Elevate Economics

‘Unjust transitions and false prophets’
At ‘Resisting Green Imperialism: fighting for a socially just transition’ hosted by London Mining Network in November, it was clearer than day from a range of stakeholder voices (indigenous, groups, women weavers, food sovereignty advocates, NGOs, researchers): the current plans for transition to green energy are neither just or ‘green’: they are market-based, often at the expense of land rights, rights of communities, decimating biodiversity, requiring huge amounts of resource extraction and reproducing colonial relationships between Global North and resource rich countries of the South.

It cannot be left to capital alone to optimise for people and planet when its logic is to optimise profit, and we are not arriving at the intersection.

Benny Wenda West Papua independence leader, speaks of plunder of resources in their lands, partly fuelled by green transition (Free West Papua Campaign). West Papua is a microcosm of what is happening the world over to resource rich countries in Global South as MNCs in the Global North siphon metals, minerals, fossil fuels secured by resource based militia and do so now, in the name of ‘green’ transition, creating green sacrifice zones around the world.

Takeaways and thoughts to mind from Adam Hanieh’s (University of Exeter), talk, the 1st video:

The £300bn earmarked for ‘green transition’ that came out of COP29 is largely loan finance: conditional debt creation for Global South countries. These countries already spend 12 x more on debt servicing than climate mitigation (this debt in part was created by IMF/ World Bank 80s). Debt cancellation is one part of the answer to finance a green transition. That and scrapping fossil fuel subsidies in the Global North: 7% of global GDP!

These conditional loans are the same neoliberal system of structural adjustment that created debt related dependency of Global South countries on the former colonial powers in 1980s (IMF/World Bank). This time, it’s under the guise of ‘green’ transition. The debt conditions involving freeing up trade, removing protection of infant industries, rolling back state investment, deregulate have hindered development in the past (e.g ‘lost decade’ in Mexico)

COP finance is NOT about moving to cleaner energy.

Hanieh emphasises: ‘oil is not the cause of the ecological crises, it’s the ‘lifeblood of extractive systems’. Capitalism is’

Commodification of the natural world is.

‘Transition’ has been a process of addition not replacement of fossil fuel use,’ Hanieh says. Renewable energy is added on to oil production, not replacing it.

This just means consuming / producing MORE. Myth of transition. AI Will exacerbate this.

Saudi Aramco has a large hand in directing climate change solutions. It’s the largest oil company in world, with profits of 120billion dollars last year (exceeding the other five largest oil companies combined). It has a seat at the table for climate solutions and this is dangerous: ‘Oil states are playing an outsized role in steering policy’

E.g carbon capture being built in Saudi Arabia. Blue Carbon, a Dubai based carbon offsetting corporate buying up swathes of land in Liberia.

Hanieh emphasised that barriers to green transition are not technical, but social