cold green: useful and frightening? - ku leuven...cold green: useful and frightening? •very bad if...
TRANSCRIPT
Cold green: useful and frightening?
• Very bad if it happens , even worse if it doesn’t (at least one of the major global disasters avoided)
• Very unlikely to happen: - long term sustainability incompatible with extreme inequality - U- turn in terms political will needed • but if only a part of this scenario… - Development coöperation / Collaboration - Civil society emergency
One problem solved
• Threat of climate change is at least temporarily dealt with
• This a major political achievement • Implies dramatically strengthened (selective)
international cooperation, regulation and enforcement capacity
• Strong articulation between national and international policy
• Implies a massive increase of resources (strange mix of financial regulation and increasing public debt)
• Revival of local agriculture
One major problem solved?
Session in the dutch parliament
The world political forum
GUN: Green United Nations
Greening of Big business
Grow local
promising
• Worst case scenario avoided (ecological AND social disaster
• Strong governments and binding international framework (although partial)
• Business interested in ecologically sustainable economy and investment
• More solid financial architecture
• Impressive technological achievements
• Potential of local agriculture/ sustainable production
• Plenty of reasons for resistance
BUT
High social costs
- Selective (even cynical: ‘long? Live the CO2 – neutral poor?’ vs the ‘greening of the BRIC middle class’)
- Repressive: precarity on the rise/ king size Indignados movement
- Exclusive ‘Minimal damage control’ policies (with a role for development coöperation)
- MDG put ‘on hold’ because of emergency
- Unholy alliance between authoritarian politics and big business (agreement on profitable ecological agenda)
- Growing inequality
t
The watercanon on solar energy
Fully recyclable barded wire
Eco- F…
Development ’collaboration’?
• more than ever following the paradigm instead of changing it • Total blurring of DAC criteria (could be N-N or S-S , etc.) • Instrumentalised : ecologically (geared towards mitigation etc)./
politically/ Socially: used for subminimal social protection floor/ migration policy
• Militarised (permanently in between pre- and post conflict, and disaster management)
• Privatised (operational aspects/ expensive technology and infrastructure) • Differentiated: keep the LDC ‘reasonably’ poor and the MIC clean and
decoupled • Reoriented: new sectors/ geographicaly • New alliances outside of traditional donor circle (across regions, sectors,
corporate- civil s - public • Some ‘like minded’ keep development focus on the agenda)
NGO emergency : even if only part of the scenario…
• Keep the fundamentals right: right to development / focus on fight against poverty and inequality/ defence of democracy / challenge the model: keep the social dimension of sustainability on the table • Sneek them in: Embed the social dimension (fix firmly in a surrounding) ,
the right words, concepts, proposals in academic texts/ in constitutions, in government declarations, in EU directives, in UN texts, in international agreements, treaties, work programmes of international institutions etc
• Speed up the research and implementation of ‘transition’ measures Invest in the development of socially sustainable ‘greening’
• use cross border alliances efficiently: (thematic/ regional/ actors) : build new generation of world social fora.
• Private sector Kiss and Kick strategy
• Mediatise the fight (ecoscandals/ spectacular alternatives (and take it to the streets)
• Politicise the fight (take it to the kabinet!) • Intensify work on institutional aspects of
development • Strange: renewed defense of old fashioned ‘real aid’ • Keep various fractions of civil society on speaking
terms (green aid/ emergency/ watch dog/ social movement/ )
• Use the potential of the scenario: lessons /strong int. Framework/ technology, etc)
heat it up