By Connor Cashell.
Connor is a student on our MA International Development programme. You can follow him on Twitter/LinkedIn.
Capitalism will not save us from the climate crisis. Nature's exploitation in service of western development is unsustainable. Extreme weather events such as hurricanes, droughts and forest fires are becoming increasingly frequent. Captured by vested interests, international voluntary emissions pledges have failed to alter our current course. Global temperatures are still set to rise by at least three degrees. Despite producing 70% of global emissions, market-based ‘false solutions’ such as Clean Development Mechanisms (CDMs) allow fossil-fuel corporations to evade responsibility (Guerrero 2018, p.34).
How do we then reverse course and deliver a sustainable and just future for all? Advocates of Buen Vivir, a plurinational alternative from the Global South, argue avoiding climate catastrophe demands a complete re-imagining of our relationship with nature. Rather than its saviour, Buen Vivir understands capitalist modernity as directly responsible for climate change. Life can no longer be organised around the capitalist ontology of ‘living better’, predicated upon endless ‘progress’ and accumulation via the exploitation of nature. Instead, tackling climate change and realizing a sustainable future for all requires ‘living together well’ in a codependent, biocentric relationship with Pacha Mama (Mother Earth).
Source: Øystein Sassebo Bryhni (Creative Commons License), ‘Bolivia January 2009, Indigenous women on their way home from the MAS Congress in Oruro’
Buen Vivir lays bare the uneven consequences of capitalism’s environmental destruction. Despite contributing the least to rising CO2 levels, advocates elucidate how the Global South bears the brunt of the costs of capitalist-driven climate change. To address this, proponents envision the realization of a just international climate regime. Over 30,000 activists organised a global summit, proposing an international climate court and alternative legal framework. By holding polluters accountable for their climate debt, proponents aimed to fairly redistribute responsibility for the crisis. Beyond transforming the international climate regime, Buen Vivir envisions a fundamental, anti-capitalist reorganisation of the economy towards realizing a state of sufficiency and harmony with nature. As a starting point, this requires transferring ownership of the means of production from extractive, environmentally destructive corporations to local communities. Rather than catastrophic inequality and overconsumption, through Buen Vivir everyone’s needs will be met through the principles of solidarity and reciprocity.
Despite its promising vision, Buen Vivir has fallen short in practice. The 2008 Ecuador Constitution incorporated multiple aspects, providing nature with fundamental rights and opposing the privatization of water. Yet, this approach does not represent an ecological alternative to development aligned with indigenous conceptions. Instead, Ecuador's state-led neo-extractivism represents a misappropriated post-neoliberal alternative within development (Villalba-Eguiluz and Etxano 2017). President Correa has faced significant opposition from indigenous activists over his 2013 abandonment of the Yasuni-ITT Initiative. The plan failed to raise $3.6bn from the international community to protect the 2.4 million acre national park from oil extraction. Rather than seeking economic transformation, environmentally harmful primary exports have become the engine for short term redistribution (North and Grinspun 2016 pp.1496-1497).
Clearly there is a misalignment between indigenous knowledge, its incorporation into constitutional frameworks and development outcomes. Materialising structural change within the constraints of global capitalism is extremely difficult. Lopez et al (2015, p.157) argue ‘the transnationalization of Latin America’s economies is directly related to their re-primarization’. Global South neo-extractive agendas are continuations of their historical exploitation as primary exporters at the expense of colonial powers. Ecuador’s oil sector received 64% of total foreign direct investment in 2016. Foreign investment has embedded Ecuador into the global economic periphery as a primary exporter under the New International Division of Labour (NIDL). Corporate capture of natural resources poses a monumental barrier to achieving the structural transformation required for realizing Buen Vivir.
Source: Friends of the Earth International (Creative Commons License), ‘System change, resistance, mobilization and an end to corporate impunity.’(2019)
But Buen Vivir should not be discarded. Instead, time and space needs to be allowed for realizing its transformative potential. Buen Vivir provides a radical blueprint for overcoming a fundamental contradiction of capitalism; its suicidal destruction of the environment. Corporate fossil fuel profits depend upon the continuation of the current system and they will not relinquish power willingly. Transferring ownership of the means of production, reconnecting humans to nature and reverting climate catastrophe requires an overwhelming international movement agitating for its implementation.
Bibliography
- Villalba-Eguiluz, C.U., Etxano, I., (2017). Buen Vivir vs development (II): The limits of (neo-)extractivism. Ecological Economics [online]. 138(1), 1–11. [Viewed 23 November 2020]. Available from: doi: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2017.03.010.
- Guerrero, D.G., (2018). The limits of capitalist solutions to the climate crisis. In: V. Satgar, ed. The climate crisis: South African and global democratic eco-socialist alternatives [online]. South Africa: Wits University Press. pp. 30-46. [Viewed 23 November 2020]
- Grinspun, R. and North. L.L., (2016). Neo-extractivism and the new Latin American developmentalism: The missing piece of rural transformation. Third World Quarterly [online]. 37(8), 1483-1504. [Viewed 23 November 2020]. Available from: doi: 10.1080/01436597.2016.1159508
- Lopez, E., Vértiz, F., Olavarria, M., (2015). Extractivism, transnational capital, and subaltern struggles in Latin America. Latin American Perspectives [online]. 42(5), 152-168. [Viewed 23 November 2020]. Available from: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24574874
