The Geopolitics of Green Colonialism: Global Justice and Ecosocial Transitions
The time for denial is over. Across the Global North, the question of how we should respond to the climate crisis has been answered: with a shift to renewables, electric cars, carbon trading and hydrogen. Green New Deals across Europe and North America promise to reduce emissions while creating new jobs.
But beneath the sustainability branding, these climate 'solutions' are leading to new environmental injustices and green colonialism. The green growth and clean energy plans of the Global North require the large-scale extraction of strategic minerals from the Global South. The geopolitics of transition imply sacrificing not only territories, but truly sustainable ways of inhabiting this world. A new subordination in the global energy economy prevents societies in the South from developing sovereign strategies to foster a dignified life.
This book provides a platform for the voices that have been conspicuously absent in debates around energy and climate in the Global North. Drawing on case studies from across the Global South, the authors offer incisive critiques of green colonialism in its material, political and symbolic dimensions, discuss the multiple entanglements that forcefully connect the transitions of different world regions in a globalized economy, and explore alternative pathways toward a liveable and globally just future for all.
Panelists include:
Sabrina Fernandes is a Brazilian sociologist and political economist whose work focuses on transition, Latin America, and internationalism. She’s the Head of Research at the Alameda Institute, a former postdoctoral fellow of CALAS and the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, and a member of the Ecosocial and Intercultural Pact of the South.
A Filipina feminist and activist researcher, Mary Ann Manahan is currently a doctoral assistant with the Conflict Research Group of the Department of Conflict and Development Studies at Ghent University in Belgium. Since 2020, she has also been the co-coordinator of the Global Working Group Beyond Development. Formerly, Manahan was a Senior Program Officer with the Asian-based Focus on the Global South NGO, and coordinator of the IFI Advisory Board of the US-based grassroots grant-making organisation, Global Greengrants Fund. Her recent research focuses on the intersections of indigenous people's struggles for self-determination, forest conservation and alternatives to development.
Miriam Lang is Professor in the Department for Environment and Sustainability at Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, Ecuador. Since 2020, she coordinates the master’s in Political Ecology and Alternatives to Development. She holds a PhD in Sociology and a master’s degree in Latin American Studies from the Free University of Berlin. She collaborates with the Latin American Permanent Working Group on Alternatives to Development as well as with social movements and organizations on feminist, environmental and anti-racist issues. Since 2016, she co-coordinates the Global Beyond Development Working Group. Among her recent publications in English, besides the book The Geopolitics of Green Colonialism: Global Justice and Ecosocial Transitions recently coedited with Mary Ann Manahan and Breno Bringel, are the articles Commoning Care: Feminist Degrowth Visions for a Socio-Ecological Transformation in Feminist Economics (2021) and Degrowth, global asymmetries and ecosocial justice: decolonial perspectives from Latin America, in the Review of International Studies. She is also active in the Ecosocial and Intercultural Pact of the South.