible’ (Kenis and Mathijs, 2014: 155).

Questions: • Strategic positioning: There is some correspondence between NGOs’ stances

and diverse concepts of justice. How to explain the correspondence in terms of strategic positioning vis a vis the UN system?

• • Parallel or competing approaches? In what sense do these different

approaches compete with each other for influence? or debate each other?• • ‘Justice’ meanings and roles: In the 1990s the concept ‘justice’ had

ambiguous, diverse meanings amongst various NGOs. More recently it has been promoted most strongly from anti-capitalist, pro-commons perspectives, especially as ‘environmental/climate justice’. Is the concept being defined in more oppositional ways?

• • Stakes: Why does it matter that NGOs’ roles have such differences? What are

the stakes?

NGOs’ divergent alliances, frames and roles in ‘green economy’ debateProblem-frame Cause of social

inequity and environmental degradation

Solution/ justice concept Relation to UNEP agenda

Alliance Natural Capital Project: Finance sector, nature- conservation groups(e.g. IUCN, WWF), TEEB for Business Coalition, etc.

Invisibility of natural capital (as stocks) in economic valuations

Natural capital accounting (& ecosystem pricing) to be considered in decisions on financial products and services

Vanguard via public-private networks

Green Economy Coalition:Transnational NGOs, e.g. IUCN, WWF, IIED, IISD, Consumers International, ITUC + companies (Philips) + UNEP sponsor

Communities’ inequitable access to financial and natural capital

Justice principle: communities’ greater access and control over capital for the global public good

Complementary or supplementary

People’s Summit +WSF: Transnational advocacy networks linked with social movements, e.g. FERN, GJEP, BankTrack, WDM, Re:Common, etc.

Commoditisation undermining commons and communities that protect them

Environmental Justice: global networks resisting enclosures by linking commons, communities and resource sovereignty

Oppositional