Showing papers in "International Journal of Green Economics in 2006"

Green Economics: setting the scene. Aims, context, and philosophical underpinning of the distinctive new solutions offered by Green Economics

Abstract: Green Economics positions economics within a very long-term, earth-wide, holistic context of reality as a part of nature. It also incorporates and celebrates 'difference', diversity, equity and inclusiveness within its concepts of society and community. Its philosophy is to manage economics for nature as usual, rather than to manage the environment for business as usual. The paper introduces the new Green Economics discipline and reviews its shape and philosophical underpinnings. By combining economics with knowledge from the natural sciences, we argue that Green Economics can incorporate a much wider, more practical, multidisciplinary range of knowledge than other schools of economics. The paper suggests how Green Economics can offer unique insights into four of the key areas ('eco', intellectual, political and moral) of today's significant and mounting problems and highlights how its novel insights provide new solutions. The development of this new branch of Economics is justified in this text by reviewing the main contradictions, deficiencies, assumptions, conventions, and inherent normative concepts to be found in dominant neo-classical economic thinking, which have accumulated over the past two centuries.

Ecofeminist political economy

Abstract: This paper will argue that ecofeminist political economy can make a major contribution to green economics. Ecofeminist political economy sees women's work and lives, like the natural world, as being externalised by current economic systems. Through an analysis of the gendering of economic systems, the paper explores alternative ways of conceptualising the provisioning of human societies. Central to this is a critique of conventional notions of 'the economy' and its dualist framework that only values marketable aspects of humanity and nature. The paper identifies the core elements of an ecofeminist analysis, including women's work as body work in biological time, and the necessarily embedded and localised nature of this work. From this perspective the paper goes on to explore conceptions of an embodied and embedded economics that would not be exploitative of women and nature.

Green economics : an introduction and research agenda

Abstract: Green economics: An introduction and research agenda, examines the historical evolution of green economics, a discourse which is marked by antipathy to the foundational assumptions of conventional market based economics. Green opposition to growth and the market is identified along with values of ecological sustainability, social justice, decentralisation and peace. To move beyond a critical account, green economics, as a discipline, needs to establish a research agenda based on: 1 examining global political economy 2 developing forms of regulation beyond the market and the state 3 examining the transition to such an alternative economy.

Turning economics inside out

Abstract: This article sets out a view of the purposes and approaches of 'green economics'. It looks particularly at the 'boundary' conventionally drawn around economics, and at the 'inputs' and 'externalities' which cross that boundary, and proposes that these should be the primary focus for work on green economics, incorporating both ecological and social aspects. The article includes a brief critique of conventional environmental economics, distinguishing that approach from the approach of green economics.

Managing the narrative of sustainable development: "discipline" of an "inefficient" concept

Abstract: This paper overviews two contested narratives of sustainable development. One employs sustainable development as a key concept in the rhetoric of eco-modernism and 'green business', following a 'managerial' model. The opposing narrative frames the concept as capable of emancipating more democratic and inclusive approaches to living with nature and with each other. Some of the ways in which that emancipatory narrative of sustainable development has been 'disciplined' and 'tamed' by the successful employment of the traditional power of management are considered. The paper draws upon an investigation carried out in New Zealand to identify how sustainable development was being framed at government and corporate level prior to the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002. It is concluded that the concept of 'management' of sustainable development was largely driving the debate. However, counter-hegemonic views were also emerging that challenged the managerial narrative in order to address systemic impediments to sustainable development.

An overview of green economics

Abstract: This paper reviews the foundational axioms, principles, aims and instruments of the system of Green Economics. It ties economics to its ecological foundations, delineates a simple structure for the economy, investigates the relationship between resources, work, wealth and money. Equity is discussed in all its relationships, and capitalism and divergence between the fortunes of rich and poor are considered. Green economics is a new discipline, and this is therefore an important moment in which to try to find an orientation and to try to produce a sketch map of the field. This paper is an attempt to provide a provisional plan. Its aim is to place the various elements of green economics into relationship with each other rather than to provide a detailed exposition or argument for each point.

The role of green economics in achieving realistic policies and programmes for sustainability

Abstract: The notion of a sustainable society is a radical one, and therefore, the ideas presented in this paper are arguably novel. We have become complacent with the notion of sustainability in recent years, but it is a concept that needs to be managed, planned, and administered, and inevitably will require significant institutional and cultural changes in order to achieve. The ideas set forth in this paper attempt to redress this complacency and envision a new revolutionary approach utilising the principles within the multidisciplinary field of green economics in order to achieve sustainability. This paper proposes pragmatic solutions for the incorporation of humanitarian and environmental considerations beyond traditional economic mechanisms. These green economic alternatives are essential to achieving the significant institutional and cultural changes necessary in order to attain a sustainable society.

Restoring the rights of future generations

Abstract: This paper promotes the idea of Rights for Future Generations as one of the ethical principles on which politics, economics and justice in the 21st century should be based. It argues that environmental damage caused by current generations has already impaired the ability of future generations to meet their basic needs. As a result of this, it argues that the concept of Sustainable Development is now flawed and should be augmented by the concept of Restorative Development. This paper highlights areas where restoration can be effected and some of the mechanisms that will be required in economics, law and politics to support this restoration.

A theoretical investigation into the likely existence of the Environmental Kuznets Curve

Abstract: The Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) first emerged in the 1990s as a means of describing the changing relationship between growth and environmental degradation. The EKC is based on the view that, as a nation's per capita real GDP rises over time, environmental quality initially deteriorates but eventually improves as the desire for a clean environment and the wherewithal to obtain it increases. Should the EKC exist, the solution to environmental degradation is not a cessation to growth. Rather, it is the continued growth of a nation's real GDP. A theoretical model previously developed to derive the EKC is extended and employed to determine the level of truth underlying the EKC hypothesis. The revised model indicates that the EKC does not resemble the concave or inverted U-shaped relationship that is presumed to exist between environmental degradation and per capita real GDP. Consequently, improved environmental quality and continued human development can only be achieved if policy-makers strive to achieve sufficiency, equity, natural capital maintenance, and the qualitative improvement of human-made goods.

Street wise provocations: the "Global Justice" Movement's take on sustainable development

Abstract: Doran reclaims 'sustainable development' for the history of social movements and the contemporary global justice movement. Opposition to the unacceptable facets of globalisation is situated within histories of struggle against all forms of domination and enclosure, both economic and symbolic. The Global Justice Movement's approach to sustainable development is contrasted with the technocratic discourse that prevails at the United Nations. For Doran, the Movement is attuned to dimensions of sustainable development that remain invisible to the eye (or the fame) of the seasoned diplomat and many of the experts who make up the epistemic communities who construct the problematic of sustainable development during multilateral negotiations, and who remain seasled off in their very own discursive biomes.

Book Review: Development as freedom

Abstract: Development as freedom, by Amartya Sen. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001. ISBN 0–19–28330–0

The greening of South Africa is basic to its healing

Abstract: It is environmental issues which are crucial in restoring the disastrous impact of the apartheid system in South Africa. The denial of natural resources in the rural areas to the majority of the people in the country is largely responsible for most of the problems which confronted the new government. Land reform, provision of clean water and sanitation, the HIV/AIDS epidemic and other diseases, education, crime and basic social services were among the main issues to be addressed. Much progress has been made in the 11 years since the fall of apartheid, but much still needs to be done.