Description

---

The age of denial is over. Across the global North, how we should respond to the climate crisis has been answered: with carbon trading, green hydrogen, a shift to renewables, and electric cars. Green New Deals across Europe and North America promise to reduce emissions while creating new jobs.

But these climate 'solutions' beneath the sustainability branding lead to new environmental injustices and green colonialism. The green growth and clean energy plans of the Global North require the large-scale extraction of strategic minerals from the Global South. The geopolitics of transition implies sacrificing territories and genuinely sustainable ways of inhabiting this world. A new subordination in the global energy economy prevents societies in the South from developing sovereign strategies to foster a dignified life.

This book platforms the voices conspicuously absent in debates around energy and climate in the Global North. Drawing on case studies from across the Global South, the authors provide incisive critiques of green colonialism in its material, political, and symbolic dimensions, discuss the multiple entanglements that forcefully connect the transitions of different world regions in a globalized economy, and explore alternative pathways toward a liveable and globally just future for all.

About the Author

---

‘Written by some of the most important theorists of the ecological, degrowth and debt movements ... A powerful and comprehensive analysis. Essential reading’ Silvia Federici, author of Caliban and the Witch

‘An impeccably documented, well-argued book [that shows that] a post-carbon world needs to be a post-capitalist world’ Walden Bello, author of Deglobalization

‘Brilliantly surveys critical feminist, ecological and decolonial perspectives from leading scholars and activists’ Peter Newell, Professor, University of Sussex

The time for denial is over. Across the Global North, the question of how we should respond to the climate crisis has been answered: with a shift to renewables, electric cars, carbon trading and hydrogen. 

But beneath the sustainability branding, these climate ‘solutions’ are leading to new environmental injustices and green colonialism. The green growth and clean energy plans of the Global North require the large-scale extraction of strategic minerals from the Global South. The geopolitics of transition imply sacrificing not only territories, but truly sustainable ways of inhabiting this world. 

This book provides a platform for the voices that have been conspicuously absent in debates around energy and climate. Drawing on case studies from across the Global South, the authors offer critiques of green colonialism in its material, political and symbolic dimensions, discuss the entanglements that connect the transitions of different world regions, and explore alternative pathways toward a liveable and just future for all.

Miriam Lang is Professor of Environment and Sustainability at the Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, Ecuador. Mary Ann Manahan is a doctoral assistant in the Department of Conflict and Development Studies at Ghent University, Belgium. Breno Bringel is a Professor of Sociology at the State University of Rio de Janeiro and a Senior Fellow at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid.

Praise For…

---

'Written by some of the most important activists/theorists of the ecological/degrowth/debt movements ... a most powerful and comprehensive analysis of the forces and projects that are threatening the future of our planet. This is a most essential reading for those struggling to create a world where "life is at the center". Study groups should be organized to spread its knowledge and vision of a different, life affirming future.'
Silvia Federici, feminist activist and scholar and author of Caliban and the Witch

'The big question in critical environmental thinking today is whether the transition to a post-carbon world can take place without a radical overhauling of the system of production globally. The answer this collection of impeccably documented, well-argued studies comes up with is an unqualified no--a post-carbon world needs to be a post-capitalist world.'
Walden Bello, author of Deglobalization: Ideas for a New World Economy

'Drawing on critical feminist, ecological and decolonial perspectives from leading scholars and activists, this book brilliantly surveys this terrain across a broad range of sectors and regions of the world, as well as highlights the resistance grounded in a belief that another world is possible and being built through everyday struggle.'
Peter Newell, Professor of International Relations, University of Sussex

'As conventional forms of colonialism and neo-colonialism are challenged across the world, capitalist and statist forces are trying hard to sustain their own profits and power (rather than sustain the earth) by seductive but superficial 'solutions' like the green economy, carbon markets, and technofixes. By exposing these trends for what they are, and by providing genuine, radical alternatives that could lead to a truly equitable, regenerative future, this book is a very valuable contribution to local-to-global struggles for a just world.'
Ashish Kothari, Kalpavriksh, co-editor of Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary

'If ‘green’ ever meant ecological, it certainly doesn’t now: the business of the climate catastrophe is an opportunity for transnational profit. This fine collection analyzes the contours of power that capitalists have used to extract from the Global South. More than that, through the contributors’ range of experiences and struggles, they’re able to what no one author could: flag the many sites and modes of resistance in a way that offers genuine decolonial hope.'
Raj Patel, Research Professor, University of Texas at Austin

'This volume sheds harsh light on entanglements of “green technologies” with socio-political arrangements that facilitate exploitation toward profit; it also nourishes hope via explorations of liveable horizons illuminated by decolonial, ecofeminist, and degrowth perspectives.'
Susan Paulson, Center for Latin American Studies, University of Florida

'An indispensable read for the actors, policymakers and citizens confronted with the major challenge of our time. The authors show that another approach to the ecological transition is not only possible; it is urgent if we want to live together on a limited planet.'
Geoffrey Pleyers, President of the International Sociological Association

'Each chapter in this extraordinary book explores and exposes how the North has found a new way of extracting value - I insist: material and moral - from the South. Through the team of authors of this excellent and well-articulated collective work, we witness not only the process of expropriation of goods and resources, but also the usurpation of the vocabulary with which we had named a precious historical goal - ours too - such as the defence of the environment. Double theft: of nature and of the words with which we intended to defend it. The structure of the coloniality of power, untouched by time, re-emerges before our eyes mapped in a new form ... that has rarely been mapped in this way.'
Rita Segato, feminist decolonial Anthropologist