IJTM/IJCEE PAGE Templatev2

Int. J. Green Economics, Vol. 1, Nos. 1/2, 2006 201 Green economics: an introduction and research agenda Derek Wall Goldsmiths College, University of London New Cross, London SE14 6NW, UK E-mail: [email protected] 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. Keywords: green economics; global political economy; regulation; transition; economic growth; anti-capitalism; Marx; open source; usufruct; commons. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Wall, D. (2006) ‘Green economics: an introduction and research agenda’, Int. J. Green Economics, Vol. 1, Nos. 1/2, pp.201–214. Biographical notes: Derek Wall teaches Political Economy at Goldsmiths College, University of London in the Politics Department. His PhD, ‘The Politics of Earth First! UK’ was completed in 1998. He has published six books on green economics including, most recently, Babylon and Beyond: The Economics of Anti-Capitalist, Anti-Globalist and Radical Green Movements (Pluto 2005). He is a long standing eco-socialist and the founder of the Association of Socialist Greens. He is a member of International Zen Association. His next book, Shopping Without Money, will look at a wide variety of non-monetary forms of economic regulation. 1 Introduction The Green Movement, which broadly defined, includes grassroots direct action networks such as Reclaim the Streets and Earth First! as well as the more radical elements of NGOs such as Friends of the Earth and Survival International, is globally significant. Green discourse is increasingly influencing personal lifestyles with organic gardening, fair trade and low energy practices spreading through society. Green Parties have become a feature of modern politics with activities in seventy countries and recent governing coalitions in states including Belgium, France, and Germany. While Green Parties and Copyright © 2006 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. 202 D. Wall green movements have advanced, green ideas have provided a challenge across a number of fields including economics. This paper explores the historical roots of green economics, outlining its defining themes and looks at where it might advance in the future. In short this piece of writing introduces green economics and suggests a research agenda for future work. A starting point has to be the notion of the hegemonic role of orthodox economics in our present society and the opposition of greens to such dominance. Economics is, in many ways, the dominant discourse of modern and even post-modern societies, yet green economics, in contrast to environmental economics, challenges its fundamental logic. Green economists are sceptical of economic growth, the market, notions of ‘rational’ utility maximisation and anthropocentricism. Green economics, far from being new, has deep roots; these are outlined in the first section below. To move forward, green economists would benefit from looking at issues of global political economy, transition and regulation. Global political economy is important to move green economics away from being a discourse, which is primarily moral and critical. Green economists need to understand how, at a particular moment, the worldwide economic system is functioning if they are to theorise how it can be changed. Given the pathological effects of a growth-orientated capitalist economy, green economists must discuss in a practical fashion how change can be introduced. Finally, Greens need to maintain their utopian programme by asking how an economy that rejects continual accumulation can be sustained while removing poverty and providing prosperity without alienation. These orientating questions of where we are (global political economy), of ‘getting there’ (to a green society) and of ‘being there’ (maintaining such a green society) provide the basis of a tentative research programme or in Althusserian language, a set of interlinked ‘problematics’. A ‘problematic’ is a question or a problem worthy of study. The problems identified by students of particular intellectual discipline as worthy of research can be used to distinguish such a discipline from others. Put crudely, economists are concerned with the problem of how scarce resources can be used to meet unlimited human wants. Green economists are, in contrast, concerned with how human happiness can be maintained within ecological restraints. In some ways, such contrasting approaches may seem similar, yet economists assume that ever-increasing production is a goal where green economists wish to increase utility by using less. The green opposition to economic growth is perhaps what makes green economics so interesting. 2 Green economics: outline and history Green ideas and movements are often conceptualised as modern. Such modernism is used to suggest that green politics can be sharply distinguished from an old politics of right and left, centrally concerned with issues of economic distribution and class struggle. Numerous New Social Movement theorists have used Inglehart’s (1977) concept of post-materialism to argue that growing prosperity concerns, with ‘bread and butter’ issues of income and wealth distribution, have been replaced with environmental issues. Apparently, the old social movements, concerned with power, have given way to new movements based on identity, dealing with issues of peace, sexuality and the environment. In turn, the global environmental issues that helped trigger the growth of green concern can be seen as rather modern. How could we protest against nuclear power Green economics: an introduction and research agenda 203 before it had been invented? The ‘novelty’ thesis of green movements is strengthened by the fact that Green Parties have only emerged in the 1970s and global environmental pressure groups such as Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace date only back to the 1960s. Yet, while Green Parties are relatively new, environmental concern is not. In turn, environmental and animal rights organisations were amongst the first pressure groups in existence. Plato drew attention to the effects of soil erosion, and other examples of classical Greek and Ancient Roman environmental concern have been chronicled (Hughes, 1975). The earliest UK anti-pollution laws were put on the statute books in the 13th century. John Evelyn, in the reign of Charles II, wrote a tract against air pollution and a manifesto for tree conservation (Wall, 1993). The Vegetarian Society was established in 1847 and the Open Spaces Society can trace its origins back to the 1850s; the US Sierra Club dedicated to conserving wilderness was also created in the nineteenth century after John Muir went on this famous ‘wilderness’ walks across North America (Wall, 1993). Virtually every element of green economics can be historically situated, although such a history is often forgotten. Opposition to economic growth, a rejection of anthropocentricism, the demand for cooperation rather than competition, an emphasis on localism, and decentralised production and consumption are just some of the features of green economics that can be traced through centuries of evolution. One source of green economics is to be found in the nineteenth century Romantic critique of industrialisation. William Blake criticised the arrival of ‘satanic mills’ in England’s green and pleasant land; Wordsworth and Shelley expressed similar sentiments, which were developed by the Victorian critic John Ruskin who inspired William Morris. Goethe’s romanticism has also been influential. Such concerns were incorporated by urban planners such as Geddes and Mumford in the twentieth century (Gould, 1988). William Morris, the nineteenth century artist and political activist, fused such a romantic concern with Marxism. Indeed it has been argued that despite the dominant productivity strain in 20th century Marxism, Marx was centrally concerned with both environmental problems such as soil erosion and the science of ecology. An eco-socialist economic philosophy was also developed by the psychologist Fromm, most famously, in his book To Have or To Be? (Fromm, 1979). Foster (2000) has outlined Marx’s ecological analysis in some detail. A holistic philosophy that shows how different parts of society and nature are interrelated is taken by greens from the science of ecology, which studies relationships, often invisible without careful study, between different organisms. Holism has spiritual roots drawing upon Eastern philosophies and religions, particularly Buddhism and Taoism. The novelist Aldous Huxley developed such insights as did Schumacher (1978), the green economist, who wrote Small is Beautiful. The Beat poets, especially Synder drew upon Zen and fed into the 1960s hippie counter culture, providing a rich soil for the Green Parties of the 1970s (Snyder, 1974; 1999). Holism remains very important in contemporary green discourse, yet to argue that Asian spirituality gives rise to ecotopia is slightly misleading. China, India and Japan have devastated

Load more