Towards an Anti-imperialist Green New Deal

This paper proposes a conceptual framework to analyze the political economy of energy transitions in the context of Green New Deals (GND) and global justice. In the core of GND proposals lies the transition from fossil-based to decarbonized energy systems in core countries as a solution to climate change. However, a transition in these terms aggravates perverse trends of globalization: the reproduction of global patterns of unequal exchange and further dependency and violation of sovereignty of peripheral nations. Renewable energy infrastructure requires non-renewable raw materials to be mined mostly in peripheral countries, which will bear the social-environmental costs of extractivism for the “green” transition. This is not a dilemma for imperialist states and corporations; however, social movements and organizations face the contradiction of addressing climate change while remaining committed to their claims for global justice. Some propose a “GND without growth” for Europe, which does not fully solve the problem of “colonialism without growth”. Recent considerations put the colonial/imperial question on the table, but a blueprint for an energy transition without colonialism is still to be offered. Aiming to advance a conceptual framework for a GND that takes a radical approach to international solidarity, this work draws elements from three strands of research: the critique of imperialism, world-system approaches to ecologically unequal exchange and degrowth.