Emphasis on the role of the state in steering green investment can also be seen
as a response to a sense of crisis in states’ more conventional environmental
governance roles. Failures of institutional arrangements and architectures nationally
and globally to tackle climate change, biodiversity loss and key areas of pollution
successfully have led some to revise expectations that such agreements are possible,
in the face of overwhelming national and interest-group political–economic
interests. Other views, such as perspectives in the Earth system governance
literature, are more optimistic, stressing the scope to accelerate green transformations by strengthening global architectures and institutions, and if necessary creating
new ones, such as the World Environment Organisation much discussed around
Rio 2012.
Citizen-led transformations
A fourth narrative suggests that transformations will have to come from below.
This represents a more populist version of sustainability, centred on taking control
over resources from state-capital elites who have shown little serious interest in
more profound green transformations and whose ability to deliver them is highly
compromised by their commitments to growth at any cost. There is a strong
emphasis on degrowth and bottom-up transitions to alternative solidarity-based
econ omies (Dobson, 2009; Utting, forthcoming, 2015), including examples of transi -
tion towns and alternative agri-food movements (Leach and Scoones, this book).
Civil society groups have also proposed alternative ways of ‘living well’. Among
the most celebrated are plans for buen vivir, now endorsed by government ministries
in Ecuador, that combine environmental justice, common goods, agroecology and
food sovereignty. Buen vivir (the Quechua term is sumak kawsay) also emphasizes
indigenous, non-Western concepts, such as miriachina – the idea that people and
groups contribute to the realization of goods collaboratively and with nature, rather
than producing things as individuals (Martínez Novo, 2012). These proposals imply
quite different routes to achieving green transformations that involve challenging
the social and political–economic structures that sustain individualist, capitalist
development paths.
Mobilizations for alternative pathways in which rights to food, water or energy
often have a central role are combined with resistance to existing forms of
extractivism and business-as-usual developmentalism (Bond, 2012; Gottlieb and
Joshi, 2010). As well as ‘weapons of the weak’ (Scott, 2008) and transnational
mobilizations (Tarrow, 2005), as Leach and Scoones (this book) illustrate, they
combine with initiatives around ‘citizen science’ and grassroots innovation (Smith
and Ely, this book). From projecting alternatives to current unsustainabilities, to
demonstrations and experiments within ‘niches’, the emphasis is often on diversify -
ing and democratizing knowledge for transformations, and so ‘culturing’ sustain -
ability (cf. Stirling, this book), through an emphasis on everyday and lifestyle politics.
Table 1.1 offers a schematic summary of the diagnoses and associated solutions
proposed under these four narratives of green transformations. As the chapters that
The politics of green transformations 15
as a response to a sense of crisis in states’ more conventional environmental
governance roles. Failures of institutional arrangements and architectures nationally
and globally to tackle climate change, biodiversity loss and key areas of pollution
successfully have led some to revise expectations that such agreements are possible,
in the face of overwhelming national and interest-group political–economic
interests. Other views, such as perspectives in the Earth system governance
literature, are more optimistic, stressing the scope to accelerate green transformations by strengthening global architectures and institutions, and if necessary creating
new ones, such as the World Environment Organisation much discussed around
Rio 2012.
Citizen-led transformations
A fourth narrative suggests that transformations will have to come from below.
This represents a more populist version of sustainability, centred on taking control
over resources from state-capital elites who have shown little serious interest in
more profound green transformations and whose ability to deliver them is highly
compromised by their commitments to growth at any cost. There is a strong
emphasis on degrowth and bottom-up transitions to alternative solidarity-based
econ omies (Dobson, 2009; Utting, forthcoming, 2015), including examples of transi -
tion towns and alternative agri-food movements (Leach and Scoones, this book).
Civil society groups have also proposed alternative ways of ‘living well’. Among
the most celebrated are plans for buen vivir, now endorsed by government ministries
in Ecuador, that combine environmental justice, common goods, agroecology and
food sovereignty. Buen vivir (the Quechua term is sumak kawsay) also emphasizes
indigenous, non-Western concepts, such as miriachina – the idea that people and
groups contribute to the realization of goods collaboratively and with nature, rather
than producing things as individuals (Martínez Novo, 2012). These proposals imply
quite different routes to achieving green transformations that involve challenging
the social and political–economic structures that sustain individualist, capitalist
development paths.
Mobilizations for alternative pathways in which rights to food, water or energy
often have a central role are combined with resistance to existing forms of
extractivism and business-as-usual developmentalism (Bond, 2012; Gottlieb and
Joshi, 2010). As well as ‘weapons of the weak’ (Scott, 2008) and transnational
mobilizations (Tarrow, 2005), as Leach and Scoones (this book) illustrate, they
combine with initiatives around ‘citizen science’ and grassroots innovation (Smith
and Ely, this book). From projecting alternatives to current unsustainabilities, to
demonstrations and experiments within ‘niches’, the emphasis is often on diversify -
ing and democratizing knowledge for transformations, and so ‘culturing’ sustain -
ability (cf. Stirling, this book), through an emphasis on everyday and lifestyle politics.
Table 1.1 offers a schematic summary of the diagnoses and associated solutions
proposed under these four narratives of green transformations. As the chapters that
The politics of green transformations 15