{"title":"A globally just and inclusive transition? Questioning policy representations of the European Green Deal","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2024.102946","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Climate change mitigation policies around the world are increasingly formulated as ‘green deals’ characterized by comprehensive packages of (‘green’) economic and societal reforms intended to bring about a just and inclusive transition to a low-carbon economy. This paper takes as its starting point what we see as a fundamental tension underlying the logic of these policies: despite making ambitious claims about the ethical merits of the transition they aim to bring about, their implementation depends on the extraction of massive amounts of raw materials. Most of these materials will be sourced from the Global South, where the negative ecological and social impacts will be felt. Empirically we explore how this tension is reflected in the European Green Deal, the most comprehensive of the green deal initiatives to date. Analyzing 195 policy documents from the European Union, we find that the role played by the European Green Deal in driving negative impacts beyond its borders is effectively silenced in official discourse. This enables the propagation of a narrative that justifies the dominant paradigm of green growth by portraying the European Green Deal as undertaking a globally ‘just transition’ that ‘do no harm’ and ‘leaves no one behind’. However, it also results in discursive contradictions and inconsistencies that undermine the logic and legitimacy of the European Green Deal. These contradictions and inconsistencies, we argue, provide a possible entry point for efforts to improve the just and inclusive outcomes from the European Green Deal.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":328,"journal":{"name":"Global Environmental Change","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":8.6000,"publicationDate":"2024-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Global Environmental Change","FirstCategoryId":"6","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095937802400150X","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Climate change mitigation policies around the world are increasingly formulated as ‘green deals’ characterized by comprehensive packages of (‘green’) economic and societal reforms intended to bring about a just and inclusive transition to a low-carbon economy. This paper takes as its starting point what we see as a fundamental tension underlying the logic of these policies: despite making ambitious claims about the ethical merits of the transition they aim to bring about, their implementation depends on the extraction of massive amounts of raw materials. Most of these materials will be sourced from the Global South, where the negative ecological and social impacts will be felt. Empirically we explore how this tension is reflected in the European Green Deal, the most comprehensive of the green deal initiatives to date. Analyzing 195 policy documents from the European Union, we find that the role played by the European Green Deal in driving negative impacts beyond its borders is effectively silenced in official discourse. This enables the propagation of a narrative that justifies the dominant paradigm of green growth by portraying the European Green Deal as undertaking a globally ‘just transition’ that ‘do no harm’ and ‘leaves no one behind’. However, it also results in discursive contradictions and inconsistencies that undermine the logic and legitimacy of the European Green Deal. These contradictions and inconsistencies, we argue, provide a possible entry point for efforts to improve the just and inclusive outcomes from the European Green Deal.
期刊介绍:
Global Environmental Change is a prestigious international journal that publishes articles of high quality, both theoretically and empirically rigorous. The journal aims to contribute to the understanding of global environmental change from the perspectives of human and policy dimensions. Specifically, it considers global environmental change as the result of processes occurring at the local level, but with wide-ranging impacts on various spatial, temporal, and socio-political scales.
In terms of content, the journal seeks articles with a strong social science component. This includes research that examines the societal drivers and consequences of environmental change, as well as social and policy processes that aim to address these challenges. While the journal covers a broad range of topics, including biodiversity and ecosystem services, climate, coasts, food systems, land use and land cover, oceans, urban areas, and water resources, it also welcomes contributions that investigate the drivers, consequences, and management of other areas affected by environmental change.
Overall, Global Environmental Change encourages research that deepens our understanding of the complex interactions between human activities and the environment, with the goal of informing policy and decision-making.