Salon.com > Jim Shultz http://www.salon.com Sun, 19 May 2013 13:30:00 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Questioning ‘green economics’ http://www.salon.com/2012/06/17/questioning_green_economics_salpart/ http://www.salon.com/2012/06/17/questioning_green_economics_salpart/#comments Sun, 17 Jun 2012 11:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12939583 In May at the headquarters of the United National Development Program in New York, I asked a dozen UNDP staff members to each define the term 'green economics.' From one end of the conference table to the other their answers were largely the same - green economics is about fusing environmental values into the marketplace so that economic growth does not have to come at the expense of environmental destruction.

AlterNet

At a meeting here this month in Bolivia, Latin American organizations preparing for this week's UN Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro, described 'green economics' very differently - "turning nature into a commodity...a huge false solution...green structural adjustment...a new plan to deliver the environment over to corporate control..."

As presidents, UN officials, local government leaders, and thousands of environmental and social movement leaders from across the world all head to Rio, they are also headed into a battle over what 'green economics' really means. At the heart of that debate is a basic question: Is the goal is to harness economic forces in service to the environment or to harness the environment in service to powerful economic interests?

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