Green new deal must remain green
Farida Akhter
Farida Akhter
THE most recent (March 2009) policy brief of the United Nations Environment Programme on Global Green New Deal is about the ‘worst financial and economic crisis’ and raises the question whether the response of financial stimulus of $3 trillion globally is sustainable. UNEP recommends a green stimulus of 1 per cent of global GDP (approximately $750 billion) – one-fourth of the total proposed fiscal stimulus could provide a critical mass of green infrastructure ‘needed to seed a significant greening of the global economy. The focus of the green stimulus is on growth, jobs and tackling poverty. Also, the policy document says, the objective is to reduce carbon dependency and ecosystem degradation.
The present global financial crisis began in the developed countries, particularly in the United States and spilled over to most parts of the world encompassing the banking sector, securities and currency market, and institutional and individual investors. From 2008, it has been the breaking news in the international media and also helped to bring down the Bush era in the US. This financial crisis is similar to that of the Great Depression in the 1929-30 and many researches show a strong conviction of the leaders of the Bretton Woods conference in 1944 that the World War II in one way or the other was the result of the Depression. That means the Great Depression caused the war and the war led to the creation of the Bretton Woods Institutions such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, etc with the guarantee for future world peace. There was also the conviction that the Depression was the product of the frenzied speculative activities by the big financial institutions in a climate of easy money and the absence of strong regulations and capital controls. There was thus a strong determination to re-establish a new financial architecture which would regulate financial markets to avoid such crises and prevent another war in the future.
In the New Deal legislation of President Roosevelt, it was made clear that there must be strict supervision of all banking, credits and investments. The New Deal was a deal among rich and industrialised countries competing with each other to dominate the world market and dividing the world between themselves. Interestingly, ‘war’ among the industrialised countries is known as ‘world war’ while war against non-western weak countries is marginalised and considered as having no ‘world’ significance despite the fact that the war in the Middle East is fundamental to the survival of the fossil-fuel based industrial societies. War, militarization and violence have always been the part of us since the establishment of Bretton Woods institutions. War against Afghanistan and Iraq removed the veil of un-sustainability of the industrial fossil-fuel based societies and there is hardly any option left to ensure energy security for their survival through military means and, therefore, construction of new kind of ‘enemies’ to perpetuate war and violence to keep up with the over-consumption and oil-based lifestyle of the rich in the western countries. The example of fossil fuels indicates clearly that the issue is no more economy as such, creation of wealth in the form of money, commodity and technology, but the way we relate to nature in generating our life, lifestyles and the future. It implies that we can no more talk about any ‘deal’ without fundamentally reviewing our conception of economy, ecology and lifestyle and putting our efforts to construct a vision and science that starts to link these already obsolete sciences that claim independence from each other, while they indeed are integral to the very activity of human beings that build civilisation. The new deal must be the deal for post-industrial, post-capitalist green civilisation.
Since nature, or the natural value of commodities, remains outside the consideration of the economic science; in other words, ecology and biodiversity are considered de-linked and lifestyles and value of local cultures and knowledge has never been the part of the paradigm of ‘development’, so the Bretton Woods Institutions have been active in financing projects that are destructive to environment and people’s livelihood.
In the early sixties of the 20th century, the World Bank made conditional loans to the developing countries to adopt ‘modern agriculture’ – a package of chemical fertilisers, pesticides, irrigation system with diesel or power in the name of achieving higher yields and thereby attaining food self-sufficiency. By ‘food’ the World Bank meant cereals and the focus was on the staples. As a result, while cereal production increased in some cases in countries like Bangladesh, oil seeds, lentils, forest products and in general the biomass – a major source of energy in the rural areas – have decreased. Misconception of ‘agriculture’ is scandalously obvious here. Agriculture does not only produce food, but also fuel woods, fibres, medicines, construction materials, etc. By polluting environment, both terrestrial and aquatic, the modern agriculture destroyed food sources that people could easily collect without cultivating. In Bangladesh, the fish and aquatic resources have been destroyed by chemicals, pesticides and unsustainable urbanisation dumping waste into rivers and agricultural lands. This has proved a disaster for Bangladesh. Food insufficiency still remains an acute problem, while the rural environment is destroyed due to excessive use of chemicals. Problem now is not only insufficiency of food but the deterioration of basis of food production – the environmental and ecological erosion of the land, rivers and water bodies. And now, the biotechnology industry is promoting and facilitating the proliferation of genetically modified organisms in food and agriculture. A step that will simply accelerate the biological pollution in countries that is still rich in biodiversity and genetic resources.
In the seventies and eighties, the World Bank supported shrimp aquaculture as part of export-led growth to repay external debts. The World Bank’s International Finance Corporation provided funds to private investors for the expansion of shrimp farming. International environment activists have pointed out that aquaculture already posed severe problems at conservation and sustainable use of marine living resources. The rapid and unregulated expansion of the shrimp aquaculture industry in Asia, Latin America and Africa has led to severe environmental degradation and loss of livelihood of millions of people.
The World Bank and its institutions are best known for their financing of large infrastructure projects, such as big dams power plants, highways, etc. The natural resource-based mega-projects like big dams and coal mining in developing countries cause displacement of communities, harm to indigenous peoples, release of greenhouse gases, and other serious negative impacts.
Deforestation accounts for some 20 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, but the bank continues to promote industrial logging and agro-fuels. Throughout tropical rainforest areas, the International Finance Corporation – the private sector lending arm of the World Bank Group – finances soy and oil palm plantations and cattle ranching, as well as financing shrimp farming in mangrove forests.
Fossil fuel projects extract a heavy toll on people and the planet, leaving toxic legacies of social injustice, degraded water, land and air, and global warming pollution. Yet the World Bank Group funded over $3 billion in fossil fuels between 2007 and 2008. Despite professed concern regarding climate change, the World Bank Group increased its fossil fuel lending by 94 per cent. Lending for coal – the dirtiest of the fossil fuels – increased 256 per cent.
From New Deal to Green New Deal
THE New Deal, even if it is ‘Green’ cannot succeed unless we are ready to look at the basis of the problems. At the economic level a ‘new deal’ is not easy to make in 2009. True that in the 1930s and 40s it was possible to push through regulatory moves against finance capital because it was not yet the dominant economic and political force in the US. In the 1950s the financial service sector constituted only 10 per cent, while in the 1980s it rose to 20 per cent of US GDP. In contrast, the manufacturing sector was 30 per cent in the 1950s, shrunk to 12 per cent in the 1980s. In terms of profits, the financial sector generated 44 per cent of all corporate profits and manufacturing sector generated 10 per cent of the profit. But ample liquidity and low interest rates, together with regulatory shortcomings, resulted in a rapid growth of speculative lending, sowing the seeds of the global financial turmoil (Third World Resurgence, 2009). In Washington, on November 15, 2008 the G-20 summit failed to realise the promise of a fundamental change in the global financial architecture, particularly in bringing about concrete measures to effectively regulate the reckless financial market practices. A second Bretton Woods could not be created.
Before the G-20 summit top economists and United Nations leaders worked on a ‘Green New Deal’ to create millions of jobs, revive the world economy, slash poverty and avert environmental disaster, as the financial markets plunge into their deepest crisis since the Great Depression. It aims to establish the fact that far from restricting growth, healing the global environment will be a desperately-needed driving force behind it. The Green Economy Initiative – spearheaded by the United Nations Environment Programme – draws its inspiration from Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. Nicknamed Green New Deal, it envisages basing recovery on providing work for the poor, as well as reform of financial practices.
The ‘Green New Deal’ is a new multimillion dollar initiative – which is being already funded by the German and Norwegian Governments and the European Commission – and arises out of a study commissioned by world leaders at the 2006 G8 summit into the economic value of ecosystems. It argues that the world is caught up in not one, but three interlinked crises, with the food and fuel crunches accompanying and intensifying the financial one.
Soaring prices of grain and oil, it stresses, have stemmed from outdated economic priorities that have concentrated on short-term exploitation of the world’s resources, without considering how they can be used to sustain prosperity in the longer term. According to UNEP, over the last quarter of a century, world growth has doubled, but 60 per cent of the natural resources that provide food, water, energy and clean air have been seriously degraded.
Putting economic tags on the ‘services’ we receive from the ecosystems function may be a useful way to convince the policymakers on the value of natural and biological world that does not enter into strictly economic relations. Achim Steiner, UNEP’s executive director, pointed out that new research shows that every year, for example, the felling of forests deprives the world of over $2.5 trillion worth of such services in supplying water, generating rainfall, stopping soil erosion, cleaning the air and reducing global warming. By comparison, the global financial crisis is so far estimated to have cost the world the smaller one-off sum of $1.5 trillion. The world market for environmental goods and service already stands at $1.3 trillion and is expected to double over the next 12 years even on present trends.
The new, green economy would provide a new engine of growth, putting the world on the road to prosperity again. This is about growing the world economy in a more intelligent, sustainable way. The 20th-century economy, now in such crisis, was driven by financial capital. The 21st-century one is going to have to be based on developing the world’s natural capital to provide the lasting jobs and wealth that are needed, particularly for the poorest people on the planet.
Pragmatically, the ‘Green New Deal’ would like to take advantage of the unique opportunity presented by the multiple crises and the ensuing global recession with multilateral and national efforts, simultaneously addressing the interconnected global climate, food, fuel and water challenges that threaten society over the medium term.
There is a widespread acceptance that neo-liberal model has collapsed and the so-called ‘free market’ cannot work any more. The unregulated market can not resurrect itself on its own from the historic collapse and without significant and co-ordinated government interventions.
Nevertheless, the premise of profit-based competitive capitalist global architecture is not under question, although there is more willingness to listen to new solution. It is assumed that the enormous fiscal resources being released can potentially be used to achieve ‘critical mass’ of investment and employment in order to kick-start the new sustainable paradigm. In a way this is again ‘development’ from the top and essentially a proposition to improve the quality of the development financing to achieve the millennium goals. It is also assumed that the initiatives for global financial restructuring may be corrected in a way to address global emission governance as well.
The global financial crisis has global consequences. It will exacerbate poverty and will accentuate social risks and costs. This is where countries like Bangladesh may hope to get some benefits from the Global Green New Deal since the suggestion is to invest in securing freshwater, providing sanitation, and optimising agricultural productivity through sustainable methods. The determination to ensure that ‘post-crisis’ economy follows a sustainable model and does not continue to add to the two most significant risks faced by society: ecological scarcity and climate instability is obviously directly related to the concerns of the people of Bangladesh.
The misconception what the Global Green New Deal would like to dispel is that there is a trade-off between economic development and environmental stewardship. This view is exacerbated at times of economic difficulty. Environment, ecology and biological foundation of life can not be eroded in the name of development, since these are also economic assets. Consequently, a responsible framework is necessary for using environmental assets. This is particularly true about the poorest populations as they depend disproportionately on the ecological commons both for livelihoods and for consumption.
The Global Green New Deal is an approach to revive global economy, saving and creating jobs and protecting vulnerable groups. It aims to reduce carbon dependency and ecosystem degradation and a wish to put the global capitalist economy on a path to clean and stable development. However, this is not a shift from the ‘growth’ paradigm and does not fundamentally question the main drive of the capitalist economy — profit and greed. The deal is within the economic paradigm and creation of implementing agencies that are mainly global. Although the necessity of the national efforts is recognised, the initiative is coming from industrial societies as response to solve their own national crisis.
Our solutions must come from ecological and livelihood perspective for the majority of the people of Bangladesh.
Abridged version of a paper presented at the April 24-26 McPlanet.com congress in Berlin. Farida Akhter is executive director of UBINIG.
The present global financial crisis began in the developed countries, particularly in the United States and spilled over to most parts of the world encompassing the banking sector, securities and currency market, and institutional and individual investors. From 2008, it has been the breaking news in the international media and also helped to bring down the Bush era in the US. This financial crisis is similar to that of the Great Depression in the 1929-30 and many researches show a strong conviction of the leaders of the Bretton Woods conference in 1944 that the World War II in one way or the other was the result of the Depression. That means the Great Depression caused the war and the war led to the creation of the Bretton Woods Institutions such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, etc with the guarantee for future world peace. There was also the conviction that the Depression was the product of the frenzied speculative activities by the big financial institutions in a climate of easy money and the absence of strong regulations and capital controls. There was thus a strong determination to re-establish a new financial architecture which would regulate financial markets to avoid such crises and prevent another war in the future.
In the New Deal legislation of President Roosevelt, it was made clear that there must be strict supervision of all banking, credits and investments. The New Deal was a deal among rich and industrialised countries competing with each other to dominate the world market and dividing the world between themselves. Interestingly, ‘war’ among the industrialised countries is known as ‘world war’ while war against non-western weak countries is marginalised and considered as having no ‘world’ significance despite the fact that the war in the Middle East is fundamental to the survival of the fossil-fuel based industrial societies. War, militarization and violence have always been the part of us since the establishment of Bretton Woods institutions. War against Afghanistan and Iraq removed the veil of un-sustainability of the industrial fossil-fuel based societies and there is hardly any option left to ensure energy security for their survival through military means and, therefore, construction of new kind of ‘enemies’ to perpetuate war and violence to keep up with the over-consumption and oil-based lifestyle of the rich in the western countries. The example of fossil fuels indicates clearly that the issue is no more economy as such, creation of wealth in the form of money, commodity and technology, but the way we relate to nature in generating our life, lifestyles and the future. It implies that we can no more talk about any ‘deal’ without fundamentally reviewing our conception of economy, ecology and lifestyle and putting our efforts to construct a vision and science that starts to link these already obsolete sciences that claim independence from each other, while they indeed are integral to the very activity of human beings that build civilisation. The new deal must be the deal for post-industrial, post-capitalist green civilisation.
Since nature, or the natural value of commodities, remains outside the consideration of the economic science; in other words, ecology and biodiversity are considered de-linked and lifestyles and value of local cultures and knowledge has never been the part of the paradigm of ‘development’, so the Bretton Woods Institutions have been active in financing projects that are destructive to environment and people’s livelihood.
In the early sixties of the 20th century, the World Bank made conditional loans to the developing countries to adopt ‘modern agriculture’ – a package of chemical fertilisers, pesticides, irrigation system with diesel or power in the name of achieving higher yields and thereby attaining food self-sufficiency. By ‘food’ the World Bank meant cereals and the focus was on the staples. As a result, while cereal production increased in some cases in countries like Bangladesh, oil seeds, lentils, forest products and in general the biomass – a major source of energy in the rural areas – have decreased. Misconception of ‘agriculture’ is scandalously obvious here. Agriculture does not only produce food, but also fuel woods, fibres, medicines, construction materials, etc. By polluting environment, both terrestrial and aquatic, the modern agriculture destroyed food sources that people could easily collect without cultivating. In Bangladesh, the fish and aquatic resources have been destroyed by chemicals, pesticides and unsustainable urbanisation dumping waste into rivers and agricultural lands. This has proved a disaster for Bangladesh. Food insufficiency still remains an acute problem, while the rural environment is destroyed due to excessive use of chemicals. Problem now is not only insufficiency of food but the deterioration of basis of food production – the environmental and ecological erosion of the land, rivers and water bodies. And now, the biotechnology industry is promoting and facilitating the proliferation of genetically modified organisms in food and agriculture. A step that will simply accelerate the biological pollution in countries that is still rich in biodiversity and genetic resources.
In the seventies and eighties, the World Bank supported shrimp aquaculture as part of export-led growth to repay external debts. The World Bank’s International Finance Corporation provided funds to private investors for the expansion of shrimp farming. International environment activists have pointed out that aquaculture already posed severe problems at conservation and sustainable use of marine living resources. The rapid and unregulated expansion of the shrimp aquaculture industry in Asia, Latin America and Africa has led to severe environmental degradation and loss of livelihood of millions of people.
The World Bank and its institutions are best known for their financing of large infrastructure projects, such as big dams power plants, highways, etc. The natural resource-based mega-projects like big dams and coal mining in developing countries cause displacement of communities, harm to indigenous peoples, release of greenhouse gases, and other serious negative impacts.
Deforestation accounts for some 20 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, but the bank continues to promote industrial logging and agro-fuels. Throughout tropical rainforest areas, the International Finance Corporation – the private sector lending arm of the World Bank Group – finances soy and oil palm plantations and cattle ranching, as well as financing shrimp farming in mangrove forests.
Fossil fuel projects extract a heavy toll on people and the planet, leaving toxic legacies of social injustice, degraded water, land and air, and global warming pollution. Yet the World Bank Group funded over $3 billion in fossil fuels between 2007 and 2008. Despite professed concern regarding climate change, the World Bank Group increased its fossil fuel lending by 94 per cent. Lending for coal – the dirtiest of the fossil fuels – increased 256 per cent.
From New Deal to Green New Deal
THE New Deal, even if it is ‘Green’ cannot succeed unless we are ready to look at the basis of the problems. At the economic level a ‘new deal’ is not easy to make in 2009. True that in the 1930s and 40s it was possible to push through regulatory moves against finance capital because it was not yet the dominant economic and political force in the US. In the 1950s the financial service sector constituted only 10 per cent, while in the 1980s it rose to 20 per cent of US GDP. In contrast, the manufacturing sector was 30 per cent in the 1950s, shrunk to 12 per cent in the 1980s. In terms of profits, the financial sector generated 44 per cent of all corporate profits and manufacturing sector generated 10 per cent of the profit. But ample liquidity and low interest rates, together with regulatory shortcomings, resulted in a rapid growth of speculative lending, sowing the seeds of the global financial turmoil (Third World Resurgence, 2009). In Washington, on November 15, 2008 the G-20 summit failed to realise the promise of a fundamental change in the global financial architecture, particularly in bringing about concrete measures to effectively regulate the reckless financial market practices. A second Bretton Woods could not be created.
Before the G-20 summit top economists and United Nations leaders worked on a ‘Green New Deal’ to create millions of jobs, revive the world economy, slash poverty and avert environmental disaster, as the financial markets plunge into their deepest crisis since the Great Depression. It aims to establish the fact that far from restricting growth, healing the global environment will be a desperately-needed driving force behind it. The Green Economy Initiative – spearheaded by the United Nations Environment Programme – draws its inspiration from Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. Nicknamed Green New Deal, it envisages basing recovery on providing work for the poor, as well as reform of financial practices.
The ‘Green New Deal’ is a new multimillion dollar initiative – which is being already funded by the German and Norwegian Governments and the European Commission – and arises out of a study commissioned by world leaders at the 2006 G8 summit into the economic value of ecosystems. It argues that the world is caught up in not one, but three interlinked crises, with the food and fuel crunches accompanying and intensifying the financial one.
Soaring prices of grain and oil, it stresses, have stemmed from outdated economic priorities that have concentrated on short-term exploitation of the world’s resources, without considering how they can be used to sustain prosperity in the longer term. According to UNEP, over the last quarter of a century, world growth has doubled, but 60 per cent of the natural resources that provide food, water, energy and clean air have been seriously degraded.
Putting economic tags on the ‘services’ we receive from the ecosystems function may be a useful way to convince the policymakers on the value of natural and biological world that does not enter into strictly economic relations. Achim Steiner, UNEP’s executive director, pointed out that new research shows that every year, for example, the felling of forests deprives the world of over $2.5 trillion worth of such services in supplying water, generating rainfall, stopping soil erosion, cleaning the air and reducing global warming. By comparison, the global financial crisis is so far estimated to have cost the world the smaller one-off sum of $1.5 trillion. The world market for environmental goods and service already stands at $1.3 trillion and is expected to double over the next 12 years even on present trends.
The new, green economy would provide a new engine of growth, putting the world on the road to prosperity again. This is about growing the world economy in a more intelligent, sustainable way. The 20th-century economy, now in such crisis, was driven by financial capital. The 21st-century one is going to have to be based on developing the world’s natural capital to provide the lasting jobs and wealth that are needed, particularly for the poorest people on the planet.
Pragmatically, the ‘Green New Deal’ would like to take advantage of the unique opportunity presented by the multiple crises and the ensuing global recession with multilateral and national efforts, simultaneously addressing the interconnected global climate, food, fuel and water challenges that threaten society over the medium term.
There is a widespread acceptance that neo-liberal model has collapsed and the so-called ‘free market’ cannot work any more. The unregulated market can not resurrect itself on its own from the historic collapse and without significant and co-ordinated government interventions.
Nevertheless, the premise of profit-based competitive capitalist global architecture is not under question, although there is more willingness to listen to new solution. It is assumed that the enormous fiscal resources being released can potentially be used to achieve ‘critical mass’ of investment and employment in order to kick-start the new sustainable paradigm. In a way this is again ‘development’ from the top and essentially a proposition to improve the quality of the development financing to achieve the millennium goals. It is also assumed that the initiatives for global financial restructuring may be corrected in a way to address global emission governance as well.
The global financial crisis has global consequences. It will exacerbate poverty and will accentuate social risks and costs. This is where countries like Bangladesh may hope to get some benefits from the Global Green New Deal since the suggestion is to invest in securing freshwater, providing sanitation, and optimising agricultural productivity through sustainable methods. The determination to ensure that ‘post-crisis’ economy follows a sustainable model and does not continue to add to the two most significant risks faced by society: ecological scarcity and climate instability is obviously directly related to the concerns of the people of Bangladesh.
The misconception what the Global Green New Deal would like to dispel is that there is a trade-off between economic development and environmental stewardship. This view is exacerbated at times of economic difficulty. Environment, ecology and biological foundation of life can not be eroded in the name of development, since these are also economic assets. Consequently, a responsible framework is necessary for using environmental assets. This is particularly true about the poorest populations as they depend disproportionately on the ecological commons both for livelihoods and for consumption.
The Global Green New Deal is an approach to revive global economy, saving and creating jobs and protecting vulnerable groups. It aims to reduce carbon dependency and ecosystem degradation and a wish to put the global capitalist economy on a path to clean and stable development. However, this is not a shift from the ‘growth’ paradigm and does not fundamentally question the main drive of the capitalist economy — profit and greed. The deal is within the economic paradigm and creation of implementing agencies that are mainly global. Although the necessity of the national efforts is recognised, the initiative is coming from industrial societies as response to solve their own national crisis.
Our solutions must come from ecological and livelihood perspective for the majority of the people of Bangladesh.
Abridged version of a paper presented at the April 24-26 McPlanet.com congress in Berlin. Farida Akhter is executive director of UBINIG.
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