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Governance of Global Sustainability - Summary
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Complete summary of all lectures and readings for the course Governance of Global Sustainability.
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1. Counter current perspectives of sustainability1.1 Practice questions
What are the SDGs? Define them
SDGs are 17 qualitative Sustainable Development Goals set out by the UN. They aim at
ensuring prosperity and sustainability. The UN set these out through a consultation process,
and they elaborated the goals through different targets. The SDGs are the successors of the
MDGs.
How do the SDGs differ from past global governance efforts?
1. All countries are seen as developing countries
2. Specifically global, not just on developing countries such as the MDGs
3. They are not legally binding in treaties, while MDGs were
What are the main governance characteristics of the SDGs?
1. Not legally binding, have no ‘teeth’ cannot ‘bite’
2. National/country specific interpretations and indicators are needed
3. Global inclusive goal setting
1.2 Lecture summary
Focus of the SDGs
1. Planetary Boundaries
2. Population growth
3. Poverty
Pros of the SDGs
Awareness raising
Reflect concrete problems back to us
Inclusive: SDGs make no difference about development level
Bottom-up approach
Cons of the SDGs
Legally non-binding
Vague
o Prone to hijacking by greenwashers
Weak institutional arrangements
Ignores power relations
Impossibility to maximise all the goals
o Intrinsic contradictions
o Too many trade-offs
o Reason for not being legally-binding
, Stakeholder oriented and leeway for national choice and preferences
Quantitative: hard to monitor progress
No mention of climate justice or environmental justice
Success of the SDGs depends on:
1. An increasing formalization of commitments
2. All countries need to stick to the SDGs
3. Agreement on the meaning of “sustainable development”
History of the term “development”
The first use of the word “development” in an international context was by US president
Truman during inaugural speech.
In his rhetoric about ramping up industrial production in order to kick off globalization, he
equated “development” with “capitalism”.
Thus, in the US, development had an economic incentive.
Key international development agencies after WW2
United Nations
World Bank (international bank for reconstruction and development)
International Monetary Fund
Key historical development eras after WW2
1944 - 1978: Keynesianism
o Capitalism but with a strong role for government and state. This was the paradigm in
the west and ended with the Cold War.
1978 - now: Neoliberalism
o Was kicked off by Reagan in the US and Thatcher in the UK. It let private actors free
and reduced taxing to let the economic activity run its course.
Sustainable Development (SD)
Adams, 2009: it is necessary to escape the idea that development necessarily involves a
progression towards better conditions. Adams criticizes development as it is about control of
both nature and people.
He points out that SD seems to challenge this, but that this is actually the same paradigm in
a new disguise.
Mainstream Sustainable Development (MSD)
MSD is the type of development that the majority of governments, companies and citizens in
the West seem to be engaging with right now.
Adams, 2009: the Rio Conference marks the start of MSD.
Adams, 2009: MSD does not challenge the dominant capitalist industrialized model
Presents the market as a solution rather than the problem
Encourages free markets and self-regulation of business actors
, Consumers are held responsible for the green transition
Rejects the idea that there are environmental limits to growth, as innovation will save us
Asserts that poverty can avoid environmental destruction (EKC)
The ghost of neoliberalism is still present
Adams, 2009: Mainstream Sustainable Development (MSD) is associated with corporate
greening, symbolic commitments, and an openly antagonistic relationship between
environmentalists and corporations.
Three types of MSD according to Adams (2009)
Market environmentalism
o Blames environmental damage on the misallocation of resources
o Resists the notion that fundamental change is needed
Ecological modernization
o Beliefs that the state and the market should work together to protect the
environment
o High belief in innovation, competition and technological change
o Modernization is compatible with ecological sustainability
Environmental populism
o Puts power with civil society
o Focus on meeting basic human needs
o Poverty
o Neo-Malthusianism
o Bottom-up approach
o Critiques:
Romanticizing the harmony of the people
Belief in zero-growth might be naïve and a dead end
Environmentally racist
Countertendencies
Adams, 2009: radical green ideas should be taken seriously for two reasons:
1. They are still alive today
2. These organisations have pushed radical approaches at the meetings that resulted in MSD
Adams, 2009: counter-currents are often fragmented because:
1. Political thinkers have slowly begun to engage with environment
2. Environmentalists pick up fragments of ideologies that catch their eye
3. Environmentalists don’t know much about politics and don’t know what they are talking
about
Ecosocialism
Ecosocialism is based on socialist and Marxist thought.
Marx was not an eco-centric. His focus was on humans.
, However, in his work Marx does mention the instrumental values of nature. There is more
Marx in environmental though than might at first appear. Marx suggests that in various
ways, the capitalist system is unsustainable.
Ecosocialism sees environmental racism as a by-product of capitalism, and recognises that
the environmental crisis affects different people differently.
In Ecosocialism, the working class is put in a contradictory place: they are both the most
vulnerable to environmental degradation, as well as to an industrial standstill.
Adams, 2009: Eco-socialists have lost confidence that capitalism can help the developing
world to reach the level of the industrialized West. Capitalist industrialization in 18 th and 19th
century Europe was made bearable by the prospect of escaping it by trampling others.
However, if there is no one left to trample, then you are stuck.
Adams, 2009: according to eco-socialism, there are three problems with capitalism:
1. Monopolies
2. Overproduction
3. Race to the bottom
Ecoanarchism
Believes that hierarchy causes domination of humans by humans
Focus on the individual
Form of extreme liberalism
Rebels at the coercive power of the State
An example of an ecoanarchist group is Extinction Rebellion
Other ideas: decentralization, participatory democracy, self-sufficiency, egalitarianism and
alternative technologies
Anarchists also commonly advocate political tactics that include strikes, boycotts and
protests
There is much debate within the movement, and its ideas can be vague and scattered
However, it forms a revolutionary form of opposition
Deep ecology
Fundamental critique to anthropocentrism
Eco-centric
Bio-centric ascribing intrinsic values or moral status to non-human nature
Rejection separation between nature and humans
Created by Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess
Inspired by Spinoza and Gandhi
With the term “ecosophy”, Naess invited people to create their own version
Critiques:
o Religious fundamentalism
o Neo-Malthusian thinking
o Eco-fascism
o Primitivist: the active destruction of civilisation
Eco-feminism
Highlights the double subjugation of women and nature by the patriarchy
, The coercive relations between humans and non-human nature are the result of a gendered
process of exploitation.
The structured oppression of women by men is reflected in imperialism and capitalism
Different strands of thought:
o Shiva: focus on biological differences
o Plumwood: focus on social construct of gender
Offers a diverse range of ideas that challenge MSD
o E.g. it emphasises the patriarchal roots of developmentalism and capitalism
Political ecology
Holistic view
Trans-disciplinary field in which social and environmental conditions are deep and
inextricably linked
Observation of the centrality of politics in attempts to explain the interactions between
people and the environment.
Adams, 2009: recognises MSD as critical from a moral point of view, but that it in the end
adopts a version of the same paradigm. The only reason it [MSD] exists is because it is an
ideology that most people find tolerable.
Decoloniality
Decolonizing ecology needs to be practiced in five areas:
1. Decolonize your mind
2. Know your histories
3. Decolonize access
4. Decolonize expertise
5. Practice ethical ecology in inclusive teams
1.3 Reading summary
Adams (2009) Chapter 2: Sustainable Development
Adams argues that environmental thinking has been happening in the west for a long time, and from
the 1900s, Western people, organisations and governments became increasingly aware of the
environmental limits of the world. In order to control these limits, sustainable development became
a policy agenda.
Adams (2009) Chapter 5: Mainstream Sustainable Development
Adams is critical of mainstream sustainable development because it does not challenge the
dominant capitalist industrialization model. Adam splits MSD up into three strands: market
environmentalism, ecological modernization, and environmental populism.
Adams (2009) Chapter 7: Countercurrents in sustainable development
Adams examines critiques of developmentalism. His main argument is that we should shake off the
belief that development involves a progression towards better conditions, and that we can learn
from countercurrent movements, in particular from political ecology.
,Biermann et al. (2017) Global governance by goal-setting
Biermann et la. are critical of whether the SDGs can guide us in the right direction, especially
considering the absence of clear vision and an idea of what long-term sustainable development in
the Anthropocene means.
, 2. Neoliberalism
2.1 Practice questions
What is neoliberalism?
Neoliberalism is a political agenda that transports governance in a certain way. It is a form of
human liberation, achieved by freeing markets and the replacement of the big state to the
extend that it only seeks to protect these markets. This stems from the belief that markets
create efficiency, and governments can never have the information needed to make the
most efficient transaction.
Neoliberalism has three pillars:
1. Deregulation
2. Privatization
3. Liberalization
According to Harvey (2005), Neoliberalism is in the first instance a theory of political
economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating
individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework
characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade. The role of the
state is to create and preserve an institutional framework appropriate to such practices.
According to Harvey (2005), we can interpret neoliberalism either as a utopian project to
realize a theoretical design for the reorganization of international capitalism or as a political
project to re-establish the conditions for capital accumulation and to restore the power of
economic elites.
Provide a description of key historical moments that characterized its development
End of 1960s: double crisis hit the US (inflation and unemployment)
1970s: wealth crash
11 September 1973: Coup-de-etat in Chile backed by the CIA, which could be characterised
as the playground of Neoliberalisation. The Chicago Boys, who were educated under US
neoliberal economist Friedman, became the ministers of the new government. This is a
watershed moment as Chile became the playground for neoliberalism.
1970s-80s: Volcker shock
1973: oil crisis
1978, Deng Xiaoping opened Chinese markets to international trade
1979/1980 Reagan and Thatcher into office
1989: Washington Consensus resulting in Global Unequal Exchange
Provide an example of where in the sustainability world you see neoliberalism
Because the SDG framework does not have legal binding, it places responsibility of achieving
targets to consumers rewarding companies in a free market system
Global unequal exchange (Global North has been accumulating profit by dumping
contamination in Global South)
Privatization of water services, dams, energy companies, recycling companies
, Tradable carbon permits (commodification is ghost of neoliberalism)
Inequality in access to water in water stressed countries
2.2 Lecture summary
Good and bad freedoms
Harvey, 2005: the core of neoliberalism has always been human dignity and individual freedom.
However, the US has adopted a hyperfocus on freedom, which has further increased since 9/11. The
goal of neoliberalism was to prevent a crash such as in the 30s, and to prevent war. Its elimination of
trade barriers has resulted in a form of free market fundamentalism. It means the financialization of
all goods.
There is a big difference between liberal (freedom) and neoliberal.
‘Good’ freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of movement
‘Bad’ freedoms: freedom of exploitation of the commons, freedom to pollute, freedom to
express
One of the fundamental assumptions about capitalism is capital accumulation and a focus on
surplus.
Coup in Chile
A watershed moment for Neoliberalism was September 11, 1973 in Santiago Chile. On this day, the
bombing of the Presidential Palace took place in order to kill the democratically elected socialist
Allende, and to replace him with Pinochet. This operation was directed by the CIA. The Chicago Boys
(Chilean economists educated under Milton Friedman in the 50s and 60s became ministers of the
new government). One of the first policy changes the new government made was privatization of
goods, especially of water. This established the playground for the neoliberal project.
The events that led up to neoliberalism
Late ‘60s: crisis of Capital Accumulation
o A double crisis hit the US and the Global North as a whole. Inflation and
unemployment went up, eventually leading to stagflation.
1970s: Wealth crash
o This led to a wealth crash, when the share of the assets held by the top 1% in the US
collapsed.
1979: Volcker Shock
o In order to restore the class power, the Volcker shock was given. Paul Volcker was
the head of the Federal Bank in the US, and raised interest rates. Thereafter, the FED
fought aggressively against inflation, sometimes resulting in high unemployment
rates.
1979 and 1980: Reagan and Thatcher
o When Reagan and Thatcher they took office, all heads of the world banks that were
Keynesian were replaced with neoliberal thinkers.
1973: oil crisis
, o When the US was cut-off from Arabian oil during the 1973 oil crisis following their
support for Israel during the Yom Kippur war, the US threatened Saudi Arabia with
violence to recycle all of their petrodollars through New York investment banks.
1989: Washington Consensus
o The Washington Consensus was a set of economic policy recommendations for
developing countries (Latin-America in particular) that became popular during the
1980s.
o It often refers to the dogmatic belief that developing countries should adopt market-
led development strategies that will result in economic growth that will trickle
down.
o Following the Washington Consensus, different banks and government agreed that
any excess of money had to be reinvested in the Global South.
o Through a flow of money from OPEC (petrol dollars) through the World Bank, major
loans were given out to the south. These loans were called “stabilization and
adjustment programs”.
o These loans, used for infrastructure in the 1980s, had high interest rates.
o A lot of the money was lost due to corruption, inefficient governments and military
interventions, and these governments defaulted.
o This gave the World Bank, or the US, an excuse to take control of these countries.
This is how the Global North gained control over these resources, and it gave rise to
the global unequal exchange.
Driver of inequality (Harvey, 2005)
Neoliberalism is authoritarian, forceful and anti-democratic.
The US used neoliberalism to pry open other countries, in return for trade, and as a way to
fight off communism and revolutions.
The creation of this super rich elite created a new problem, because they became so rich
that they could influence politics. Furthermore, it has created monopolies and a
concentration of corporate power.
Since the 1980s, neoliberalism has caused a widening income gap. Neoliberalism has
essentially restored the power of the economic elites, which was tainting in the 70s.
Ironically, these were often not the same people as before. In Russia and China there was no
economic elite before, and it created one.
2.3 Reading summary
Harvey (2005) Introduction
Harvey explains how Paul Volcker, Thatcher and Reagan caused arguments used by the minority to
be applicable to the majority. He defines neoliberalism as a theory of political economic practices
that proposed that human well-being can be advanced by liberating entrepreneurs, minimizing the
role of the state to only ensure strong property rights, free markets and free trade. According to
Harvey, the results of neoliberalism are, amongst others: a hegemony, the information society, and
time-space compression.
Harvey (2005) Chapter 1: Freedom’s just another word
, Harvey explains neoliberalism at its core as a project about human dignity and individual freedom.
He lists the events that led up to the neoliberal hegemony. According to Harvey, neoliberalism has
resulted in a system that is authoritarian, forceful, anti-democratic, and the cause of inequality and
massive concentrations of power.
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