climate smart agriculture, or large-scale, input-intensive industrial agricultural
invest ments. Each could be the basis of a green food future. However, they are
very different futures; they incorporate different meanings of green, and small
farmers, businesses, national policy-makers and others would value and prioritize
them in very different ways. As controversies around genetically modified (GM)
crops attest (see Leach and Scoones, this book), such contestation can be vibrant
and highly political.
Alternatively, take an ecosystem in a place, such as a particular African tropical
forest. Here, a plurality of possible goals could be associated with different people
and groups, scales and particular boundaries. Thus, governments and international
agencies might value the forest as a carbon stock to offset emissions in industrialized
countries to help keep global humanity within climate boundaries, and businesses
and public–private partnerships would value the profits to be made by trading carbon
credits. Biodiversity scientists might value its endemic flora and fauna, seeking to
protect forest habitat as a key contribution to steer development within biodiversity
boundaries. The tourist industry might value the profits to be made from eco -
tourism here. For nearby urban populations and water companies, the forest safe -
guards hydrology and its protection is key to maintaining water supplies. For the
timber industry and government production foresters, green goals would mean
developing sustainable logging practices and timber supplies. For local residents,
the same forest may be valued as a place of historical memories and ancestral spirits;
a source of gathered foods, fibres and medicines; a source of bushmeat from hunting;
a place to plant agroforestry trees under the shade of the forest canopy, or a set of
potential fallows to sustain the fertility of household rice production. Indeed, a
forest is all of these and more, but the point is that these diverse ecosystem properties,
goods, services and cultural attributes are valued differently by different local, national
and global populations. There is a wide diversity of green goals, but green in different
ways. Some are compatible – gathering and biodiversity, for instance – but others
imply tensions, trade-offs and potential contestation. Local people have often resisted
biodiversity conservation and forest carbon schemes that have excluded them from
forest access and jeopardized their livelihoods and ways of life (e.g. Fairhead and
Leach, 1998; Corbera and Brown, 2010; Leach and Scoones, 2013).
Discursive appeals to broad planetary boundaries can often obscure such
diversity, and contestation, around particular versions of green. This may create
resist ance that ultimately undoes even the best intentioned interventions, or
suppress understandings and practices that offer valuable prospects for more sustain -
able futures. Taking diverse perspectives and goals seriously suggests not a single
form of green transformation to steer within universal limits, but multiple
transformative pathways, towards multiply-envisaged futures (Leach et al., 2013)
and a more negotiated approach that works through tensions with the diverse
stakeholders involved.
A third set of questions, then, concerns the implications of planetary boundaries
discourse for justice. At a global level, these surfaced in geopolitics around the
Rio+20 conference. Many low-income and emerging economies contested the
What is green? 33
invest ments. Each could be the basis of a green food future. However, they are
very different futures; they incorporate different meanings of green, and small
farmers, businesses, national policy-makers and others would value and prioritize
them in very different ways. As controversies around genetically modified (GM)
crops attest (see Leach and Scoones, this book), such contestation can be vibrant
and highly political.
Alternatively, take an ecosystem in a place, such as a particular African tropical
forest. Here, a plurality of possible goals could be associated with different people
and groups, scales and particular boundaries. Thus, governments and international
agencies might value the forest as a carbon stock to offset emissions in industrialized
countries to help keep global humanity within climate boundaries, and businesses
and public–private partnerships would value the profits to be made by trading carbon
credits. Biodiversity scientists might value its endemic flora and fauna, seeking to
protect forest habitat as a key contribution to steer development within biodiversity
boundaries. The tourist industry might value the profits to be made from eco -
tourism here. For nearby urban populations and water companies, the forest safe -
guards hydrology and its protection is key to maintaining water supplies. For the
timber industry and government production foresters, green goals would mean
developing sustainable logging practices and timber supplies. For local residents,
the same forest may be valued as a place of historical memories and ancestral spirits;
a source of gathered foods, fibres and medicines; a source of bushmeat from hunting;
a place to plant agroforestry trees under the shade of the forest canopy, or a set of
potential fallows to sustain the fertility of household rice production. Indeed, a
forest is all of these and more, but the point is that these diverse ecosystem properties,
goods, services and cultural attributes are valued differently by different local, national
and global populations. There is a wide diversity of green goals, but green in different
ways. Some are compatible – gathering and biodiversity, for instance – but others
imply tensions, trade-offs and potential contestation. Local people have often resisted
biodiversity conservation and forest carbon schemes that have excluded them from
forest access and jeopardized their livelihoods and ways of life (e.g. Fairhead and
Leach, 1998; Corbera and Brown, 2010; Leach and Scoones, 2013).
Discursive appeals to broad planetary boundaries can often obscure such
diversity, and contestation, around particular versions of green. This may create
resist ance that ultimately undoes even the best intentioned interventions, or
suppress understandings and practices that offer valuable prospects for more sustain -
able futures. Taking diverse perspectives and goals seriously suggests not a single
form of green transformation to steer within universal limits, but multiple
transformative pathways, towards multiply-envisaged futures (Leach et al., 2013)
and a more negotiated approach that works through tensions with the diverse
stakeholders involved.
A third set of questions, then, concerns the implications of planetary boundaries
discourse for justice. At a global level, these surfaced in geopolitics around the
Rio+20 conference. Many low-income and emerging economies contested the
What is green? 33