THE POLITICS OF GREEN

TRANSFORMATIONS

Multiple ‘green transformations’ are required if humanity is to live sustainably

on planet Earth. Recalling past transformations, this book examines what makes
the current challenge different, and especially urgent. It examines how green
transformations must take place in the context of the particular moments of
capitalist development, and in relation to particular alliances. The role of the state
is emphasised, both in terms of the type of incentives required to make green
transformations politically feasible and the way states must take a developmental
role in financing innovation and technology for green transformations. The book
also highlights the role of citizens, as innovators, entrepreneurs, green consumers
and members of social movements. Green transformations must be both ‘top-down’,
involving elite alliances between states and business, but also ‘bottom up’, pushed
by grassroots innovators and entrepreneurs, and part of wider mobilisations among
civil society. The chapters in the book draw on international examples to emphasise
how contexts matter in shaping pathways to sustainability
Written by experts in the field, The Politics of Green Transformations will be of
great interest to researchers and students in environmental studies, international
relations, political science, development studies, geography and anthropology, as
well as policymakers and practitioners concerned with sustainability.

Ian Scoones is a Professorial Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS),

Sussex, UK and Director of the ESRC STEPS Centre.

Melissa Leach is Director of the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), Sussex,

UK.

Peter Newell is Professor of International Relations at the University of Sussex,

UK.
Pathways to Sustainability Series
This book series addresses core challenges around linking science and technology
and environmental sustainability with poverty reduction and social justice. It is based
on the work of the Social, Technological and Environmental Pathways to Sustain-
ability (STEPS) Centre, a major investment of the UK Economic and Social
Research Council (ESRC). The STEPS Centre brings together researchers at the
Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and SPRU (Science and Technology Policy
Research) at the University of Sussex with a set of partner institutions in Africa,
Asia and Latin America.

Series Editors:
Ian Scoones and Andy Stirling
STEPS Centre at the University of Sussex

Editorial Advisory Board:

Steve Bass, Wiebe E. Bijker, Victor Galaz, Wenzel Geissler, Katherine Homewood,
Sheila Jasanoff, Melissa Leach, Colin McInnes, Suman Sahai, Andrew Scott

Titles in this series include:

Dynamic Sustainabilities
Technology, environment, social justice
Melissa Leach, Ian Scoones and Andy Stirling

Avian Influenza
Science, policy and politics
Edited by Ian Scoones

Rice Biofortification
Lessons for global science and development
Sally Brooks

Epidemics
Science, governance and social justice
Edited by Sarah Dry and Melissa Leach

Regulating Technology
International harmonization and local realities
Patrick van Zwanenberg, Adrian Ely, Adrian Smith

The Politics of Asbestos

Understandings of risk, disease and protest
Linda Waldman
Contested Agronomy
Agricultural research in a changing world
Edited by James Sumberg and John Thompson

Transforming Health Markets in Asia and Africa

Improving quality and access for the poor
Edited by Gerald Bloom, Barun Kanjilal, Henry Lucas and David H. Peters

Pastoralism and Development in Africa

Dynamic change at the margins
Edited by Ian Scoones, Andy Catley and Jeremy Lind

The Politics of Green Transformations

Ian Scoones, Melissa Leach and Peter Newell
An all-star team provides a clear, critical and fascinating discussion of the concept and
practice of green transformations for a more sustainable and just world. Drawing on
critical social theory they show us who has the power to define and implement trans-
formations – comparing technocentric, marketized, state-led and citizen-led movements
for sustainability – and the politics of knowledge and science that defines environmental
crisis and responses. What adds depth to their arguments is that these authors are not
isolated academics – they have been out there in the world of international relations,
government policy, and NGOs with a thoughtful and engaged approach to change.
Diana Liverman, Institute of the Environment, University of Arizona, USA
In the twenty-first century environmental imperatives will increasingly define economic
policy and societal choices. Key questions such as who will make these choices, who
could be the winners and losers and how will our political and governance systems
mediate this process of transition are key to understanding the political economy of
green transformation. The dynamics of innovation and policy discourse on the green
economy have been remarkably fast and diverse. The questions and interpretations put
forward by the authors in The Politics of Green Transformations are timely and provide
important context and focus for a rapidly evolving paradigm of sustainable development.
Achim Steiner, United Nations Under-Secretary-General, Executive Director,
United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Kenya
The world has moved from why to what? No longer is the question why we should
act. Instead the question is what should we do, at the scale that can make a real
transformation? The problem is that current solutions are small because they are at best
transitional. The world needs real solutions that can be scaled up at speed to meet
the needs of all – transformational solutions. What then can we do? What is working
and where? This is what the ‘politics of green transformations’ is about. This is what
we must understand so that we can move beyond the fluff of green verbiage to real
pathways that can bring us real change. I would encourage you to read this book because
we must relearn the message of sustainability for a world that is increasingly warmer,
riskier and unjust.
Sunita Narain, Director General, Centre for Science and Environment, India
This book is a thoughtful and robust exploration of the concept of green transformation.
It will make a significant contribution to better understanding this complex and
sometimes contested issue. The authors offer an essential reading for anyone who wants
to invest in making development more sustainable.
Youba Sokona, Co-Chair IPCC WGIII and Special Advisor,
South Centre, Switzerland
If you have ever wondered why there is so much talk about green transformations and
so little action, this is the book to read. It is a fascinating and enlightening tour of the
green political map in all its complexity. It won’t give you all the answers, but it will
enable you to ask the right questions.
Carlota Perez, London School of Economics, UK and Nurkse Institute,
Estonia, author of Technological Revolutions and
Financial Capital: the Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages.
THETHE
POLITICS
POLITICS
OF OF
GREEN
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TRANSFORMATIONS
TRANSFORMATIONS

Edited Edited
by by
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Peter Newell
First published 2015
FirstRoutledge
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by Routledge
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711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
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© 2015 Ian Scoones, Melissa Leach and Peter Newell
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© 2015 Ian Scoones, Melissa Leach and Peter Newell
The right of the editor to be identified as the author of the editorial
© 2015 Ian Scoones, Melissa Leach and Peter Newell
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CONTENTS

List of illustrations ix
List of contributors x
Preface and acknowledgements xiii
List of acronyms and abbreviations xv

1 The politics of green transformations 1

Ian Scoones, Peter Newell and Melissa Leach

2 What is green? Transformation imperatives and

knowledge politics 25
Melissa Leach

3 Invoking ‘science’ in debates about green

transformations: a help or a hindrance? 39
Erik Millstone

4 Emancipating transformations: from controlling

‘the transition’ to culturing plural radical progress 54
Andy Stirling

5 The politics of green transformations in capitalism 68

Peter Newell
viii Contents

6 The political dynamics of green transformations:

feedback effects and institutional context 86
Matthew Lockwood

7 Green transformations from below? The politics

of grassroots innovation 102
Adrian Smith and Adrian Ely

8 Mobilizing for green transformations 119

Melissa Leach and Ian Scoones

9 The green entrepreneurial state 134

Mariana Mazzucato

10 Financing green transformations 153

Stephen Spratt

11 Green transformation: is there a fast track? 170

Hubert Schmitz

References 185
Index 215
ILLUSTRATIONS

Figures
6.1 Political and economic dynamics in the energy system 88
9.1 Development bank broad clean energy investment by sector 138
9.2 Global trend in renewable energy investment by region 140
9.3 Sources of finance for climate change adaptation or mitigation
projects in 2012 141

Tables
1.1 Narratives of green transformations: diagnoses and solutions 16
7.1 Mainstream STI institutions and grassroots innovation
movements’ approaches to innovation 108
10.1 Forms of greenhouse transformation 155
10.2 Commercial financial institutions and financial instruments 157
10.3 Non-commercial financial institutions and financial instruments 158
10.4 Forms of finance 159
10.5 Forms of green transformation 160
11.1 Accelerating green transformation 176
CONTRIBUTORS

Adrian Ely is a Senior Lecturer at SPRU (Science Policy Research Unit) at the
University of Sussex and Deputy Director/Head of Impact and Engagement at
the ESRC STEPS Centre. His research interests are broad but focus in particular
on international, transdisciplinary studies of the regulation and governance of emerg-
ing biotechnologies, for example co-authoring the book Regulating Technology:
International Harmonisation and Local Realities in 2011. Adrian is involved in ongoing
research projects focusing on grassroots innovation for sustainability (Argentina,
India), low-carbon innovation (China) and collaborative research in the life sciences
(Europe–Asia).

Melissa Leach is Director of the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at the

University of Sussex. She founded and directed the STEPS Centre from 2006 to
2014 and is co-Chair of the Science Committee of Future Earth. A social anthro-
pologist and geographer, her research in Africa and beyond has integrated social
science with science-policy and natural sciences across environmental, agricultural,
health, technology and gender issues. Recent books include Dynamic Sustainabilities:
Technology, Environment, Social Justice (2010); Epidemics: Science, Governance and Social
Justice (2010); and Green Grabbing: A New Appropriation of Nature? (2013).

Matthew Lockwood is a Senior Research Fellow in the Energy Policy Group at

the University of Exeter and a Visiting Research Fellow at the School of Global
Studies at the University of Sussex. He was previously Head of the Climate Change
Team at the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex. His main interest is in
the politics of energy and climate policies, in both developed and developing
countries. He has recently published work on the political sustainability of the UK
Climate Change Act, and on the political economy of fossil-fuel subsidy reform
in emerging economies.
 Contributors xi

Mariana Mazzucato holds the R.M. Phillips chair in the Economics of Innovation
at SPRU in the University of Sussex. Her work looks at the relationship between
innovation and economic growth at the firm, industry and national level. Her new
book The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Private vs. Public Sector Myths (2013) – on
the 2013 Books of the Year list of the Financial Times, Forbes and Huffington Post –
focuses on the need to develop new frameworks to understand the role of the state
in economic growth – and how to enable rewards from innovation to be just as
‘social’ as the risks taken. In 2013 the New Republic called her one of the ‘three
most important thinkers about innovation’. She advises governments around the
world and the European Commission on innovation-led growth.

Erik Millstone is a Professor of Science Policy at the University of Sussex, and co-
convenor of the STEPS Centre’s Food & Agriculture work. Much of his research
has focused on the ways in which public policy-makers reach decisions concerning
the protection of environmental and public health, and particularly on the impact
and interpretations of uncertainties and the interactions between scientific and non-
scientific considerations. His publications include: BSE: Risk, Science and Governance,
(Oxford University Press, 2005), co-authored with Patrick van Zwanenberg.

Peter Newell is Professor of International Relations at the University of Sussex

and Director of the Centre for Global Political Economy. His research focuses on
the (global) political economy of climate change and energy transitions, including
a current project on the role of rising powers in low-carbon transformations. He
is author most recently of Globalization and the Environment: Capitalism, Ecology and
Power (2012), co-author of Climate Capitalism (2010) and Governing Climate Change
(2010), and co-editor of The New Carbon Economy: Constitution, Governance and
Contestation (2012).

Hubert Schmitz is Professor of Economic Development at the Institute of

Development Studies and leader of its Green Transformations Group. His current
research investigates: How does the global power shift from West to East affect
the transformation from high to low carbon economy? Who drives climate-
relevant policies in the rising powers? What are the critical success factors for green
industrial policy? Key to his research is a political economy approach which centres
on the role of transformative alliances. He has a long track record of publishing in
development journals, managing international research teams and integrating
competences across disciplines.

Ian Scoones is a Professorial Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies at the

University of Sussex, and is Director of the STEPS Centre. He works on the
intersections of science and policy, particularly around environment, land and
agriculture in Africa. Recent books include Dynamic Sustainabilities: Technology,
Environment, Social Justice; Green Grabbing: A New Appropriation of Nature? and Science
and Citizens: Globalization and the Challenge of Engagement.
xii Contributors

Adrian Smith is a Researcher at the STEPS Centre and SPRU (Science Policy
Research Unit). His work covers grassroots innovation, sustainable development,
and the political and social aspects of technology. Past projects have looked at a
variety of sectors, including energy, food, housing and water, and in Europe, Latin
America and India. He is currently researching grassroots digital fabrication.

Stephen Spratt is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Development Studies,

University of Sussex. Stephen’s research focuses on development finance, financial
regulation, low-carbon development and environmental taxation. Professionally,
he has been Head of the Sustainable Markets Group at IIED, Chief Economist at
the New Economics Foundation and a Lecturer in international finance at the
University of Reading. He has also worked in the private sector in the City of
London. Stephen holds a BA from the University of East Anglia, an M.Sc. from
the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and a Ph.D. from the University
of Sussex.

Andy Stirling is a Professor at SPRU (Science Policy Research Unit) and a co-
Director of the STEPS Centre at Sussex University. He is an Interdisciplinary
Researcher, with a background in astronomy, social anthropology, and the green
and peace movements. Focusing on challenges around ‘opening up’ more
democratic governance of science, technology and innovation, his work addresses
issues such as uncertainty, precaution, scepticism, sustainability, resilience, diversity,
transformation, participation and power. He is especially interested in why progress
proceeds in some directions rather than others, and making these social choices
more accountable. He has served on many advisory bodies in the EU and UK, on
issues around energy, the environment, GM foods, and science and technology
policy.
PREFACE AND
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book asks what it takes to create the multiple ‘green transformations’ required
if humanity is to live sustainably on planet earth. It focuses on the politics of
transformations and the diverse directions of pathways that can be taken.
Different chapters examine what we mean by ‘green’ and the discursive contests
about limits, boundaries and what this implies for clarifying what transformations
are required. It examines the role of science in this debate and the way that science
frames what is most effective and suitable according to different perspectives. It
also debates the contrasts between a more technical focus on transitions and the
more political emphasis of transformations.
Recalling past transformations, the book examines what makes the current
challenge different, especially around questions of urgency and time-frames. It
examines how green transformations must take place in the context of particular
moments of capitalist development and driven by particular alliances. The role of
the state is emphasized, both in terms of the type of incentives required to make
green transformations politically feasible and the way states must take a develop-
mental role in financing innovations and technologies for green transformations.
The book also highlights the role of citizens, as innovators, entrepreneurs, green
consumers and members of social movements.
Green transformations must be both ‘top-down’, involving elite alliances
between states and business, but also ‘bottom-up’, pushed by grassroots innovators
and entrepreneurs, and part of wider mobilizations among civil society. Each of
these forms, styles and sites of politics combine and play out in different ways in
different places. The chapters draw on examples from across the globe, emphasizing
how contexts matter in shaping pathways to sustainability.
The book emerged during 2013–2014 from discussions at the University of
Sussex, convened by the ESRC STEPS Centre (Social, Technological and Environ-
mental Pathways to Sustainability). These brought together researchers working
xiv Preface and acknowledgements

in different places and from different disciplinary angles on broad questions of the
politics of green transformations. In many ways this project builds on and is shaped
by long-standing work at the intersection of the natural and social sciences taking
place at the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), the Institute of Development
Studies (IDS), and more recently through the ESRC STEPS Centre and the Centre
for Global Political Economy (CGPE) at Sussex.
We hope the eclecticism afforded by this collaboration across disciplines,
theoretical perspectives, regional and sectoral foci, linking macro and micro across
different contexts North and South, that characterizes Sussex research on develop-
ment and environment, enriches the insights the book provides.
Finally, we would like to acknowledge the support of the ESRC STEPS Centre
in supporting the process of production and publication of this book, three
anonymous reviewers, and Naomi Vernon at IDS for her help with editing the
book.

Ian Scoones, Peter Newell and Melissa Leach

Falmer, Brighton
July 2014
ACRONYMS AND
ABBREVIATIONS

AARP American Association of Retired Persons

AD accelerated depreciation
ADIs acceptable daily intakes
AEIC American Energy Innovation Council
BNDES Brazilian Development Bank
BNEF Bloomberg New Energy Finance
CDB China Development Bank
CDM Clean Development Mechanism
CDP Carbon Disclosure Project
CFC chlorofluorocarbon
CFS UN Food and Agricultural Organization’s Committee on
Food Security
CGPE Centre for Global Political Economy
CIGS copper indium gallium (di)selenide solar panels
COP UNFCCC conferences of parties
DDT dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane
DEFRA Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
DOE Department of Energy (of the United States)
EC European Commission
EEA European Environment Agency
ENSSR European Network of Scientists for Social and Environmental
Responsibility
EPA US Environmental Protection Agency
EU European Union
FAO Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
FDA US Food and Drug Administration
FIT feed-in tariff
xvi Acronyms and abbreviations

FSD financial sector development

GDP gross domestic product
GE General Electric
GHG greenhouse gas
GIS Geographic Information Systems
GM genetically modified
GMO genetically modified organism
GWEC Global Wind Energy Council
HFT high frequency trader
IAASTD International Assessment for Agricultural Science and
Technology for Development
IDS Institute of Development Studies
IEA International Energy Agency
IGBP International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme
IHDP International Human Dimensions Programme
IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
IUCN International Union for Conservation of Nature
JTA Just Transition Alliance
MDG Millennium Development Goal
MTD maximum tolerated dose
NGO non-governmental organization
OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
OSHA US Occupational Safety and Health Administration
OTC over-the-counter
PES payments for ecosystem services
PV photovoltaics
R&D research and development
RO Renewables Obligation
RSL Royal Society of London
SDGs Sustainable Development Goals
SDSN Sustainable Development Solutions Network
SME Small and medium enterprise
SPRU Science Policy Research Unit
SRIs Socially Responsible Investors
STEPS Centre Social, Technological and Environmental Pathways to
Sustainability
STI science, technology and innovation
STN Social Technologies Network
SWFs Sovereign Wealth Funds
TEEB The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity
UNEP United Nations Environment Programme
UNFCCC UN Framework Convention on Climate Change
UN-REDD United Nations collaborative initiative on Reducing Emissions
from Deforestation and forest Degradation
 Acronyms and abbreviations xvii

US NAS US National Academy of Sciences

VC venture capitalist
WBCSD World Business Council for Sustainable Development
WBGU German Advisory Council on Global Change
WHO World Health Organization
WTO World Trade Organization
7KLVSDJHLQWHQWLRQDOO\OHIWEODQN
1
THE POLITICS OF GREEN
TRANSFORMATIONS
Ian Scoones, Peter Newell and Melissa Leach
DOI: 10.4324/9781315747378-1

The green transformation imperative – and its politics

Talk of transformation is back in vogue. This time the call is for a green
transformation,1 but what would one look like and who will bring it into being?
While such a discussion implies a key role for technology and markets, it is also
deeply political. What makes it political, and which and whose politics will shape
the sorts of transformations that are desirable and possible?
A confluence of financial and ecological crises, in particular, have once again
raised issues about the ecological, social and economic sustainability of the global
economy, and the extent to which we have the sorts of political institutions able
to contain crises and steer positive and progressive change. This has prompted calls
for a new green industrial revolution, transitions to a low-carbon economy, or for
more radical restructuring for degrowth or the pursuit of prosperity without
growth (cf. OECD, 2011; Jackson, 2011).
While calls for radical transformations are often made but mostly ignored, this
one has captured attention at the highest levels, whether through the launching
of the Sustainable Development Goals, heightened mobilization around a ‘make-
or-break’ climate agreement for Paris 2015, or renewed calls for a World
Environment Organisation at the time of the Rio+20 summit in 2012. Emphasis
is often placed on the need for massive public and private investment in new
technological revolutions (Stern and Rydge, 2012) or on greening capitalism through
pricing nature (Costanza et al., 2014). What is often missing, however, is attention
to the politics that are inevitably implied by disruptive change of this nature:
questions of institutional change and policy, as well as more profound shifts in
political power. This is the starting point for this book.
Why politics? What is it that makes green transformations political? The chapters
in this book provide a number of answers. Questions surrounding what counts as
green, what is to be transformed, who is to do the transforming, and whether
2 Ian Scoones, Peter Newell and Melissa Leach

transformation, as opposed to more incremental change, is required are all deeply

political. For many, the green transformation is like no other we have witnessed
so far. While history has witnessed numerous waves of disruptive economic and
social change, brought about by technology, war and shifts of cultural values –
from the Industrial Revolution, to the end of slavery to the rise of feminism
– none has been primarily driven by the goal of rendering the economy and existing
model of development more sustainable. That is not to say that key shifts have not
had positive environmental consequences. Think of the effect of the 1970s oil crisis
on rising investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency, or the argument
that the ecological unsustainability of previous civilizations have been key factors
in their demise (Ponting, 2007). In most cases, however, the principal drivers and
goals were not the pursuit of a ‘green’ transformation.
The political nature of the green transformation is heightened because speed of
change is seen as essential. There is a sense of urgency that pervades current debates
about sustainability amid talk of tipping points, thresholds and planetary boundaries
(Rockström et al., 2009; Lenton, 2013). Furthermore, the threats of the Anthro-
pocene era have prompted calls for truly global responses (Crutzen and Steffen,
2003; Steffen et al., 2007) that must take place in today’s thoroughly multi-polar
world. The governance challenges of redirecting so many types of human activity
across so many levels are staggering and quite possibly unprecedented, prompting
calls to strengthen ‘earth system governance’ (Biermann, 2007; Biermann et al.,
2012a) and the social science of transformation (Leggewie and Messner, 2012a;
Brown et al., 2013).
The aim of the book is to engage with these debates, from a variety of
different perspectives and settings, and lay out some of the core challenges, trade-
offs and directions for a new politics of green transformation. Intellectually, getting
a handle on these challenges requires a fusion of insights from disciplines such
as anthropology, development studies, ecology, economics, geography, history,
international relations, political science, science and technology studies and
sociology, among others. We cover a range of sectors and issues from energy, food,
natural resources, transport, urban infrastructure and finance in a diversity of
settings from Denmark to China.
This interdisciplinary and multisited approach allows us to conceive of more
multidimensional understandings of politics. These include political economy and
political ecology (with an accent on material and structural forms of power and
their implications for questions of access and justice), to institutional politics
(focusing on national and global organizational forms) to discursive expressions of
power (through knowledge and values). The aim, collectively, is to offer a deeper
and more rounded understanding of and engagement with the politics of green
transformations, beyond a more narrow focus on institutions and policy, or the
perspectives of mainstream political science.
Our emphasis on transformations also moves beyond, while engaging with, the
substantial body of literature on sociotechnical transitions that cover some aspects
of these debates. Indeed, our focus on politics and broader questions of structural
 The politics of green transformations 3

change suggests ‘transformation’ rather than ‘transition’, as the key term (Stirling,
this book; see also Brand, 2012b). Within the ‘transitions’ literature there has been
a recent move to address questions of power and politics more explicitly (e.g. Geels,
2014), suggesting a move from a narrow sociotechnical understanding of transitions
to one more aligned with a wider debate about transformative change. Yet the
conceptualizations of power and politics, and their relationship with questions of
knowledge and social justice, require further elaboration. Our focus on trans-
formations assists this. Transformations are inevitably multiple and contested, as
pathways interconnect and compete (Leach et al., 2010). Politics and power are
important to how pathways are shaped, which pathways win out and why, and
who benefits from them.
By prefacing the transformations with the word ‘green’ our intention is to focus
on the environmental dimensions of change, but these almost inevitably raise
questions of social as well as environmental justice. The constitution of ‘green’
transformations varies depending on the setting in which they are occurring. In
many, perhaps especially developing country contexts, there is unlikely to be any
green transformations if questions of social justice are not part of the debate. This
is captured in calls for a ‘just transition’ (Swilling and Annecke, 2012; Newell and
Mulvaney, 2013), which requires attention to both distribution and direction as
part of any assessment (STEPS, 2010).
Respecting differences of context and perspective, the book does not follow a
single definition of ‘green transformations’. Instead, there is a variety of approaches,
ranging from those focusing on environment (e.g. Schmitz, this book, for whom
‘green transformation is the process of structural change which brings the economy
within the planetary boundaries’) to those focusing also on social justice and
distribution, either as intrinsic to the definition (e.g. Stirling, this book) or in talking
of ‘green and just transformations’ (e.g. Leach, this book). In contrast with
definitions focusing on the need to respect environmental limits, others link
‘greening’ intimately with the multiple dimensions of sustainability – social and
economic as well as environmental. A common normative view unites the chapters:
all authors share a concern both for environment, and for people’s inclusion and
well-being. Yet differences lie in conceptualization and analytical implications, with
implications too for which dimensions of politics are highlighted.
We understand ‘greening’, therefore, as a process rather than a measurable end-
state. Just as it is impossible to conceive of the end-point of the unfolding low-
carbon transition, so previous transformations did not start out with clear blueprints
and plans that were then rolled out. Rather, they were the product of competition
and interaction between a number of pathways, supported by diverse social actors
with highly uneven political power.
In this book, the notion of ‘green’ is therefore not just reduced to ‘green’
technology or business, but to more radical shifts to sustainable practices. There
are, of course, various shades of green implied by weaker and stronger versions of
sustainability (Spratt, this book), and throughout the book, we are interested in
how different versions of green are represented in politics – in other words, asking
4 Ian Scoones, Peter Newell and Melissa Leach

‘what does green mean?’ and ‘whose green counts?’ (Leach, this book). Politics
are often about reconciling tensions between different versions of ‘green’, and here
links with social justice and equity concerns are vital.
Contests over pathways are thus not just about end-points, or the role of
technology, markets or the state, but also about the knowledge underpinning them.
In this sense, the science that is invoked to legitimate calls for green transformations
is also a site of political contestation. It does not provide neutral value-free
guidance as to what is to be done and by whom (Millstone, this book), even though
it may be represented as doing just that. Dig a little deeper and we find the
assumptions embodied in understandings of complex processes of (global) environ-
mental change to be subject to scrutiny and dissent. There is a politics around
knowledge production in debates about green transformations, turning both on
what we think we know (consensus and uncertainties) and on who knows it (whose
knowledge counts). We must ask which scientists or other stakeholders, which
forms of expertise, from the official to the informal, which disciplines and which
regions have most voice in the construction of knowledge about the predicaments
that underpin calls for green transformations. Put another way, a ‘reflexive turn’
is needed that treats the governance of expertise about global environmental and
green issues as a matter of political contestation (Beck et al., 2014). Who sets the
terms of debate about green transformations is crucial because organized knowledge,
explicitly or implicitly, demarcates ways forward. Such knowledge in turn suggests
who can use which resources in order to live within environmental limits and
planetary boundaries, and gives an indication of which causal processes should be
addressed. The impacts of these decisions affect everyone, but perhaps most those
whose livelihoods are tied up with day-to-day interactions with ecologies and natural
resources: the majority of the world’s poor.
We are therefore concerned in this book with a very material politics, but also
a politics of knowledge. These are deeply intertwined. While drawing attention
to the sometimes problematic ways in which knowledge gets produced might play
into the hands of sceptics and distract from the hard politics that must address the
political–economic structures that are leading us towards planetary disaster, there
are dangers too associated with an uncritical embrace of dominant knowledge
production for green transformations. Instead, we argue that so-called soft and hard
politics are deeply connected. Knowledge politics matter because they are so closely
entwined with material political economy (Leach, this book), and making them
explicit can lead to more open, robust and grounded knowledge for green
transformations (Stirling, this book).
At the same time, discourses of catastrophe and imminent ecological collapse
raise unsettling questions about the ability of democratic institutions to deliver fast
and effective solutions, or whether the scale and urgency of ecological crises warrants
some suspension of normal democratic procedures. There are undoubtedly trade-
offs around the efficiency of decision-making and inclusion, and around negotiation
versus coercion, but this book cautions against deriving political action from
‘ecological imperatives’ without attention to the principles of democracy (Stirling,
 The politics of green transformations 5

this book). Similarly, others have highlighted the dangers of ‘post-political’

discourses (Swyngedouw, 2010) around environmental threats such as climate change
that restrict the contours of legitimate political debate precisely on grounds of the
need to suspend social conflict. Instead, clear urgencies and imperatives may call
for a ‘slow race’ – making haste slowly – in a way that is respectful of inclusion,
deliberation, democracy and justice (Leach and Scoones, 2006).

What is to be transformed and how?

There is widespread acknowledgement of the multiple environmental stresses the
world faces – from climate change, air and water pollution, and biodiversity loss
to land use change, for example. There is growing consensus that these will prove
deeply damaging to human well-being and futures unless they are addressed. There
is a robust debate, but a lesser consensus, about the drivers that exacerbate them
– including overconsumption, urban expansion, population pressures, unequal
economic relations and globalization. But how these are to be tackled remains much
disputed, and a clear vision of what green transformations are required, for what
and for whom remains elusive.
This is, of course, due to political contention. There is intense competition
around framings of how to read and react to the observed trends: what diagnoses
they allegedly provide of the origins of the crisis and the sources of the remedies.
There is much at stake in the construction of what drives unsustainability (who is
to blame for what) and of what forces can be aligned to rebalance socionatures.
Whether wholesale transformations, as opposed to more discrete sociotechnical tran-
sitions, are required, and what it is that is to be transformed, has major implications
for actors and interests – which are supported and which challenged. Whether
transformations should be technology-led, marketized, state-led or citizen-led has
huge implications for the processes, institutions and instruments deployed. Should
the entry point be individual behaviour change, pricing of environmental external-
ities and ecosystem services, state restructuring and support for ‘green’ industrial
sectors, or green technological innovation? All have different implications for who
should be involved on what terms and who wins and who loses. Such choices
about ‘green’ directions therefore inevitably have implications for social justice and
social inequality.
In recent years, debates about economic growth have taken centre stage – both
its desirability as an end in itself (Jackson, 2011; Dale, 2012), and the extent to
which it improves broad well-being in highly unequal, richer societies (Wilkinson
and Pickett, 2010). Measures of growth, and appropriate metrics and accounting
systems, have also been widely debated, with calls for ‘green accounting’, ‘ecological
footprint’ assessments and ‘circular economy’ measures (Vincent, 2000; Mathews
and Tan, 2011; Wackernagel and Rees, 2013). Debates about growth have also
prompted deeper reflections about the scope for the greening of capitalism, or
whether the idea of green(er) capitalism constitutes an oxymoron (O’Connor, 1994;
Foster, 2002; Newell and Paterson, 2010; Newell, 2012). All of these debates identify
6 Ian Scoones, Peter Newell and Melissa Leach

fundamental conflicts and trade-offs, centring again on questions about what is to

be sustained and what we mean by green.
Glib policy statements of win–win green economies often obscure the many
hard trade-offs implied by attempts to square environmental aims with social justice,
or to pursue a just transition (Agyeman et al., 2003; Swilling and Annecke, 2012;
Newell and Mulvaney, 2013). While some focus only on green limits and planetary
boundaries, others argue that attending to distributional issues first is essential –
creating a ‘safe and just operating space for humanity’, with a basic floor of welfare,
human rights and dignity (Raworth, 2012; Leach et al., 2012, 2013). These per-
spectives are reflected in attempts to protect ‘development rights in a carbon
constrained world’ (Baer et al., 2008) or to specify ‘contraction’ on the part of
richer countries and ‘convergence’ on the part of poorer ones towards agreed per
capita entitlements to what remains of available carbon budgets (GCI, 2014).
Rather than divide up the existing cake (albeit an ever smaller one) in more
equitable ways, one alternative invokes what some term ‘green sufficiency’. Thus
the claim that continuous exponential economic growth can ever be compatible
with long-run environmental sustainability is contested (Trainer, 1996). Prosperity,
not growth, is seen as the appropriate goal for green economies and societies, to
be built through emphases on well-being, social sustainability, services and care
(Jackson, 2011). Such perspectives are promoted by Green political parties in some
countries, with a focus on public provision of sustainable energy and water, and
support for community-based economies (Douthwaite, 1996; Levidow, 2014).
A related set of alternatives emphasize green well-being and justice. Some argue
that mainstream versions of the ‘green economy’ and ‘green growth’ function
primarily as a means to maintain existing patterns of capitalist development and
the inequalities associated with them, just now under a green veneer (Lyon and
Maxwell, 2011). While some reject the concept of the green economy entirely
(Wanner, 2014), others seek to elaborate it to incorporate questions of justice,
promoting ideas of a ‘green and fair economy’ (Green Economy Coalition, 2014).

Understanding the politics of green transformations

All transformations are replete with governance challenges, and this book asks: whose
rules rule, which institutions define visions of change and the terms of change,
and which relations of power shape different pathways?
Given the variety of perspectives on green transformations, it is not surprising
to find a diversity of literatures that offer interpretations and frameworks for
understanding them. One important area is the growing literature on sociotechnical
transitions. This has generated many important insights into how, when and why
sociotechnical change is possible: how niche technologies emerge and displace
incumbent regimes and how a series of landscape factors can frustrate or enable
this change (Geels, 2005a; Scarse and Smith, 2009; Geels and Schot, 2007;
Loorbach, 2007; Grin et al., 2010).
 The politics of green transformations 7

One area where this literature has fallen short is in its understanding of power
and political economy (Smith et al., 2005, 2010; Meadowcroft, 2011; Baker et al.,
2014). An understanding of politics is important in explaining which pathways get
supported and legitimized, and which are ignored and so fail to gain traction. This
is starting to be recognized in recent contributions around the ‘multi-level
perspective’ of the sociotechnical transition literature (e.g. Geels, 2014). A deeper
understanding of the processes of knowledge politics, political conflict and accom-
modation, bargaining and disciplining, as niche experiments challenge existing
regimes is clearly highly pertinent (Smith and Raven, 2012).
The politics of green transformations implicate multiple levels of governance
and decision-making, and the challenges of coordinating these to pull in the same
directions. A plethora of approaches labelled multilevel, polycentric, global and
earth systems governance has been suggested (Galaz et al., 2012). However, each
raise the key questions of who steers, and which actors and institutions govern
transformations, through which institutional mechanisms operate. This in turn raises
questions about how far transformations can, in fact, be managed and directed, as
often assumed in earth systems governance and transition management debates,
as opposed to emerging from below in unanticipated ways that are difficult to
anticipate and direct. Questions are also raised about roles and actors. Should
transformations be overseen by nation states or global institutions, and in what
relation? Given the track-record of national environmental policies and global
governance of the environment, what can realistically be expected? Assumptions
about capacity, commitment and willingness are built into many green economy
policy proclamations, but will the key players be prepared to intervene, and if so,
what type of green transformation will be backed (Allen, 2012; Fouquet and Pearson,
2012)?
The politics of green transformations are also about the politics of accountability
and participation – whether at global, national or local levels. These become
especially pertinent as global institutions and governments seek to extend their reach
in efforts to create – or under the guise of building – a green economy. Will these
interventions be inclusive or exclusive, top-down or bottom-up, and who gets the
rent from ‘managing’ such transformations? As Lockwood (this book) describes,
depending on the political–economic setting, the incentives for policy elites to back
a green transformation and for states to intervene will vary dramatically. The role
of elite politics, and alliances of states, businesses and finance, becomes important,
as different groups seek to capture the benefits of any transformative shift. Power
and political authority in alliance-building, influenced by particular political
economic context, is central to any understanding of what is likely to happen, and
what is not (Schmitz, this book).
The political dimensions of long-term change are also important. History offers
highly relevant lessons about the circumstances in which ‘technological revolutions’
come about – whether the move to coal under the Industrial Revolution or the
shift to mass mobility under Fordism – are also relevant. Perez (2002, 2013), building
on Schumpeter, highlights the critical role of finance capital in unleashing ‘waves
8 Ian Scoones, Peter Newell and Melissa Leach

of creative destruction’ that unsettle incumbent regimes – a theme picked up by

Mazzucato, Spratt and Newell in this book.
Histories often involve the co-evolution of policies, institutions, infrastructures
and even whole political systems with technologies and material resources. As
Mitchell (2011) argues in relation to coal and then oil, for example, forms of
democracy are deeply entwined with particular material energy resources. In this
sense, politics is co-constructed with sociotechnical systems and particular resources,
whether coal or oil, water or land. Some types of transformation are thus affected
by the biophysical, material qualities of those resources, with water, for example,
being described as the ‘un-cooperative commodity’ – its fluidity making it difficult
to govern (Bakker, 2010). The materiality of resources can also provoke an
unravelling of political systems, technologies and infrastructures built around them,
as is claimed for peak oil and its ability to destabilize incumbent power (Leggett,
2014). Unravelling such co-constructed complexes of technology, infrastructure,
institutions and politics and creating alternative pathways is therefore a central
challenge of the politics of green transformation. Opportunities may emerge during
periods of crisis (or interregnum) in which a new politics of transformation
becomes possible.
The politics of transformation also involve the politics of knowledge and
culture. Building more sustainable pathways involves transformations in behaviour
at personal and collective levels, underpinned by convictions that change is necessary
and desirable. Green transformation thus requires transformative knowledge
(Hackmann and St Clair, 2012). Yet as longstanding experiences and literatures from
the sociology and anthropology of science and policy tell us, such knowledge cannot
just be imposed from above by expert science; to have traction, it must make sense
to people in diverse settings (Jamison, 2001; Jasanoff and Martello, 2004). There is
a politics to the ways that different people and groups, with different cultural
backgrounds, invoke particular forms of knowledge to define and contest the nature
of environmental problems, why they matter and to whom, and what should be
done about them. The intensity of these knowledge politics is picked up in different
ways in Chapter 2 by Leach, Chapter 3 by Millstone, Chapter 4 by Stirling and
Chapter 7 by Smith and Ely. They underscore the potential of grassroots and citizen-
based knowledge to contribute to green transformations, and the need for
transformations in the ways different knowledge producers and holders interact in
order to enable this.
Underpinning these different conceptualizations of transformation, and how and
when they occur, different emphasis is placed on the desirability and possibility of
incremental institutional change and transitions within capitalism as against the need
for more radical transformations of capitalist structures and relations (Kovel, 2002).
This raises a series of entrenched and contentious questions about strategy: how
much change is ‘good enough’; whether reform or more radical revolution is the
appropriate strategy, and whether the urgency of delivering green transformations
necessarily prioritizes immediate incrementalism over longer term, more radical
restructuring. It underscores the very different visions of sustainability which run
 The politics of green transformations 9

through all debates about green transformations, reflected in the diversity of per-
spectives of contributors to this book. Much depends on the framing of competing
visions of sustainability, a theme to which we now turn.

Framing green transformations

At the broadest level, therefore, many agree that the world is on an unsustainable
path and that business-as-usual is not an option. ‘Hard’ disagreements exist, for
sure, with those fundamentally opposed to change in sustainable directions – such
as institutions and businesses whose profits and power are fundamentally interlocked
with the status quo. Yet even among those sharing a broad ‘green’ consensus lie
a range of hotly contested visions of sustainability that define the framing of and
approach to green transformations. These ‘soft’ disagreements are also important,
and they too implicate material questions of economy, interest and resource
allocation. Visions of what is to be done reflect starkly conflicting diagnoses of
what the problem is and who is best placed to act on it.
Such visions partly reflect longstanding debates about how to reconcile
environment and development, or growth and sustainability. Current discussions
about green transformations bear the legacy of debates about sustainable develop-
ment in particular. ‘Sustainable development’, of course, has been a rallying call
for those concerned with the relationships between environment and development
over several decades (Adams, 2003). Brundtland’s original formulation was
‘development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability
of future generations to meet their own needs’ (Brundtland, 1987). This inspired
the Rio Earth Summit discussions in 1992, and the plans that emerged around
Agenda 21, and many conferences, summits, conventions and policy statements
since.
Mobilized by this idea, the early 1990s saw strong momentum in the form of
environmental legislation, policy, business and community action, locally, nationally
and internationally. However, this had slowed by the early 2000s (Vogler and Jordan,
2003; Redclift, 2005), and attempts to resuscitate the sustainable development vision
at the Rio+20 conference in 2012 largely failed (Bulkeley et al., 2013). Progress
on the major 1992 targets was disappointing, and many national sustainability action
plans became forms of managerialism that failed to challenge the economic and
institutional interests and practices that supported unsustainability (Berkhout et al.,
2003; Scoones, 2007; Jordan and Adger, 2009). Sustainability and sustainable
development could easily be used as empty rhetoric, masking a variety of decidedly
environmentally unfriendly actions through ‘greenwash’ (Rowell, 1996).
One response to this disappointing history would be to recommit to the idea
of sustainable development with renewed vigour, recasting this as a concept to
drive a new round of political and policy change. Indeed, the Rio+20 outcomes
document, The Future We Want (UN, 2012), is framed in these terms and commits
countries to defining and implementing a set of Sustainable Development Goals
(SDGs). Yet, as the SDG process unfolds, many are questioning whether, again,
10 Ian Scoones, Peter Newell and Melissa Leach

this will prove to be an ineffective discourse that drives only more rhetoric, bureau-
cracy and managerialism. Meanwhile, though, others have picked up and run with
alternative ‘green’ framings – especially around the green economy and ideas of
green limits or ‘planetary boundaries’, seeing these as more potent in galvanizing
politicians, businesses, policy-makers and publics for real change.
For example, Jacobs (2012a) elaborates on the politics surrounding the rise of
the green economy concept. These have included the perceived need to replace,
for Rio+20, the managerial, statist concept of sustainable development. Many also
recognized that discourses focused on costs and green limits – including the two-
degree safety barrier in climate change and planetary boundaries, as well as climate
discourses focused on the costs of mitigation – would struggle to gain political
support in a post-financial crisis world where economic growth and employment
remained the core priority of voters, businesses and governments. In this context,
ideas of ‘green growth’ offer a positive spin, claiming ‘that protecting the environ-
ment can actually yield better growth’ (Jacobs, 2013, p6).
However, ‘sustainable development’ and ‘green economy’, while the most visible
and mainstream, are not the only ways of framing green transformations. Our focus
on politics reveals others and differences and contrasts within these. In the sections
below we identify four broad narratives of green transformation, each reflecting
different framings of problem and solution, and different versions of sustain-
ability. Others have proposed similar typologies of environmental world views on
the question of ‘pathways to a green world’ (Clapp and Dauvergne, 2011; see also
Szerszynski, 1997; Dobson, 1998, 2000; Jamison, 2001; Hopwood et al., 2005)
that correspond in some ways to those we outline here. Each narrative embodies
a different perspective on what it is (if anything) that needs to be transformed; and
each reflects different understandings, prejudices and theories of change, informing
how, when and why transformation is possible. In other words, each narrative
suggests a pathway (or set of pathways) to green transformations, and so a particular
politics of transformation.
The chapters that follow take different positions with respect to these narratives,
often advocating a combination of pathways, and so a diversity of political strategies,
demonstrating that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to green transformations
and their politics.

Technocentric transformations
First, we identify a ‘technocentric’ view of sustainability and transformation. Here
the challenge essentially lies in finding the right combination of technologies to
meet rising demands in greener ways. For example, lower carbon energy, fewer
agricultural inputs but higher yields, less water-intensive systems, and so on. The
aim is to reduce ecological footprints through technological innovation without
altering systems fundamentally. Reorganizing economies or institutions and
unsettling prevailing power relations is less of a priority. The emphasis is much
more on creating incentives and enabling the ‘right’ kinds of technologies to
 The politics of green transformations 11

compete with incumbent ones: through picking winners, appropriately designed

R&D and intellectual property policies, supportive industrial and tax policy, and
heroic entrepreneurs – what Elkington (2012) calls the ‘zeronauts’. This is a reformist
perspective on green transformations, which offers a relatively limited account of
politics. Politics is essentially understood as policy, providing policy fixes in support
of sustainable technologies. Such proposals are in many ways radical in terms of
the ambition and are, of course, deeply political, as in calls for decoupling and
some arguments for a ‘green industrial revolution’ noted above. Likewise, for some,
an advocacy of geoengineering, as a technical solution to climate mitigation, is
informed by an assessment that other options are unlikely any time soon due to
the power of vested interests (Lomborg, 2013).
In some versions of a ‘green economy’ position, a dominant emphasis is on
technological innovation and investment – mostly by the private sector – in low-
carbon and other environmental technologies. In this narrative, ideas of green and
new technology are firmly interlocked, and often coupled with assumptions of
business-led growth. For some, green technoscience is on the brink of creating a
‘new industrial revolution’ (Stern and Rydge, 2012) set to transform economies.
Such techno-optimistic visions are echoed in applications to developing countries,
where groups such as the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN,
2014), as well as a host of private companies, suggest that a combination of bio-,
info-, nano- and engineering technologies, and markets to enable their spread, will
transform economies in green directions. Both the Organisation for Economic Co-
operation and Development (OECD) and the United Nations Environment
Programme (UNEP) also emphasize technoscientific innovation, highlighting the
need for international cooperation in facilitating trade and technology transfer, to
allow for ‘leapfrogging’, if developing countries are to go green (Levidow, 2014).
In such discourses, ‘greenness’ is often presented as if it were an attribute of a
technology itself, and as if the technology had agency in economic transformation.
Yet this is, of course, to ignore the vast array of political–economic and social
arrangements associated with both technological innovation and application in
particular settings that shape whether and how technologies work, and towards
what ends (Bryne et al. 2011). While there are exceptions, such as the more recent
emphases of the SDSN, the focus on technological solutions generally downplays
the governance contexts of technologies and the ways they become part of diverse
pathways. Arguments about imminent technological revolutions similarly downplay
the embedded political and institutional regimes that have shaped such ‘long
waves’ of technology-related growth in the past (Perez, 2013).
Technocentric narratives often imply that innovation originates in the hi-tech
laboratories of firms and technology start-ups, largely in the global North, or in
the emerging economies of China, India or Brazil. Notions of green technology
transfer, leapfrogging and catch-up reinforce this view. Yet such versions of green
technology marginalize or devalue technoscientific innovation that emerges from
the global South (Ely et al., 2013), while also concealing the North–South
inequalities of access and capacity that shape innovation capabilities (Levidow, 2014).
12 Ian Scoones, Peter Newell and Melissa Leach

Likewise, the focus on hi-tech innovation obscures and marginalizes innovation

from the grassroots (Smith and Ely, this book) and through wider mobilizations
of citizens (Leach and Scoones, this book). Such local innovation processes are
frequently motivated by a mesh of sociocultural and livelihood concerns, and
understandings of ecology and sustainability, which diverge from the narrow
notions of ‘green’ and ‘economic benefit’ encompassed in most technocentric green
economy discourses.

Marketized transformations
A second narrative centres on calls for marketized transformations to sustainability.
Here, the market is the agent of transformation, which through pricing, creating
markets and property rights regimes, unleashes new rounds of ‘green accumulation’.
Hence the diagnosis of the problem is market failure, lack of green entre-
preneurialism and failure to allocate and sufficiently protect private property rights.
For example, the World Bank’s 2003 World Development Report on ‘Sustainable
Development in a Dynamic Economy’ advances the idea that the spectacular failure
to tackle poverty and environmental degradation over the last decades is due to a
failure of governance, ‘poor implementation and not poor vision’ (World Bank,
2003). The report notes, ‘Those [poverty and environmental problems] that can
be coordinated through markets have typically done well; those that have not fared
well include many for which the market could be made to work as a coordinator’.
The challenge for governments is therefore to be more welcoming of private
actors through, among other things, ‘a smooth evolution of property rights from
communal to private’ (World Bank, 2003, p133). Markets are thus emphasized as
the key drivers of sustainable development, while recognizing that markets can
only work in this way once states have intervened in particular ways.
The emergence of ideas about the marketization of nature and the green
economy has been dramatic. As Jacobs (2012a) documents, rarely heard before 2008,
market-oriented green economy concepts are now prominent in policy discourses
across governments and international economic and development institutions alike.
Thus, the World Bank and other multilateral development banks have ostensibly
embraced green growth as a core goal, while the OECD has committed itself to
a green growth strategy (OECD, 2011). Similarly, the UNEP has strongly promoted
a green economy agenda (UNEP, 2011). These international institutions have jointly
established a ‘Green Growth Knowledge Platform’ to build knowledge about the
field. Green growth and/or a green economy have been adopted as explicit policy
objectives in a number of countries, including some of the world’s largest econ-
omies, and many NGOs and alliances have also bought into the concept.
Those now promoting green growth and the green economy claim that it is
not a substitute for sustainable development, but a way of achieving it. However,
this elision overlooks the extent to which the framing of a green economy
represents a distinct set of meanings, politics and imperatives. As Jacobs (2012a)
argues, the emphasis is on a level of environmental protection that is not being
 The politics of green transformations 13

met by current or ‘business-as-usual’ patterns of growth. This gives the concept

both its political traction and its discursive power to justify transformations.
Proponents of a marketized green economy perspective argue that this could be a
driver of higher output and rising living standards, and in the relatively short term.
This positive framing has united diverse public and private organizations, whether
in energy, transport or natural resources. It has also co-developed with the
number and power of environmentally oriented businesses for whom ‘green’ and
‘commercial success’ are deeply intertwined.
These perspectives emphasize the need to recognize and value economically
the natural capital on which growth depends. ‘Putting a price on nature’ as a way
to overcome so-called market failures has a long history in green economic
thought and policy, with environmental economists during the 1980s and 1990s
putting much effort into the development of methods, measures and metrics (Pearce
and Warford, 1993). Today, discourses centring on valuing natural capital are
extending ever more widely into previously unpriced and non-marketized dimen-
sions of nature and ecosystems. This is associated with new forms of financialization
and commoditization, deeply embedded in and thus furthering capitalist networks
of control and appropriation (McAfee, 2012; Sullivan, 2013).
A number of governments have embraced these concepts and are translating
them into policy. For instance, the UK has established a Natural Capital Committee
(DEFRA, 2014), has positioned itself at the centre of the ‘new carbon economy’
(Newell et al., 2012) and embraced controversial practices of biodiversity off-setting.
Internationally, UNEP (2011) has been among the key proponents of this
marketized version of green economy discourse and its application to developing
country contexts. The UNEP-hosted Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity
(TEEB) initiative advocates strongly for the concept of natural capital in ‘making
nature’s values visible’ (TEEB, 2014). An array of schemes is now unfolding to
value and trade aspects of ecosystems now (re)defined as financialized commodities.
They include schemes for trading carbon credits and offsetting emissions, such as
those associated with clean energy, forests and agriculture under the Clean
Development Mechanism (CDM), the United Nations collaborative initiative on
Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (UN-REDD), and
a host of voluntary schemes. They include emerging markets for ‘offsetting’ species
and biodiversity loss. They also include an array of ‘payments for ecosystem
services’ (PES) schemes. They are in turn linked to new forms of venture capital
and speculation, as derivatives circulate as fictitious and liquid capital (Büscher
et al., 2012). Yet whether the claimed benefits are realized in practice, amid
imperatives for project developers to realize profits in often uncertain markets, and
in the context histories of weak local resource tenure and control, is highly
variable (Newell and Bumpus, 2012; Leach and Scoones, forthcoming, 2015).
Interventions promoted in the name of green marketized approaches can easily
become forms of ‘green grabbing’ that dispossess local resource users of rights and
livelihoods (Fairhead et al., 2012). Meanwhile, narrow forms of financial valuation
of ecosystems and landscapes overlook alternative social and cultural values,
14 Ian Scoones, Peter Newell and Melissa Leach

including those that have emerged from the long co-existence of people and
ecologies in diverse settings (Martin et al., 2013).
Markets always depend to some extent on state action, on the ways that states
enable the emergence of particular markets, and through providing incentives and
regulation, shape how they operate. Pathways of green transformation therefore
often involve combinations of market and state action, even while narratives of
marketized transformations portray markets as if they acted alone. In contrast, other
narratives focus on the role of the state.

State-led transformations
A third narrative focuses on state-led transformations to sustainability. The
starting point is often the need to re-embed markets in stronger frameworks of
social control, combined with a recognition of states’ historically central role in
previous waves of innovation and financing of technology and growth. Arguments
for a ‘green entrepreneurial state’ (Mazzucato, 2013b, this book), or green industrial
policy (Schmitz, this book), or earlier work on the ‘green state’ (Eckersley, 2004),
all emphasize the central role of state action.
Unsurprisingly, the state also features highly in accounts of transition manage-
ment and its critical stabilizing, backstopping and stimulus roles have been
underscored by recent crises. Jacobs (2013) documents how the recent case for
greening economies emerged in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Amid neo-
Keynesian policies to rebuild economies by replacing lost private-sector demand
with public expenditure and thus create multiplier effects, public initiatives aimed
at protecting the environment were highlighted. Thus, areas such as energy
efficiency, renewable energy, water quality improvement, agricultural and landscape
management, public transport and pollution control were seen to offer ways to
get people into work and to increase demand for goods and services. Many of the
countries that introduced fiscal stimulus packages in 2008–2009 included ‘green’
programmes of these kinds. In 2009, UNEP proposed a Global Green New Deal,
including an agenda to expand public services, regulate private-sector activities and
promote less resource-intensive patterns.
What has attracted particular interest in recent years is the role for developmental
entrepreneurial states with the growth of ‘rising powers’ such as China, Brazil and
India, willing and able to use proactive industrial policy to spur marketized and
technological transformations. In a new multipolar global context, it is these
countries that are often leading in green transformations, and they are countries
where the state is playing an active role. Investments in renewable energy – wind
and solar – provide key examples. These efforts are often financed by powerful
and well-resourced development banks able to support ambitious investment strat-
egies, as Spratt (this book) shows for Brazil and Mazzucato (this book) describes
for Chinese investment in solar power. States are thus not just providing counter-
cyclical lending, but are even ‘directing’ that lending towards key, innovative parts
of the ‘green’ economy.
 The politics of green transformations 15

Emphasis on the role of the state in steering green investment can also be seen
as a response to a sense of crisis in states’ more conventional environmental
governance roles. Failures of institutional arrangements and architectures nationally
and globally to tackle climate change, biodiversity loss and key areas of pollution
successfully have led some to revise expectations that such agreements are possible,
in the face of overwhelming national and interest-group political–economic
interests. Other views, such as perspectives in the Earth system governance
literature, are more optimistic, stressing the scope to accelerate green transforma-
tions by strengthening global architectures and institutions, and if necessary creating
new ones, such as the World Environment Organisation much discussed around
Rio 2012.

Citizen-led transformations
A fourth narrative suggests that transformations will have to come from below.
This represents a more populist version of sustainability, centred on taking control
over resources from state-capital elites who have shown little serious interest in
more profound green transformations and whose ability to deliver them is highly
compromised by their commitments to growth at any cost. There is a strong
emphasis on degrowth and bottom-up transitions to alternative solidarity-based
economies (Dobson, 2009; Utting, forthcoming, 2015), including examples of transi-
tion towns and alternative agri-food movements (Leach and Scoones, this book).
Civil society groups have also proposed alternative ways of ‘living well’. Among
the most celebrated are plans for buen vivir, now endorsed by government ministries
in Ecuador, that combine environmental justice, common goods, agroecology and
food sovereignty. Buen vivir (the Quechua term is sumak kawsay) also emphasizes
indigenous, non-Western concepts, such as miriachina – the idea that people and
groups contribute to the realization of goods collaboratively and with nature, rather
than producing things as individuals (Martínez Novo, 2012). These proposals imply
quite different routes to achieving green transformations that involve challenging
the social and political–economic structures that sustain individualist, capitalist
development paths.
Mobilizations for alternative pathways in which rights to food, water or energy
often have a central role are combined with resistance to existing forms of
extractivism and business-as-usual developmentalism (Bond, 2012; Gottlieb and
Joshi, 2010). As well as ‘weapons of the weak’ (Scott, 2008) and transnational
mobilizations (Tarrow, 2005), as Leach and Scoones (this book) illustrate, they
combine with initiatives around ‘citizen science’ and grassroots innovation (Smith
and Ely, this book). From projecting alternatives to current unsustainabilities, to
demonstrations and experiments within ‘niches’, the emphasis is often on diversify-
ing and democratizing knowledge for transformations, and so ‘culturing’ sustain-
ability (cf. Stirling, this book), through an emphasis on everyday and lifestyle politics.
Table 1.1 offers a schematic summary of the diagnoses and associated solutions
proposed under these four narratives of green transformations. As the chapters that
16 Ian Scoones, Peter Newell and Melissa Leach

TABLE 1.1 Narratives of green transformations: diagnoses and solutions

Narratives of green transformations/ Solutions

diagnoses
Technocentric
Either about to or already exceed Technologies as global public goods to tackle
many planetary limits; urgency and environmental crisis
crisis Low-carbon transitions: new energy
Emphasis on population; Malthusian technologies
models of scarcity and conflict Including ‘technical fixes’, from
Highlighting the role of technology as geoengineering to genetically modified crops,
magic bullets . . . but also bottom-up, grassroots innovation
. . . but also potentials of alternative Top-down governance arrangements in favour
technologies of ‘the planet’

Marketized
Crisis results from market failures, Technological entrepreneurs, green capitalists
externalities and consumers to lead
Primacy of (green) growth Prices will reflect scarcity of resources and
demand to protect them, and reward
Corporations as agents of change ecosystem service providers
Need to allocate and enforce property rights
and use institutions to this end
Economic investments and market incentives
to achieve green growth and a green
economy
State-led
Need for state involvement in steering At the national level, need for a green state,
transformation and re-embedding adopting green Keynesian industrial policies of
markets stimulus, infrastructural projects, creating
green jobs
State-backed R&D and wider finance
central to a ‘developmental state’ At the international level, modifying and
reforming existing institutions or creating new
Crisis of governance at national and ones (World Environment Organisation)
global levels; importance of institutions,
agreements, international architectures Strengthening global architectures (Earth
System Governance)
Citizen-led
Change comes from below, cumulative Power from below, involving connected social
actions of multiple, networked initiatives movements (e.g. green consumers, green
living/transition towns; food, water, energy-
Linking niches, experiments and sovereignty movements)
demonstrations through movements
Radical system change required (e.g.
Behaviour change, advocacy and arguments for eco-socialism, eco-feminism,
demonstrating alternatives central: Third World environmentalism, post-
‘another world is possible’ developmentalism)
Bio-communities; self-sufficiency;
dematerialization; degrowth
 The politics of green transformations 17

follow show, these are not mutually exclusive categories, and many instances exist
where narratives are strategically combined to suit particular circumstances. As we
go on to argue, the important point is that each suggests different frames, different
politics, different alliances between actors, and so different routes to achieving green
transformations.
One thing that is notable from these narratives is the neglect, explicitly at least,
of questions of justice. Across each of these narratives, justice is implicitly assumed
to be delivered. In the technocentric version, this occurs through supposedly benign
elites stewarding global public goods. In the marketized version, just transform-
ations will only be effective, efficient and tenable if consumers support them
through their purchasing power, and the market will deliver the best technologies
and goods at the best price. For those emphasizing state-led transformations, only
the state has the authority and legitimacy to protect rights, oversee redistribution
and ensure that the interests of the majority are served by particular green trans-
formations. By contrast, in narratives that place the accent on citizen-led action,
neither states nor markets nor technocratic elites have proven their ability to defend
their citizens from the impacts of previous transformations, and there are few grounds
for thinking they will do so in relation to green transformations. Conceptions of
justice thus must derive from popular understandings about what is fair and socially
acceptable.
This is not to suggest there are not hard trade-offs between justice and
sustainability (Dobson, 1998; Agyeman et al., 2003; Leach et al., 2010; Martin, 2013;
Sikor, 2013; Sikor and Newell, 2014). Indeed, work on political ecology has
long drawn attention to the intimate connection between social relations of race,
class and gender, for example, and the likelihood that social groups will either benefit
from or be further excluded from access to natural resources and projects aimed
at their protection (Martínez-Alier, 2002; Newell, 2005; Robbins and Watts,
2011; Wichterich, 2012). In relation to green transformation debates, North–South
non-governmental organization (NGO) networks have attacked the dominant
agenda of the ‘green economy’. Tensions between agendas have pervaded official
texts and debates, with arguments for human well-being and social equity existing
cheek by jowl with contradictory statements that promote dependence on an
unregulated private sector. These tensions often remain hidden in narratives about
green transformations, yet making them explicit is crucial if justice concerns are
to be given due consideration. Again, this requires focusing attention on the politics
of green transformations.

The politics of green transformations

Each narrative thus employs, explicitly or implicitly, very different theories of power,
politics and governance, and so implications for justice and distribution. They also
embody distinct understandings of ‘the market’, of ‘states’ and ‘citizens’, in terms
of their transformative potential, whose interests they serve and the forms of power
they exercise and are subject to.
18 Ian Scoones, Peter Newell and Melissa Leach

In some renditions we can see traces of ‘technocratic global control’, either

through centralization of authority globally or via polycentric or multilevel
governance or through faith in technological magic bullets that bypass the need
for political change and compromise. A fallacy of control is often demonstrated,
and such calls for planetary management have provoked powerful critiques (Sachs,
1993), particularly in relation to the growing role of corporations in framing and
financing global responses to environmental threats (Hildyard, 1993). By enrolling
ever more areas of the global commons in circuits of global economic and political
power, and subject to global institutional oversight, such a technocratic turn can
undermine democratic responses.
In the case of technocratic governance, power lies with benign elites who seek
to globalize the benefits of technologies, act upon the insights of planetary science,
marshal a ‘global consensus’ and then allocate resources for the protection of global
public goods. The Green Climate Fund of the World Bank is perhaps a good
example. This perspective draws on an essentially liberal view of power where trust
in (global) institutions, and states/policy elites derives from their assumed autonomy
from particular interests and classes, and their respect for the rule of law. They are
able to align the comparative advantages of public and private (and philanthropic)
interests though a variety of public private partnerships (Bäckstrand, 2006). Citizens,
in this view, benefit from protection by such elites acting on their behalf, without
much requirement for their direct input. Rather, public participation comes
through interest-group representation in national democratic processes.
Likewise, accounts of marketized transformations present themselves as apolitical,
devolving power to the market to seek out optimally efficient outcomes by setting
the right prices and creating new markets with minimal institutional oversight.
Market-based mechanisms such as emissions trading, tradable fishing quotas and
carbon-offset projects are all examples. States oversee exchanges in the market and
provide appropriate regulation and, most importantly, allocate and enforce property
rights. Citizens are relevant as passive consumers of products and services produced
through the market, but not as shapers of markets or the rules by which they are
governed. Such accounts also overlook the deeply politicized nature of market
creation, the scope for capture by capital and the lack of attention to social justice
issues in such projects (Brand, 2012a). In their favour, such approaches reflect the
new global distribution of power – including the rise of political–economic power
in countries like China, India and Brazil – and a realpolitik of who owns the
technology, production and finance that, for many, will be critical to the prospects
of most green transformations. In this reading, green transformations will inevitably
be market led, and markets, corporations and finance capital need to be enlisted,
including from other parts of the world.
For those who place more faith in state-led transformations, as Mazzucato argues
(this book), many things that get attributed to entrepreneurs and markets are, in
fact, shaped and financed by states. Markets have to be made and brought into
being (Çalışkan and Callon, 2009); nowhere are there markets independent of
the societies that create and shape them; they are always socially embedded
 The politics of green transformations 19

(de Alcántara, 1993). Rather than wishing away the state or denying its relevance,
these accounts point to the potential of state-led Keynesian, or developmental
states (Chang, 2002; Fine et al., 2013) as an important corrective to some of
the naivety, as well as ideological tone, apparent in some market-based versions
of green transformations. In more paternalist versions, states are assumed to have
the interests of citizens at heart and a sincere commitment to the advancement of
development. Yet such models need to be nuanced with an appreciation of the
uneven capacity and resources that most states have, especially those in the majority
of the world. Only some states have the policy autonomy and developmental
space (Evans, 1995) to pursue ambitious and autonomous strategies for green
developmental transformation.
Contexts matter, and as the chapters in this book show there are a whole variety
of states, with different financial, bureaucratic and technological capacities, and
different possibilities of state-led or guided transformations follow from this. Other
critiques coming from marketized narratives would take issue with the idea that
the state knows best, and equally those emphasizing social justice issues would
question whether states are willing and able to act in benign ways rather than serve
as vehicles for the expression of the particular interests that capture them. State-
led perspectives thus still require an explanation of who sets the direction of change
and how the overall goals of green transformations are set. They also require
reflection on how issues of distribution, accountability and chronic power
imbalances will be addressed.
Those advocating more citizen-led transformations take as their point of
departure that neither state nor market can deliver. Either captured by or with
interests aligned to capital, state or marketized transformations inevitably serve the
interests of the minority, not the majority. Issues of ownership and control over
the process and the tools of change (production, technology, finance and
institutions) are key. In this narrative, greater faith is placed in the role of mobilized
citizens to democratize technology, production and the institutions that oversee
them. This assumes a much more active and inclusive view of citizenship (Leach
and Scoones, this book). In this rendition, citizens are creative, knowledgeable actors
exercising active agency, individually and through networks across scales. The
cumulative and diverse unruly politics of movements offer diverse possibilities for
transformations, and perhaps reflect more accurately where the momentum for
change has come from historically (Stirling, this book). This requires thinking about
transformations in terms of cultures, practices and mobilizations that create the
pressure for change, acting both to disrupt incumbent pathways, but also construct
alternatives (Smith and Ely, this book), connecting across scales and between
movements.
Yet, given the nature of the contemporary political landscape and prevailing
distributions of power, as well as the scale of change required, there are doubts as
to whether citizen-led action alone is up to the challenge. This is either because
of the urgency of the situation or because of the inevitable need to enrol powerful
actors in transformative projects, given their control over many of the very things
20 Ian Scoones, Peter Newell and Melissa Leach

that need to be transformed: production, technology and finance. There is also a

danger of romanticizing and exaggerating the potential for citizen action in terms
of people’s time and capacity to engage in constant mobilization, or because of
the high personal and political risks of doing so in many parts of the world where
mobilizing citizens quickly run up against elite control over resources.
These four narratives, while conflicting in many respects, contain elements of
critique and propose solutions that cut across one another. For example, some might
share the view that a more whole-scale reordering of society–nature relationships
is ultimately required, but would see a role for pricing mechanisms, technological
innovation and institutional reforms in the meantime. It is partly a question of time-
frames of change, partly an assessment of how the world is now and the practicalities
of meaningful shifts, and partly a function of ideal futures and ideological leanings.
Ultimately, it is about the messy politics of day-to-day negotiations and alliance-
building amid shifting circumstances, opportunity structures and prevalent
uncertainties, and the pragmatic politics of tactics and strategy that any green
transformation requires (Schmitz, this book).
Overall, then, some types of transformation politics are more likely around some
issues in some parts of the world than others. This depends, among other things,
on the degree of democratic space that exists, available technological capacity,
the development and functioning of markets, the power and commitment of the
state, and the influence of citizen mobilization and action. Some environmental
challenges are perhaps more amenable to technological fixes, while others are more
characterized by murky political economy and more challenging struggles, though
none, we would suggest, is devoid of politics, despite implicit assumptions to the
contrary. Unsurprisingly, therefore, there are no standard solutions, and no singular
roadmap or blueprint, for realizing green transformations.

Multiple transformations: strategies for change

What, then, do the chapters say about theories of change, the building of alliances
and the practical politics of green transformations? Clearly, contributors to this book
come at these issues from different angles, conceptually, politically and practically,
drawing on different theories of power and change, reflected in different visions
of sustainability and narratives of green transformations outlined above. Some
emphasize the politics of knowledge (Leach, Stirling, Millstone); others state policy
(Mazzucato, Spratt); others change through networks (Smith and Ely, Leach and
Scoones), others the incentives required to form interest-based coalitions (Schmitz,
Lockwood) and others the historical role of broader social forces (Newell). And
indeed many chapters combine perspectives, as power and politics take many forms
and these are inevitably co-constituted and context-specific.
Likewise, and emerging from these perspectives on power and politics, each of
the chapters suggests different pathways of change. Each provides different accounts
of what alliances could be constructed, what accommodations might be reached,
what practical tactics and strategies could be deployed, and how these combine
 The politics of green transformations 21

different narratives, and respond to different imperatives of green transformation.

What this all suggests is that, rather than there being one big green transforma-
tion, it is more likely that there will be multiple transformations that will intersect,
overlap and conflict in unpredictable ways. Many indeed may already be underway,
competing with one another for the political attention, support and financial
resources of states, businesses and publics. There will be failures, setbacks and
unintended consequences, as with any project of reorganizing society.
Change will therefore come about in a multitude of different arenas and sites,
and through diverse alliances and movements. We are likely to see a series of
competing – at times divergent, other times convergent – green transformations.
How might these come about? Drawing from the chapters, four broad, and
overlapping, strategies for change are seen.

Shaping and resisting structures

As already alluded to, one key fissure in debates about green transformations is
around the scope for change within capitalism. Most chapters here emphasize the
diversity and unevenness of capitalist development in relation to varieties of
capitalism (Lockwood, this book) and fractions of capital (Newell, this book) as a
way of getting a more differentiated handle on the possibilities of transforma-
tions within capitalism(s). Newell (this book) shows how activists have sought
to mobilize the power of finance capital given its heightened power to drive
decarbonization, while Spratt (this book) shows, in turn, how important it is to
disaggregate different types of finance in order to appreciate what transformative
potential (if any) they might have.
Due to prevailing structures of capital and finance, some strategies of green
transformation might gain traction in the neoliberal heartlands of the US and Europe,
but are far less likely to work elsewhere. In neoliberal settings, the power of trans-
national corporations reshapes democratic possibilities, due to their market power,
lobbying influence and control of states and claims to be in the vanguard of social
and environmental responsibility (Crane et al., 2008; Crouch, 2011). This suggests
new challenges for the ‘post-democratic’ era, where organized civil society becomes
crucial to challenge the power of the corporation (Crouch, 2004; Crouch and
Streeck, 2006).
As well as appreciating the macro context, what this points to is the need for
more nuanced, and regionally and nationally specific theories of change (Lockwood,
this book), given that common structures of power express themselves in distinct
forms around the world. This requires the building of national strategies and locating
transformations within understandings of national political dynamics.

Reframing knowledge
Structures of power are not just economic, of course. Many contributors place
emphasis on discursive structures that limit how we see and imagine problems and
22 Ian Scoones, Peter Newell and Melissa Leach

solutions, and how we come to define, know and frame futures. Closing down
debates and the capture of terms and styles of discussion are common features.
We must ask whose knowledge counts in the development and articulation of
authoritative and legitimate knowledge about transformations. Many of the book’s
contributions argue for the need to ‘open up’ discussions, allowing for discursive
reframing, and deliberation and dialogue as part of a process of knowledge pro-
duction for and within transformations. These structures of knowledge production
have concrete, material and distributional implications, as the contributions from
Leach, Stirling and Millstone make clear. This raises important challenges about
the robustness of institutions to deal with the plurality and diversity of knowledge,
as Millstone suggests. Previous experience of global assessments (Scoones, 2009),
or attempts to manage public engagement though global institutions charged with
governing technology (Newell, 2010) offer important lessons (Beck et al., 2014).

Realigning institutions and incentives

Several chapters point to the potentially key role of strong (entrepreneurial or
developmental) states in pushing (rather than just nudging) change (Mazzucato,
this book), and the importance of different institutional configurations to the
prospects of green transformations (Lockwood, this book). They also raise questions
about the capacity of states to fulfil what is imagined or expected of them. The
potential for state capture is also highlighted when so much is at stake and powerful
actors feel threatened by the direction of change and seek to control the pace and
direction of it.
This is not just about differences between states in the global North and
South, since while resources are critical, corporate capture of states is a worldwide
phenomenon. This is just one aspect of the changing global context, including the
rise of the BRICS, which is rendering old North–South distinctions obsolete, and
highlighting both global commonalities and new axes of political–economic power
and privilege. There are issues everywhere, then, of whether states can or should
‘pick winners’, and their willingness and ability to challenge incumbent power –
to discontinue sunk investments and avoid technological and infrastructural lock-
in, for example. The nimbleness of the state to reflect, challenge and change direction
is often questionable (Lockwood, this book), although there are also positive
examples (Mazzucato, Schmitz, this book).

Mobilizing and networking

Civic action to disrupt, discontinue and challenge incumbent power has always
been a central part of historical transformations and will continue to be part of
future ones. Smith and Ely (this book) emphasize the potential of bottom-up
innovation and grassroots practice. Movements play a key role in challenging the
legitimacy of dominant framings, resource distributions, technological priorities and
distributional consequences (Leach and Scoones, this book). This occasionally takes
 The politics of green transformations 23

the form of proactive efforts to claim control over processes, priorities and resources,
as in the case of the movements for food, water and energy justice/sovereignty.
These illustrate the potential of place-based struggles to resonate and ‘globalize’
through transnational advocacy networks (Leach and Scoones, 2007; Sikor and
Newell, 2014), while also inviting questions about the scalability and replicability
of experiments and successful campaigns, given the contingent and context-specific
nature of transformation politics.
Across these four strategies for transformation, there is a diverse, always messy
(and often murky) politics at play. This highlights a profound mismatch between
how transformations are currently and historically practised – always complex, over-
lapping and contested – and how they are talked about and imagined in policy –
often as a plan, specified in terms of goals and targets, implying hubristic illusions
of control through management (Stirling, this book). Although with hindsight the
temptation is to ascribe unidirectionality, linearity and clearly defined purpose to
transformations in previous historical periods, when living through such periods
of change, they appear open-ended, where goals and pathways to change are often
unclear and contested (Newell, this book). Moreover, despite the best intentions
and aspirations of planners and entrepreneurs, muddling through, constant adapta-
tion and coping are the norm, and act to subvert and resist any plans that seek
to predict and manage change (Folke et al., 2002). Added to the importance of
political–economic contexts, this should strike a note of caution about ‘blueprints’,
‘models’ and ‘transfers’ from ‘success’ stories such as Germany or China (see Schmitz,
Lockwood, this book).
Across the book, the different contributions incline towards a stance of politically
informed, yet pragmatic realism, drawing on combinations of the different strategies
outlined above to map out ways forward. A scepticism towards simplistic win–win
technocratic or market solutions comes across clearly. However, there is also an
acknowledgement that the likelihood of radical change in the short term is small,
while maintaining a commitment to longer term, more radical shifts, and to ensuring
that decisions now do not constrain the possibility of such longer term changes.
Collectively, there is a shared appreciation that current economic and political
structures around markets, technology, finance and existing allocations of power
are not delivering green transformations that are either just or sustainable. So a
searching analysis of wider political economy and the structures of power is
necessary. Yet the sense in which a radical and revolutionary overhaul is unlikely
soon, even if ultimately desirable, suggests the inevitability of the messy politics of
deal-brokering, compromise and alliance-building for green transformations.

Conclusion
So what does this all mean for the politics of green transformations? First, the chapters
strike a note of caution about the idea that there will be one great, guided
(normally assumed from above or through the market) green transformation.
Neither a global Green New Deal, a World Environment Organisation or global
24 Ian Scoones, Peter Newell and Melissa Leach

pricing of ‘natural capital’ will do away with the need to engage with multiple,
contested changes that may (or may not) add up to a broader politics of green
transformations. Given the diversity of accumulation strategies being pursued by
states and corporations in different parts of the world and the ways in which they
enrol and collide with so many other social actors, we can expect a diversity of
pathways. The contribution of a more political analysis of green transformations
that this book offers helps clarify some of the trade-offs, highlighting the distribu-
tional implications and therefore enabling engagement and support for transform-
ations that seem to be more ‘just’, ‘equitable’, ‘inclusive’ and ‘democratic’ – and
consequently sustainable.
Second, recognizing, celebrating and encouraging diversity in transformative
pathways is not the same as saying ‘let all flowers bloom’. Power relations do need
to change and transformations that are narrowly based – whether around technology
or markets or bottom-up politics, for example – are unlikely to gain much traction,
despite the illusions of order and clarity that they may afford. Likewise, scepticism
about knowledge claims does not amount to critiques of the value of science, but
highlight the politics of knowledge around such claims. As many of the chapters
argue, there is therefore a need for more inclusive knowledge (co-)production in
order to increase the robustness and credibility of knowledge for transformation.
Third, the emphasis on questions of equity and justice that run through many
of the chapters underscore the imperative of ensuring transformations are ‘just’:
that they pay due attention to those whose livelihoods are dependent upon the
existing way of doing things and who stand to lose out under many proposals for
green transformations, and that benefits and risks from change are fairly distributed.
Democratic politics are vital to this, despite some calls that they are a luxury we
cannot afford given the urgency of change. Political analysis is again required to
understand how modes of governing, deliberating and participating can be adapted
to help address the challenges thrown up by green transformations.
The chapters in this book therefore offer different perspectives on the politics
of green transformations; there is no standard answer, and much depends on context,
sector, political economy, timing, and so on. These politics will continue to play
out on a terrain of competing discourses, institutions and material interests in diverse
contexts. The challenge for all of us is to engage on that terrain in defining and
realizing pathways that are both green and just. A political analysis, as outlined in
the chapters in this book in different ways and from diverse perspectives, is central
to this very practical and urgent aim.

Note
1 See, for example, The Great Transformation (Heinrich Böll Foundation, 2013), echoing
the title of the earlier classic work by Polanyi (1980 [1944]).
2
WHAT IS GREEN?
Transformation imperatives and
knowledge politics

Melissa Leach
DOI: 10.4324/9781315747378-2

Introduction
The idea that our societies and economies are in urgent need of green transformation
is beginning to take hold – albeit to varying extents – across political, policy and
public debate. Quite what sort of transformation is required, and how to achieve
it, is a matter of high contention. But what does the other part of the term, ‘green’,
mean? The ‘green’ terminology that now attaches to everything from policy
concepts, political parties, campaigning organizations, movements and even
consumer products can imply that this is a settled idea, connoting a clear set of
shared values. At its bluntest, it suggests that the environment, and nature, matter,
but dig beneath the surface and we find ‘green’ to be as contested a term as
transformation. Its unthinking use begs important questions about the directions
of societal and economic change, and where it is leading – what are ‘green’ goals
and outcomes – and about the processes that might get us there, and who is involved.
Embedded in both are questions about values, power and knowledge: who gets
to define green with what consequences, and who and what are included and
excluded. Such discursive politics (Burchell et al., 1991; Hajer, 1995; Fairhead and
Leach, 2003) are the focus of this chapter.
‘Green’ has carried many meanings in political and policy debates. Amid large,
diverse literatures extending back many decades, one can broadly distinguish
ecocentric and biocentric positions in which green is associated with the
conservation of ‘nature’ for its own sake, including the rights of non-human species
(Eckersley, 1992). In contrast, anthropocentric positions – our focus – emphasize
the value of nature and ecosystems to human purposes. Here, multiple versions
(see also Spratt, this book) include ‘light green’ positions, which see the environ-
ment as relatively robust, and green goals achievable by relatively modest economic
shifts to price nature correctly, substitute for non-renewable resources, or redirect
26 Melissa Leach

personal consumption and lifestyle choices. Much contemporary ‘green growth’

thinking fits this view (Jacobs, 2012a). In contrast, ‘dark’ or deep-green positions
see ecosystems as much more vulnerable, interconnected and prone to damage,
thus emphasizing a more conservationist, preservationist or precautionary approach
that may require fundamental structural change (Sessions, 1995). Recently, the term
‘bright’ green has been deployed to distinguish optimistic approaches relying on
technology and social innovation (Steffen, 2009).
Interplaying with these distinctions, versions of green also differ in how far they
prioritize social and justice concerns. Thus, green socialist and Marxist positions
associate green with fundamental restructuring of (capitalist) social relations (Benton,
1996). Green is also linked with social equity – as well as democracy and partici-
pation – in the political positioning of many Green political parties (Wall, 2010),
as well as in various approaches to ‘green development’ (Adams, 2009). Overlapping
with these are positions valuing community resources and institutions, and ways
of life that have co-developed in interdependence with ecologies and nature (Guha
and Martinez-Alier, 1997). Indigenous people’s movements, and some versions of
ecofeminism, emphasizing the interdependence of gender equality and ecological
sustainability (MacGregor, 2006), broadly follow such meanings of green.
Yet cross-cutting such distinctions are questions of knowledge and power. Whose
knowledge counts in defining ‘green’ goals and values? Who defines what a ‘good’
future might be and how to get there? Here again we can identify distinctions in
types of knowledge, across spectra from expert science to citizen science; official
to experiential expertise; formal to informal; global to local; and the many discip-
lines and subfields that contribute to each of these (see Leach et al., 2005). Different
ways of knowing are often associated with different ways of being, including
different ways of living with and valuing ‘nature’. People, institutions and
knowledges often interact and combine in actor-networks (Latour, 2005) or
discourse coalitions (Hajer, 1995) that can serve to represent or promote particular
views, values or interests. There is no necessary affinity between any particular
meaning of green and particular type of knowledge. Yet in practice, powerful actor-
networks and discourse coalitions often converge strongly around certain green
meanings and goals, while marginalizing or crowding out others.
How are these discursive dynamics playing out today? What versions of green
are coming to dominate? A particular constellation of meanings has acquired growing
power in the last few years and are the focus of this chapter: those around ‘green
limits’, in particular ideas of ‘planetary boundaries’ and ‘safety barriers’ in climate
change, linked with notions of ‘the green economy’. The chapter traces how these
provide novel, compelling justifications for the urgency of transformation to meet
green goals, offering powerful arguments against planet-threatening ‘business as
usual’. Yet each has a history, produced by particular actors and institutions. In
coming to be settled as powerful discourses, they risk marginalizing and crowding
out other knowledges, as well as other meanings of green.
Centrally, the chapter argues that these discourses align all too neatly with top-
down approaches that rely on regulatory, planning, technical or market ‘fixes’.
 What is green? 27

In this they downplay the need for more fundamental social as well as economic
transformations. They also downplay the significance of knowledge and values
emerging from ‘below’, including from local people living with and experiencing
social and ecological dynamics on a daily basis. As illustrated in examples of land
use and tropical forests, discourses and interventions ensuing from them ignore
such alternative knowledges at their peril. The result can be reduced robustness of
policies and interventions, missed opportunities and injustices. The chapter
concludes that a more inclusive and deliberative politics of knowledge is essential
if green transformations are to be robust, effective and contribute to the social justice
dimensions of ‘green’.

Green limits
Green, today, is powerfully associated with respect for environmental limits:
whether in relation to climate change, biodiversity, water, land, oceans or their
‘nexus’ interactions (see Stirling, this book). Growth and progress, it is argued,
must keep within limits or else founder amid dangerous resource scarcities, crisis
and turbulence.
Green limits have long been invoked in science, policy and popular debate to
argue that human business-as-usual cannot continue. Their genealogy stretches back
centuries, to the ideas of islands and their limited biogeography that inspired ‘green
imperialism’ in early European encounters with the tropical world (Grove, 1996),
to notions such as the ‘carrying capacity’ of local and regional environments co-
constructed with colonial environmental and conservation science and policy,
whether concerning forests or rangelands (Leach and Mearns, 1996). By the 1960s
and 1970s scientists and social movements alike were pointing to the environmental
costs of dominant industrial development paths, on a shared, constrained, small
planet newly visible as such from the gaze of space. It was in this context that
Meadows et al. (1972) articulated the supposed resource-based ‘limits to growth’
as demand looked set to outstrip supply. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, policy
analyses often purported to identify emerging imbalances between people’s use of
and demands on environments, and environmental capacities, resulting in resource
scarcities and environmental degradation. Neo-Malthusian perspectives often dom-
inated, highlighting the threat of rapidly growing, resource-consuming populations.
This history of limits thinking has, notably, co-developed with vibrant critique
around its assumptions and evidence, including the overlooked capacity of human
innovation (e.g. Cole et al., 1973).
Today, environmental limits are being invoked with renewed vigour and at
planetary scales. This is underlain by a growing sophistication and authority of earth
system science, and its understandings of thresholds, tipping points and the possible
consequences of exceeding them (e.g. Lenton, 2013). The two most prominent
contemporary concepts are the idea of a two- degree limit for global climate change
and the more all-encompassing idea of ‘planetary boundaries’. These have gone
well beyond science to become settled as discourses linked with influential
28 Melissa Leach

institutions and policies. How has this happened, and what meanings of green and
forms of knowledge are included and excluded?

The two-degree safety barrier for climate change

In the last decade, the ‘two-degree safety barrier’ or ‘two-degree target’ has
become a dominant guiding concept in climate change debate and policy, rein-
forced again in the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
report and associated policy and media commentary. The central idea is that any
increase in average global temperature should be limited to two degrees above a
baseline, the pre-industrial level in 1880. This is the maximum allowable warming
before human interference in the climate is deemed ‘dangerous’. Beyond it dire
consequences are predicted, including potentially significant losses of food
production, especially in Africa; high extinction risks for 20–30 per cent of species,
more severe droughts and floods, and an unstoppable loss of the Greenland ice
sheet, triggering escalating sea-level rises (Hansen et al., 2007; IPCC, 2013).
This ‘two-degree safety barrier’ offers an important message about the need for
green transformation:

an indication, as simple as it is compelling, of the physical limits to the volume

of greenhouse gases that can be dumped in the atmosphere [which] sets out
the breathtaking message that the world’s population must immediately begin
to make significantly less use of fossil energy sources or leave them in the
ground.
(Leggewie and Messner, 2012b, p128)

Yet there is nothing natural or immutable about the existence of such a safety barrier,
or that it should be set at two degrees. Rather, like previous green limits, this is
socially and politically constructed, and has a history. As Randalls (2010) and Tol
(2007) detail, it is rooted in the particular ways in which scientists and economists
developed heuristics and models from the 1970s to guide understanding and
decision-making about climate change. The two- degree figure was first pinpointed
by the economist W. D. Nordhaus in 1979, assuming that this was the limit of
the warming to have occurred naturally over the last 10,000 years. Through the
1980s, a series of integrated assessment modelling exercises, and the particular
assumptions they incorporated, helped to support the idea of limits and thresholds
to dangerous climate change, and two degrees in particular. It acquired growing
weight in policy circles, with a link between limits and averted danger enshrined
in Article 2 of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC,
1992). The proposition of two degrees as an actual policy target came in 1996
from the European Union (EU), backed by certain scientists and environmentalists.
It gained in visibility and policy institutionalization through the 2000s – for
instance, underpinning the UK’s 2008 Climate Change Act and included in the
2009 Copenhagen Accord. In UNFCCC conferences of parties (COP) in
Copenhagen (COP-15) and Cancun (COP-16) all parties to the UNFCCC
 What is green? 29

(except Bolivia) agreed to pursue the aim of limiting global warming to two degrees
above the pre-industrial level (Knopf et al., 2012).
The two-degree target has come to function as an important anchoring device
(Van der Sluijs et al., 1998) or boundary object (Star and Griesemer, 1989) in climate
science-policy analysis and public debate (Hulme, 2012): ‘a socially constructed
entity which is powerful and has endurance both because it has credibility in many
different worlds and because it works to stabilize discourse across the boundaries
of these worlds’ (Leggewie and Messner, 2012b, p130). It is attractive as a target
for international negotiations (albeit a recent and arguably not necessarily particularly
successful one, given failures of global climate agreements); to governments wanting
to claim commitments; and to media and public commentary aiming to raise the
stakes of climate change mitigation. Economic justifications and interests were added
when the Stern review (Stern, 2006) calculated and publicized the economic costs
of going beyond two degrees. But in the particular ways this discourse has settled,
what is excluded?
First, the portrayal of two degrees as a clear green goal overlooks significant
uncertainties and ambiguities in the relationship between global temperature and
the drivers and effects of human-induced climate change Hulme (2012). These
range from uncertainties about the aggregate global effects of greenhouse gases,
aerosols and black carbon, the sensitivity of climate to them, and the interaction
with natural climate variability, to those around how particular energy systems,
land and forest use and other human activities affect greenhouse gas emissions. Thus,
‘as an “output index” the 2 degree safety barrier is compatible with many possible
“input scenarios”’ (Hulme, 2012, p124). Yet it may be precisely such ‘input’
processes and drivers – and the ways they connect with people’s values, lifestyles
and aspirations – that offer more meaningful versions of green in everyday terms,
and can be more easily linked to policies and regulations towards behaviour
change among people, governments and businesses.
Second, setting the safety barrier at two degrees is highly value laden. The
establishment of any particular limit depends on the assumptions incorporated into
models, and crucially, on the meanings, values and experiences likely to be
associated with warming. Thus a two-degree target may be too high for areas of
sub-Saharan Africa set to experience severe droughts, or small island states
vulnerable to flooding from rising sea levels, at lower temperatures. The Association
of Small Island States along with other developing nations has therefore argued for
an upper limit 1.5 degrees of warming. Meanwhile, some people and places could
tolerate, or even gain in productivity, from three or even four degrees of warming.
Not surprisingly, geopolitical tensions have therefore opened up over precisely where
the safety barrier should be placed. As Hulme (2012) points out, in attempting to
avert such tensions politicians and campaigners frequently revert to arguments about
expert ‘sound science’, declaring two degrees to be ‘what the science demands’
(cf. Millstone, this book). Yet most scientists – and indeed the IPCC – admit that
identifying climate policy targets involves value-judgements that are well beyond
the remit of scientific enquiry.
30 Melissa Leach

Third, the two-degree discourse defines ‘green’ in singular, climate-related terms.

When applied to particular economies, societies or ecosystems, this can channel
priority to climate over other possible green goals, with problematic consequences.
For instance, large-scale investment in biofuels has been embraced by policy-makers
as a means to reduce fossil-fuel dependence and contribute to meeting climate
targets. Yet as many examples in African, Asian and Latin American settings show,
tensions, trade-offs and conflicts have arisen where land use to grow biofuel
feedstocks competes with food production or uses for local livelihoods (Borras
et al., 2010). The latter may also be ‘green’, but defined in relation to alternative
meanings, whether around sustainable national food security and food sovereignty,
livelihoods, or community ways of life and rights.
Finally, a fixation on global climate targets – and the particular forms of
scientific and modelling knowledge they rest on – can marginalize alternative
meanings, values and forms of knowledge around climate-related phenomena. Social
and cultural analyses, and attention to everyday and citizen expertise and experience,
show how widely varying these are. Climate and weather may be understood and
discussed in terms of practical struggles to ‘get by’ in uncertain, dynamic coastal,
dryland, forest or Arctic settings, or to religious and moral codes, with weather
events and the state of the climate in many societies interpreted as indicative of
the good, or otherwise, state of social behaviour (e.g. Crate and Nuttall, 2009).
In the light of such critiques, some analysts suggest rejecting the two- degree
safety barrier altogether, along with related, single global targets for climate change
(Hulme, 2012). Others argue that it has value as an aspiration, until such time as
more robust scientific and policy approaches ‘improve’ on it (Edenhofer et al., 2012).
Rather than assess this particular green limit as a fixed end, though, it might be
more appropriately treated as a means: appreciating its social contestation, the two-
degree safety barrier might be reconsidered as a discursive concept to open up debates
about legitimacy, values and uncertainty, thus creating space for and facilitating
‘democratic discussion about what sort of world we want to live in’ (Shaw, 2010).

Planetary boundaries
‘Planetary boundaries’ offers a more recent and also more all-encompassing
‘green limits’ discourse. From the mid-2000s, scientists started to propose that we
have entered a new epoch, the Anthropocene, in which human activities have
become the dominant driver of many earth system processes including climate,
bio-geochemical cycles, ecosystems and biodiversity. The extent of human
influence has grown rapidly since the Industrial Revolution, accelerating dramatic-
ally since the 1950s (Steffen et al., 2004, 2007). A series of nine planetary boundaries
has been identified, referring to the biophysical processes in the Earth’s system on
which human life depends (Rockström et al., 2009). Together, these serve to keep
the planet within Holocene-like conditions and thus define a ‘safe operating
space’ for humanity. Human actions, it is claimed, are rapidly approaching (in the
case of climate change) or have already transgressed (in the case of biodiversity and
 What is green? 31

nitrogen pollution) key global thresholds, increasing the likelihood of unprece-

dented ecological turbulence. Potentially catastrophic thresholds are in prospect,
which will dramatically compromise development both globally and locally (Folke
et al., 2011). The concept underpins an imperative for urgent green transformation
to keep humanity within a ‘safe operating space’.
Planetary boundaries concepts and their associated meanings of green have,
like climate change limits, been constructed by particular actor-networks. Central
have been global environmental change scientists, from climate and biodiversity
science to oceanography and geochemistry. During interactions in the early 2000s
around the major global environmental change science programmes – notably the
International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) – the concept was first
mooted as a way of integrating across programmes. The International Human
Dimensions Programme (IHDP) drew in some social science perspectives, notably
from geography. The widely cited Nature paper (Rockström et al., 2009) drew
from these scientific communities, led by Johan Rockström who rapidly became
the high-profile ambassador for the concept on the global stage. Through the
influence of his colleagues at the Stockholm Resilience Centre and in the wider
Resilience Alliance, the planetary boundaries discourse has also drawn strongly
on resilience thinking in its emphasis on thresholds, tipping points and whole-system
transformation.
For many scientists, planetary boundaries ideas are ongoing work-in-progress.
As argued in response to scientific critiques (e.g. Nordhaus et al., 2012), they
emphasize that boundaries are provisional, variable in character (e.g. some are ‘fast’,
suggesting tipping points, while some, such as land degradation, accrete slowly)
and that much further work is required to understand scale effects, boundary
interactions and other matters (Rockström, 2012; Galaz et al., 2012). Yet while
the science is still developing, planetary boundaries has rapidly come to operate as
a political and policy discourse embraced by many international and national actors
and institutions. The High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability at the Rio+20
conference in 2012 drew on it to justify not just a renewed urgency to sustainable
development, but a new paradigm in which environmental boundaries, at planetary
scale, provide the framework for social and economic development. It is supported
by major networks and initiatives playing key roles in the post-Rio, post-2015
process, including the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN, 2014,
http://unsdsn.org/official) and the Planetary Boundaries Initiative (http://planetary
boundariesinitiative.org/). The concept of planetary boundaries lends itself to
evocative popular symbols and representations, from the inflatable ball earth in Johan
Rockström’s TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) talk deflating as
boundary after boundary is exceeded, to the website image of a precipitous
waterfall with an African man, as an icon of humanity, standing just far enough
away, within the boundary, to avoid tipping over the edge. Like two degrees,
planetary boundaries is operating as a boundary object, uniting diverse actors and
interests around a particular meaning of green.
32 Melissa Leach

Yet again, we must ask about the politics of this discourse: what it is enabling,
and what meanings of green and associated knowledges it may be excluding. First,
the planetary boundaries discourse can imply that the ‘earth system’ itself sets the
limits and boundaries for human progress (Rockström, 2013). Yet the idea of an
earth system is, to some degree, a social construction, associated with a particular
set of ‘earth system sciences’, while questions of where limits should lie, and what
is safe or dangerous, will always be open to human meanings and interpretations,
and to cultural and personal beliefs (Hulme, 2013). Thus, dramatic loss of
biodiversity in tropical forest landscapes might, in terms of planetary boundaries
discourse, presage a contribution to a dangerous breakdown of interconnected
ecological systems. Yet as West African examples show, some social groups believe
that it is biodiverse forests that harbour danger in terms of wild animals, spirits,
secretive cultural behaviour and disease; clear landscapes are culturally preferable,
providing more ‘open’ social relationships and more productive agriculture and
livelihoods (Fairhead and Leach, 1996). What is safe or dangerous depends on who,
and where, one is.
Of course, one might counter that this is a question of gaze and scale; what is
valued and seen as safe in diverse local places might add up, globally and over the
long term, to planetary scale dangers. Indeed, this is precisely the argument of
the planetary boundaries discourse, asserting the authority of science to know and
predict these bigger dangers for humanity. Equally, it is important not to be over-
relativistic; the bigger, longer term implications of human impacts on environmental
processes do matter, and not all ways of life and beliefs are compatible with sustain-
ability. The cultures of commercial logging firms driven by short-term profit, or
of climate sceptics supportive of continued fossil-fuel burning, would be cases in
point where values and beliefs underlie manifestly irresponsible environmental
practices. These, and the economic and power relations associated with them, need
to be challenged, for they threaten to breach even the broadest notion of green
limits. Yet failing even to acknowledge alternative knowledges and perspectives,
and to draw these into negotiation and debate when it comes to justifying policies
and interventions, is a recipe for injustice and resistance.
This becomes clear when we address a second line of questioning. Even while
ruling out some goals around profit and power as threatening planetary boundaries,
the discourse can imply a singularity of green goals that stay within. The notion
of a single, interconnected earth system aligns neatly with the idea of a single
humanity in the Anthropocene, downplaying the real diversity of societies, contexts,
identities and perspectives. Even within the broad ‘green’ of planetary boundaries
lies a diversity of possible futures and pathways, shaped by much more precise, and
varied, meanings of green, relating to particular ways of life, goals and priorities
for ecosystem use.
Take a particular challenge, such as ensuring ‘sustainable food futures’ within
global and regional boundaries of climate change, land use change, biodiversity
loss and nitrogen use. Alternative green visions and futures could include prioritizing
small-scale food production systems; participatory systems and their social benefits;
 What is green? 33

climate smart agriculture, or large-scale, input-intensive industrial agricultural

investments. Each could be the basis of a green food future. However, they are
very different futures; they incorporate different meanings of green, and small
farmers, businesses, national policy-makers and others would value and prioritize
them in very different ways. As controversies around genetically modified (GM)
crops attest (see Leach and Scoones, this book), such contestation can be vibrant
and highly political.
Alternatively, take an ecosystem in a place, such as a particular African tropical
forest. Here, a plurality of possible goals could be associated with different people
and groups, scales and particular boundaries. Thus, governments and international
agencies might value the forest as a carbon stock to offset emissions in industrialized
countries to help keep global humanity within climate boundaries, and businesses
and public–private partnerships would value the profits to be made by trading carbon
credits. Biodiversity scientists might value its endemic flora and fauna, seeking to
protect forest habitat as a key contribution to steer development within biodiversity
boundaries. The tourist industry might value the profits to be made from eco-
tourism here. For nearby urban populations and water companies, the forest safe-
guards hydrology and its protection is key to maintaining water supplies. For the
timber industry and government production foresters, green goals would mean
developing sustainable logging practices and timber supplies. For local residents,
the same forest may be valued as a place of historical memories and ancestral spirits;
a source of gathered foods, fibres and medicines; a source of bushmeat from hunting;
a place to plant agroforestry trees under the shade of the forest canopy, or a set of
potential fallows to sustain the fertility of household rice production. Indeed, a
forest is all of these and more, but the point is that these diverse ecosystem properties,
goods, services and cultural attributes are valued differently by different local, national
and global populations. There is a wide diversity of green goals, but green in different
ways. Some are compatible – gathering and biodiversity, for instance – but others
imply tensions, trade-offs and potential contestation. Local people have often resisted
biodiversity conservation and forest carbon schemes that have excluded them from
forest access and jeopardized their livelihoods and ways of life (e.g. Fairhead and
Leach, 1998; Corbera and Brown, 2010; Leach and Scoones, 2013).
Discursive appeals to broad planetary boundaries can often obscure such
diversity, and contestation, around particular versions of green. This may create
resistance that ultimately undoes even the best intentioned interventions, or
suppress understandings and practices that offer valuable prospects for more sustain-
able futures. Taking diverse perspectives and goals seriously suggests not a single
form of green transformation to steer within universal limits, but multiple
transformative pathways, towards multiply-envisaged futures (Leach et al., 2013)
and a more negotiated approach that works through tensions with the diverse
stakeholders involved.
A third set of questions, then, concerns the implications of planetary boundaries
discourse for justice. At a global level, these surfaced in geopolitics around the
Rio+20 conference. Many low-income and emerging economies contested the
34 Melissa Leach

concept, interpreting it as limiting their economic growth. The planetary bound-

aries term was excluded from the final Rio+20 Outcome document, and only
hesitantly used in formal intergovernmental processes post-Rio. Questions of
justice have also surfaced in debates about what might constitute a ‘good’ Anthro-
pocene (Peterson, 2013). In this vein, Raworth (2012) has adapted the concept of
planetary boundaries, adding an inner circle to represent a ‘social foundation’
incorporating well-being, gender equality and human rights. Between the circles
there lies a ‘safe and just operating space’. Green transformations to remain within
it are thus helpfully reconceived as ‘green and just’, with meanings of green
more akin to socialist or green political versions, with social justice at their core.
Importantly, this framework also invites attention to the social inequalities and power
relations that leave many millions of people without the essential resources they
need, while allowing excessive resource use by others to push humanity across
multiple planetary boundaries. However, to be used effectively, it must also open
up consideration of the diversity of possible ‘green and just’ goals and pathways,
the social meanings attached to these, the possible tensions and contestations
between them, and who stands to gain or lose (Leach et al., 2013).

Pathways of intervention and change: green limits and

green economies
We have focused thus far on goals and futures – where humanity is going – and
the meanings of green and associated knowledges embodied in, but also excluded
by, contemporary green limits discourses in this respect. However, further key
questions turn on how to get there. What sorts of intervention and change – path-
ways for reaching green goals or steering within green limits – are envisaged? What
sorts of intervention, by whom, are suggested and supported by green limits
discourses – both of a two-degree climate safety barrier and of planetary boundaries
– and which are marginalized? Other chapters address transformation processes in
detail, so treatment here is brief. Nevertheless, it is important to highlight how
green limits discourses are justifying attempted ‘fixes’ of various kinds: whether
through regulation, planning, technologies or markets. In this respect, green limits
intersect with other powerful contemporary discourses such as around ‘green
economies’. Notably, there is no necessary determinism of concept and approach
here, but several tendencies and alignments in practice have become so evident
as to be worth raising.
First, green limits discourses interlock with attempts at ‘regulatory fixes’. The
two-degree climate target emerged, as already discussed, in the particular context
of international efforts to construct binding regulatory agreements to curb carbon
emissions. Lack of success over the last decade might suggest that the two-degree
target has not been particularly helpful, but more fundamentally, points to the
broader problems of regulatory fixes amid far more complex climate change pol-
itics. Despite – or perhaps because of – this experience with climate change, planetary
boundaries have been linked with arguments for a much strengthened power to
 What is green? 35

global institutions – for instance, in the notion that a ‘global referee’ should monitor
national and local adherence to limits (Rockström et al., 2009). Initiatives such as
the Earth Condominium Project and Planetary Boundaries Initiative have taken
this further, seeking the recognition of the ‘earth system’ and ‘safe operating space’
as legal entities that can legitimize supranational governance (Magalhães et al., 2013).
This is regulatory fixing and aspiration to global control at its extreme. Critics have
alluded to the danger that planetary boundaries will justify a top-down power grab
that will prove anti-democratic (Leach, 2013; Pielke, 2013; see also Stirling, this
book).
Second, green limits align neatly with planning fixes: managerial approaches
that attempt to rationalize spaces and places to meet a range of boundary-related
goals. A recent example is the World Bank’s landscape approach, in which areas
for food, fuel, conservation and other uses are demarcated within multi-use
landscapes (World Bank, 2014). We also see this in scientific and governance
approaches to parcelling up, often literally from above through the use of satellite
imagery and Geographic Information Systems (GIS), ‘logical’ places for food pro-
duction, commercial cropping and biofuels. These approaches do appreciate the
multiple uses of land in a world of intersecting challenges and simultaneous threats
to multiple boundaries, but whose rationality prevails? Who is included and
excluded from decisions and who suffers as a consequence? And what political–
economic interests might apparent ‘rationality’ conceal? When governments and
corporations arrange to put so-called ‘unproductive wastelands’ into large-scale
cropping leases, rhetorically to maximize their sustainable use, the underlying profit
motive is only barely hidden. Meanwhile, pastoralists and common property users
can find themselves dispossessed in what amounts to ‘green grabbing’ (Fairhead
et al., 2012). As Stirling (this book) argues more generally, such aspirations to rational,
top-down control fly in the face of the real, uncertain dynamics of social and
ecological systems, and often founder where they meet diverse, contested
perspectives and priorities.
Third, green limits discourses support attempted technical fixes. Large-scale
technical solutions are seen as appropriate – indeed, sometimes as necessary – to
meet planetary challenges at the speed and scale required. Here we see planetary
boundaries discourses connecting with versions of contemporary ‘green economy’
advocacy focused on technoscientific green growth. In the climate change field,
large-scale climate geoengineering is a classic example, with justifications for the
large-scale use of carbon capture, cloud-seeding, albedo-reflecting and other
technologies referring to their ‘quick win’ potential to keep the world within
temperature limits. In the agricultural domain, green limits and technoscientific
green growth discourses combine to prioritize modern agricultural biotechnologies,
including genetically modified (GM), and their roll-out at scale. Such a focus on
big, quick, technofixes often suits the government agencies and businesses involved
in developing and promoting these. Yet their control-oriented focus may prove
unrealistic in the face of the uncertain dynamics of sociotechnical and climate systems
(Hulme, 2012; Stirling, this book). They may close out other technological options
36 Melissa Leach

and pathways, perhaps more suited to diverse social and ecological contexts, and
drawing on wider ranges of knowledge and innovation, including from citizens
and grassroots users (see Smith and Ely, this book). Meanwhile, reliance on
technofixes detracts attention from the underlying social, economic and political
structures that support limits-breaching pathways, and the need to challenge and
transform these.
Finally, green limits discourses increasingly support and justify market fixes.
Planetary boundaries discourses are again aligning with those of the green economy
to support the revaluation and trade of aspects of ecosystems now (re)defined as
‘natural capital’ and financialized commodities. They include schemes for trading
carbon credits and offsetting emissions, associated with clean energy, forests and
agriculture under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), United Nations
collabotarive initiative on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest
Degredation (UN-REDD) and voluntary schemes, emerging markets for ‘offsetting’
species and biodiversity loss, and an array of payments for ecosystem services (PES)
schemes. These are unfolding in many projects around the world, variously
promoted by private, public and civil society actors, and linked with new forms
of venture capital and speculation. UNEP (2011), The Economics of Ecosystems
and Biodiversity (TEEB), the World Business Council for Sustainable Development
(WBCSD), the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), World
Wildlife Fund and The Natural Capital Project have all embraced such discourses
and practices that link market-based instruments with green economies and green
limits via natural capital. A financialization agenda was consolidated at the Rio+20
Summit, including several ‘High Level Dialogues’ hosted by the World Bank
(Levidow, 2014).
While proponents often emphasize livelihood benefits (e.g. UNEP, 2011),
whether these are realized in practice is highly variable. On the contrary, inter-
ventions promoted through these green discourses can often become forms of ‘green
grabbing’ that dispossess local resource users of rights and livelihoods (Fairhead
et al., 2012). Narrow financial valuation of ecosystems and landscapes overlooks
alternative green meanings; look back to our tropical forest example, where carbon
commodities are clearly only one among multiple ways of understanding and valuing
this ecosystem. The discourse of natural capital, it can be argued, ‘chops up’ and
individuates bits of nature, removing them from their social context (Unmüßig
et al., 2012, p28). In the process, social arrangements in which people have held,
valued and sustained resources, such as community-based commons arrangements,
may be invisibilized and undermined (Levidow, 2014). As argued strongly by civil
society actors at Rio, this green economy discourse proposes solutions to environ-
mental crisis grounded in the same capitalist structures that produced the problems
in the first place. The commoditization of nature reinforces the power of
multinational corporations and financial institutions (ALAI and TNI, 2012, p11).
By ignoring the structural social and political–economic conditions that shape
planetary pressures, it is in a poor position to transform these towards genuinely
greener futures.
 What is green? 37

Conclusions
These discursive alignments between green limits and regulatory, planning, techno-
logical or market fixes are tendencies, not necessities. Others have argued, on the
contrary, that planetary boundaries and other green limits ideas simply set the terms
within which transformative interventions of many kinds might be pursued.
Indeed, in some readings, planetary boundaries ideas – with their acknowledgement
of complex system interconnectedness across scales – demand the very opposite of
top-down fixes; connecting with resilience thinking, they can be mobilized to argue
for polycentric, multiscale, adaptive approaches to governance that recognize and
facilitate local institutions, experiences and responses (Galaz et al., 2012; Galaz, 2012).
Yet the fact that the same concepts can be mobilized to argue for radically different
approaches reinforces the point that there is a discursive politics in play; not just
in how ‘green’ ideas are created, but also how they are used and by whom. Bottom-
up adaptive approaches may be admissible within planetary boundaries discourses,
but they are far from mainstream.
This chapter has asked a range of critical questions about how green transformations
– their goals and pathways to achieve them – are defined and legitimized, locating
these questions in a politics of knowledge. It has argued that powerful discourses
around green limits have recently returned to prominence across science and policy,
and are connecting in potent ways with discourses around green economies. These
are important, highlighting and justifying the need for green transformations, and
urgently and rapidly at that. Yet without denying this, on closer inspection these
discourses present some serious problems. They rely on and support narrow mean-
ings of ‘green’ that ignore large swathes of human understanding, culture, values and
experience. They align too easily with top-down, control-oriented forms of inter-
vention that attempt to substitute ‘fixes’ for required structural transformations, and
can ride roughshod over people’s rights and livelihoods. And by appearing as objective,
necessary and universal, authorized by the best scientific and economic expertise,
these discourses close out and stifle political debate – about the concepts themselves,
about the goals and pathways they suggest, and about the validity of alternative forms
of knowledge, experience and ways of life.
Why do these politics of knowledge matter? One could argue that they are a
‘soft politics’ distraction from the vital ‘hard politics’ that must tackle and transform
the political–economic and corporate structures and interests that are leading us
towards planetary disaster. Equally, it might be argued that an interest in diverse,
alternative meanings of green and knowledges ushers in a dangerous relativism just
when we can least afford it.
While these are dangers, however, they are not inevitable. As this chapter has
argued, soft and hard are deeply connected – knowledge politics matter because
they are so intimately entwined with material political economy. Appreciation of
alternatives does not mean that ‘anything goes’ – on the contrary, some forms
of knowledge and action are clearly incompatible with sustainable futures and need
to be contested strongly. With these provisos, it is the discursive downplaying of
38 Melissa Leach

alternatives that carries the greatest dangers. Seen in instrumental terms, if green
approaches ignore the perspectives, values and interests of those involved, they will
not be robust – they will fail to gain traction with stakeholders or be resisted. Seen
in justice terms, approaches focused narrowly on singular green goals may prove
undemocratic and unfair, ignoring people’s rights to knowledge, identities, liveli-
hoods and aspirations, thus denying the fundamental meanings of green that embed
social justice within their definition (cf. Stirling, this book). Seen in terms of
transformation, approaches that ignore alternatives may be most limited of all, either
because they become fixated on ‘fixes’ that ignore the need for deeper transforma-
tive change, or because they presume a single green transformation where actually
multiple transformations, respecting diverse identities and contexts, are required.
Fostering a plural, democratic politics of knowledge is therefore key to defining
and achieving green transformations. Here, concepts like planetary boundaries and
the two-degree climate change barrier, as well as particular concepts of green
economy, need to be treated as means rather than ends. They should not be seen
as closing down debate, but rather as boundary objects around which debate can
open up: around questions such as whose boundaries and safety, whose goals, which
pathways, who gains and loses, who bears costs and risks. This requires not just a
polycentric and adaptive approach to politics and governance, but also a deliberative
approach (e.g. Hajer and Wagenaar, 2003) that can recognize, and debate inclu-
sively, diverse, contested goals, values and ideas of the future, and negotiate among
these.
How and by whom such a deliberative politics might be fostered will vary
according to scale and issue. Participation and representation of diverse social groups,
including local people, in global fora around climate, biodiversity and sustainable
food and energy offers one route, enabled by international agencies and often
facilitated by civil society organizations. At regional and local scales – for instance,
in deliberating over the futures of particular forests or food systems – collaborative
approaches that bring communities, government, NGOs and sometimes business
representatives together will be key. There are always dangers that ‘invited’ partici-
pation becomes tokenistic or co-opts participants into powerful pre-set framings
of the issue. Yet awareness of the power relations that pervade deliberative exercises
provides a basis to counter these in explicit design features (Leach et al., 2010). In
other circumstances, it may be activism and mobilization that most effectively opens
up debate and deliberation, as activist groups protest singular perspectives and
highlight alternatives (see Leach and Scoones, this book).
Notions of green limits have value in this process, but we must see these concepts
for what they are: as constructed by people, institutions and societies, as part of a
contested politics of knowledge. Seen that way, they can become valuable foci for
debate about societal and environmental futures. We should treat these meanings
of green, along with alternatives, as ways to foster an inclusive, democratic and
therefore transformative politics of knowledge that can and must be central to the
politics of achieving green – and just – transformations.
3
INVOKING ‘SCIENCE’ IN
DEBATES ABOUT GREEN
TRANSFORMATIONS
A help or a hindrance?

Erik Millstone
DOI: 10.4324/9781315747378-3

The question
The question that this chapter will address is: when ‘science’ is invoked in debates
about ‘sustainability’ and green transformations, is it a help or a hindrance to
understanding the characteristics and consequences of unsustainable practices and
transformational changes?

Introduction
Debates about the unsustainability of particular forms of resource extraction,
processing, exchange, consumption and disposal arose as a consequence of scientific
research into problematic changes in the conditions of our terrestrial environment.
Evidence emerging from such research indicated that multiple kinds of harm were
being inflicted on, for example, land, air and water, as well as on the flora and
fauna (including people) that depend on those media. Without scientific research
and the dissemination of its findings, we would never have known that chloro-
fluorocarbons (CFCs) were damaging the earth’s protective layer of ozone or that
emissions of greenhouse gases are destabilizing our climates. The fact that environ-
mental sciences are essential should not detract from a recognition that those sciences,
like other forms of human enquiry, can also be profoundly problematic, epistemo-
logically, culturally and politically.
The issue of the ‘sustainability’ and/or ‘unsustainability’ of prevailing practices
gained traction on, and rose up, policy agendas due in part to publications like
Rachael Carson’s Silent Spring (Carson, 1962; Bouwman et al., 2013). Carson’s
analysis was based on a careful integration of a very large number of fragments of
evidence, focusing on the adverse environmental impacts of agricultural chem-
icals, and in particular on (what subsequently was termed) the eco-toxicity of
40 Erik Millstone

dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (or DDT). Carson fully anticipated the ferocious

response that came from the pesticides industry, and consequently was remarkably
careful and thorough to ensure that her scholarship was of an exceptionally high
standard (Anon., n.d.). According to the Natural Resources Defence Council
(NRDC): ‘she . . . compiled Silent Spring as one would a lawyer’s brief, with no
fewer than 55 pages of notes and a list of experts who had read and approved the
manuscript’ (NRDC, 2013). She propounded a powerful argument, which was
explicitly based on scientific evidence in an acknowledged normative frame, for
the assertion that industrialized agriculture, and especially its use of DDT and other
pesticides, was causing serious harm to birdlife and other fauna.

An axis of contestation
From the start of policy debates about ‘unsustainability’, there have been cleavages
between those who argued that achieving long-term sustainability will require radical
socioeconomic transformations, as well as regulatory and technological changes,
against others arguing that incremental regulatory and technological changes could
be sufficient. A few have steadfastly asserted that all such problems are imaginary,
but scientific evidence has repeatedly discredited such naive optimism.

Science as a (contested) tool in the contest

One of the means by which people have sought to impose their understandings
of these complex debates on as wide a consensus as possible has, however, been
by trying to control the agendas, conclusions and portrayals of the relevant sciences.
One popular tactic among those who argue that incremental change would be
sufficient to achieve ‘sustainability’ has been to suggest that technological changes
on their own could provide adequate solutions so no major social or economic
changes are required.
The publication in 1972 of The Limits to Growth by the Club of Rome
intensified debates about the unsustainability of ‘business as usual’, and served to
enrol wider ranges of actors and organizations into debates about (un)sustainability
than had previously been the case (Meadows et al., 1972). The impact of the analysis
advanced by the Club of Rome was in part achieved because the report’s con-
clusions were portrayed as if derived solely and rigorously from scientific evidence
and analysis, and therefore as reliable and definitive.
The alleged rigour and reliability of the conclusions in The Limits to Growth
were, however, contested. Freeman published an influential critique of the argu-
ments advanced in The Limits to Growth, which he characterized and discounted
as ‘Malthus with a Computer’ (Freeman, 1973). Freeman did not argue that environ-
mental issues were unimportant, or that it was a mistake to try to develop models
of the dynamics of the industrial economy in relation to global ecosystems, or to
computerize them, but rather that the model produced by the Club of Rome was
 Invoking ‘science’ in green transformations 41

far too reliant on assumptions that were unacknowledged, ideologically driven and
empirically unsubstantiated. Moreover, the data available as inputs to the model
were a minute fraction of what the model required for reliability and precision.
The authors of Limits subsequently acknowledged that they had only about ‘0.1
per cent of the data on the variables required to construct a satisfactory world model’
(Freeman, 1973, p8), yet the modellers failed to explore the sensitivity of their
forecasts to changes in the data or their assumptions or the equations and coefficients
with which those assumptions were modelled. Instead of highlighting ranges of
possibilities and uncertainties, they published relatively precise forecasts, and were
shocked when their predictions were first contested and subsequently refuted.

Institutionalized policy responses

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, policy-makers responded to the growing recog-
nition that some industrial practices were unsustainable by establishing regulatory
institutions and regimes to control those practices, although there were often
conflicts over whether regulations were necessary and what form they should
take. A range of instruments were used such as technology standards (e.g. catalytic
converters in vehicle exhaust systems and flue-gas desulphurization in coal-
fired power stations) and quantitative emissions limits to, or concentrations in, for
example, soil, air, water and food. More recently, economic ‘market-based’ instru-
ments such as tradable emissions permits and ‘carbon-pricing’ have been favoured
by corporations and governments. The selection of particular technologies, emis-
sions or pollution levels has typically been justified by reference to expert scientific
advice. Expert panels have often been willing to recommend, for example,
maximum concentrations or doses, even in the absence of evidence of clear thres-
holds. A few toxicological and eco-toxicological thresholds have been measured,
in respect of some identified effects, but more frequently thresholds have been
presumed rather than discovered (Howard, 2003; US EPA, undated). This is
important because concepts such as ecological ‘boundaries’ or environmental
‘limits’ presume that there are specific thresholds, and that they can be, and often
have been, located, although they are often hard to locate and may be even be
chimerical.
Policy-makers, powerful stakeholders and their chosen expert advisers developed
a vocabulary of scientific-seeming concepts to refer to those standards (Gillespie
et al., 1979; Jasanoff, 1990; Majone, 1996). Concepts such as ‘an acceptable daily
intake’, ‘a recommended daily allowance’, ‘a maximum residue level’, ‘a maximum
tolerated dose’ and ‘a threshold limit value’ were coined and regularly invoked,
initially in the USA, but subsequently in Europe and elsewhere. More recently,
quantitative targets have been seen as not just attractive to, but essential for,
managerialist and audit cultures.
Often particular standards were portrayed as justified by scientific evidence and
analysis and as being sufficient to deliver sustainability, or at least significantly to
42 Erik Millstone

diminish unsustainability. Leach (this book) explains in relation to the semi-official

target of managing greenhouse gas concentrations to prevent average global
temperatures from rising by more than two degrees Kelvin, compared to pre-
industrial levels, that such targets are social constructs and political compromises,
not facts of nature. Leach explains that if such numbers were recognized and
acknowledged to be social constructs then:

it might be more appropriately treated as a means: appreciating its social

contestation, the two degree safety barrier might be reconsidered as a dis-
cursive concept to open up debates about legitimacy, values and uncertainty,
thus creating space for and facilitating ‘democratic discussion about what sort
of world we want to live in’.
(Shaw, 2010)

An important feature of such concepts, which van der Sluijs has termed
‘anchoring devices’ is that they are often officially portrayed as if they reliably
captured something like a natural constant, when they are in practice socially
constructed hybrids, incorporating both scientific and policy considerations, but
frequently masquerading as if purely scientific (van der Sluijs et al., 1998). As such,
they can be understood as representatives of a broad category of devices that
individuals and organizations use in an attempt to invoke science to exercise power,
in large part by concealing the fact that they are doing so.
That normative considerations are involved can be revealed in part by
scrutinizing the selection and deployment of the terminology. When quantitative
figures are ‘reported’ as, for example, acceptable daily intakes (ADIs) or maximum
tolerated dose (MTDs), judgements are invariably made about what is to
be deemed ‘acceptable’ and ‘tolerable’ (JMPR, n.d.). However, what is deemed
acceptable or tolerable by some individuals and organizations may well be judged
intolerable and unacceptable by others. When organizations, such as the Joint
Meeting on Pesticide Residues (of the World Health Organization (WHO) and
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)), which are
ostensibly scientific, assign quantitative ADIs or, for example, Maximum Residue
Limits to particular active ingredients of pesticide formulations, they are providing
hybrid science policy judgements that masquerade as if purely scientific. They are
also assuming that the actions of each compound and products ingredient are
independent of the actions of the others, despite empirical evidence to the contrary
(Laetz et al., 2009).
A common tactic among incumbent institutions has been to invoke osten-
sibly authoritative narratives to try to legitimate policy decisions, and in a culture
in which ‘science’ is widely supposed to deliver the requisite authority. While that
tendency has been dominant, it has also been problematic. It is problematic for
at least two reasons. First, the science relevant to many environmental issues is
uncertain, equivocal and indecisive; consequently, scientific considerations on
their own can never decide policies. Second, if the uncertainties could be
 Invoking ‘science’ in green transformations 43

diminished or even eradicated, scientific considerations alone could never settle

policy issues. Scientific evidence and understanding will be necessary contributors
to debates about enhancing sustainability, but they can never be sufficient.

The politics of uncertainty

While much of the relevant science is uncertain, it is not uniformly so; some things
are known with far greater precision than others. Over the last 30 years the certainty
and precision with which the toxicity of metallic lead and lead compounds has
improved as a result of increasingly sensitive and thorough studies, has been
remarkable (Millstone, 1997). On the other hand, estimates of the risks posed to
human and environmental health from many other compounds, products and
processes have become increasingly uncertain and imprecise, even though that has
not been reflected in official statements or standards. The tactics used to try to
control policy agendas concerning (un)sustainability include variously overstating
or understating the uncertainties in ways that chime with particular interests; as
Brian Wynne has pointed out, there is an important ‘politics of uncertainty’ (Wynne,
1992).
The persistence and contested nature of scientific uncertainties ensure that the
role of expert advisers is both pivotal and problematic (Nelkin, 1984). If pertinent
scientific knowledge was sufficient and reliably codified, then policy-makers and
civil servants might need little more than a decent set of textbooks, but expert
advisers are recruited and can be particularly influential when knowledge is
incomplete; they are required not just to explain the content of the textbooks, but
to provide seemingly authoritative judgements, because (supposedly) while their
knowledge may be incomplete and uncertain, nobody knows better than they do.
The apparent authority of science is often invoked to portray a preferred
narrative as either the only intelligible perspective or as the most reliable and
authoritative perspective. Those tactics are intended to convey the impression either
that ‘there is no alternative’ or ‘we know best – trust us’ (Stirling, 1998). The
apparent authority of dominant perspectives can, however, often be challenged by
questioning the truth, reliability or adequacy of dominant scientific narratives, and
of the arguments and evidence on which they purport to rest.

Strategies and tactics used to influence agendas and

decisions
A range of strategies and tactics have been adopted by organizations and individuals
as they have attempted to influence agendas concerning the (un)sustainability of
the status quo as well as innovative products and processes. Those agendas and the
disputes that are a consequence of the perspectival diversity are typically concerned
with issues such as problem identification, causal diagnoses and prescriptions.
In relation to every type of industrial or commercial sector, the first regulatory
policy battle has almost always debated whether or not the sector needs to be
44 Erik Millstone

regulated. Regulations are rarely introduced at the first evidential hint of a problem.
While much of the relevant evidence is scientific, judgements about how much
evidence, and of which types, are variously necessary or sufficient grounds for
restricting or prohibiting industrial practices are normative policy judgements, not
scientific ones. Some have argued that only causal proof of harm should be deemed
sufficient grounds to ‘disrupt’ market transactions, while many others have argued
from a precautionary perspective that industrial practices and products are almost
invariably regulated in conditions of scientific uncertainty. Judgements about how
much evidence should be required and how much uncertainty should be tolerated
have been the focus of fierce disputes. In practice, regulatory regimes have typically
been reactive rather than anticipatory.

Regulatory science: a contested domain

One common source of scientific uncertainties arises as a consequence of the fact
that many putative risks are not studied directly, but explored indirectly through
the use of models. Thankfully, scientists are sometimes reluctant knowingly to release
a potentially harmful product in order to study directly the nature and scale of
the harm it can cause. Rather than testing radioactivity or chemicals on human
subjects, experiments are typically conducted using laboratory animals or bacterial
and cell cultures as models of the effects on people, as well as on flora and fauna.
Rather than deliberately changing concentrations of greenhouse gases, the risks of
climate change are most commonly examined using computer-based models
coupled to available (but incomplete) empirical data. Policy-making is complicated
by the fact that we are often very uncertain about the relevance and reliability of
the models that the experts develop and deploy to the conditions that they purport
to model. It is not that too few models are available; rather, the problem is often
to make judgements about the relative reliability of competing models, their
predictions and forecasts.
Many protagonists in debates about (un)sustainability assert that they are uniquely
in possession of the best science; their assertions can come in two main forms. The
first alleges full scientific certainty for their perspective, while the second laments
the limitations of prevailing knowledge and the extent and/or severity of scientific
uncertainty. The former tactic often requires understating, or maybe even con-
cealing, uncertainties. The latter typically involves overstating, or perhaps
exaggerating, them. Both tactics have been used by protagonists on all sides, by
those in governments, the corporate sector and civil society. That does not mean
that everybody is always dissembling, but it does mean that ostensibly scientific
assertions concerning the risks and/or benefits of industrial products and processes
such as ‘fracking’, ‘nanotechnology’ or ‘climate engineering’ should not be taken
at face value because their apparent scientificity is invariably misleading. On the
contrary, questions should routinely be asked about how they were constructed
from mixtures of both factual and normative considerations. The fact that they
have all been constructed, using forms of hybridization, does not, however, entail
 Invoking ‘science’ in green transformations 45

that they are all uncertain, let alone that they are uniformly uncertain. Examining
how they were constructed, and identifying the elements that contributed and
the means by which they were hybridized, can enable scholars, policy-makers
and citizens to make well-informed judgements about their relative reliability
(van Zwanenberg and Millstone, 2000).
One scientific field that is characterized by profound uncertainties concerns the
implications of studies using laboratory animals to try to identify the potential adverse
effects of chemicals on public and environmental health. In 1984, a leading US
toxicologist explained that: ‘Given all the uncertainties, it may seem that the very
laborious and expensive tests for assessing safety may be no better than throwing
darts at a board full of numbers’ (Wodicka, 1984). In the same year I asked the
UK’s then leading professor of toxicology what was the relevance of tests of rats
and mice to humans, and his reply was the one I least expected, namely: ‘Your
guess is as good as mine’ (pers. comm. Guildford, May 1984).
While extrapolations from models may be uncertain, estimates of the magnitude
of the attendant uncertainties are rarely provided. In the late 1970s a valiant
innovative attempt was made by a US National Academy of Sciences panel to
estimate the upper and lower bounds of the carcinogenic risk that the artificial
sweetener saccharin could pose to the US population. The panel estimated those
bounds by comparing the most pessimistic interpretation of the most worrying
evidence against the most optimistic interpretation of the most reassuring study.
The resulting estimate was that if, on average, US residents were to continue to
ingest ~120 milligrams of saccharin daily for a period of 70 years (which then
corresponded to the average level of consumption in the USA) it was unlikely that
fewer than 0.22 extra deaths from cancer would occur over that period, while it
was unlikely that more than 1,144,000 extra deaths would occur (US NAS, 1978).
In other words, estimates of the potential carcinogenicity of saccharin for humans
were characterized by uncertainty of six orders of magnitude! A remarkable fact about
that analysis has been the conspicuous reluctance of toxicology professionals or
policy-makers to ever cite that conclusion or acknowledge its implications.
Bizarrely, expert advisory committees in the USA, the UK, the European Commis-
sion (EC)/ European Union (EU) and at the WHO have subsequently all chosen
to assign numerical values to an ‘acceptable daily intake’ for saccharin in the form
of single point estimates, some of which were even specified to one decimal place,
rather than as ranges (CEC, 1977; CEC, 1985; MAFF, 1990; WHO, l993; US
FDA, 2013). The practice of ignoring, neglecting and/or concealing uncertainties,
and providing single point estimates is unfortunately widespread.
One of the reasons why expert advisers too frequently ignore and/or conceal
uncertainties is because there is a ‘market’ for their misrepresentations. Policy-makers,
such as government ministers and European Commissioners, often prefer to use
their advisory committees to shield them from having to take responsibility for
contestable and contested decisions. When expert advisory committees or panels
highlight the existence, and even the magnitude, of policy-relevant uncertainties,
policy-makers are obliged to take some responsibility for decision-making in
46 Erik Millstone

conditions of uncertainty. If no uncertainties are acknowledged and if the expert

advisers provide seemingly precise monolithic and prescriptive advice, then policy-
makers only have to rubber-stamp the advice, so excusing them from taking
responsibility for policy decisions. There is also often a market for such spurious
precision from those interest groups that stand to benefit from the resulting
policies. If there are no, or few, uncertainties attending the efficacy and safety of
your products then the adoption and retention of those products will be relatively
uncontroversial.
Profound uncertainties of the types discussed above create the conditions in which
broad ranges of scientific assertions can be made; nonetheless, some protagonists
try to maintain that they are in possession of a uniquely authoritative scientific
understanding (thereby understating or even ignoring the uncertainties), while others
emphasize or even exaggerate the uncertainties. The tactics adopted often reflect
the interests and beliefs of the particular protagonists as well as the distinctive features
of the issues at stake. Abraham has characterized the tactics often adopted by
representatives of the pharmaceutical industry, when commenting on the efficacy
and safety of their own products, and those of their competitors, as opportunistic
and ‘consistently inconsistent’ (Abraham, 2008). Such practices are, however, not
confined to that industrial sector.
One of the most familiar tactics adopted by incumbent authorities in both public
and private sectors, when confronted by an unwelcome assertion that prevailing
practices or proposed innovations may pose risks to environmental or public health,
or some other ecological parameter(s), has been to claim that science has robustly
established the absence of risks. Those claims have often been problematic because
the relevant sciences have been too uncertain to justify such confident assertions.
In many cases, not only had the science not provided sufficient evidence robustly
to support such reassuring narratives, but the relevant sciences were not yet
sufficiently sensitive, reliable and precise for such claims to be established.
Examples of this tactic are often encountered in the context of regulatory policy-
making on some aspect of protecting environmental and/or public health, and this
chapter will discuss several examples. The approach has also often entailed
understating or even completely denying policy-relevant scientific uncertainties,
and portraying the judgement of the official advisers as definitive, and based on
the most well-informed expert judgements on the available evidence. As van
Zwanenberg and Millstone have explained, that approach could most readily be
deployed within closed technocratic institutional regimes (van Zwanenberg and
Millstone, 2005). The advantage of a closed regime, at least to those operating
within the system, is that the secrecy (or as they prefer to call it ‘confidentiality’)
of the system serves to protect it from scrutiny, and in particular helps to conceal
scientific uncertainties and contestable assumptions that guide, in particular, the
selection and interpretation of evidence. Regimes of that sort prevailed in the USA
prior to the passage of the 1966 and 1976 legislation of Freedom of Information,
and in the UK and many other European countries until the BSE crises of the late
1990s (US Congress, 1966, 1976). In those contexts, power was exercised in part
 Invoking ‘science’ in green transformations 47

by concealing its exercise, which highlights the importance of transparency and

accountability in the construction of a global ‘sustainability science’.
US legislation on the freedom of information entailed that much of the scientific
evidence on which policies were based entered the public domain, with the
consequence that many of the uncertainties that characterized the scientific basis
of policy-making could no longer be concealed. Once uncertainties became
unconcealable, the tactics had to change. The most widely adopted option was to
diminish the emphasis on claims that policies were based on, and only on, (sound)
science in favour of a narrative asserting that policy deliberations start from value-
free scientific assessments of the expected environmental impacts of technological
products or processes, which are delivered to policy-makers in the form of
quantitative thresholds or targets, along with estimates of such residual uncertainties
as may remain. Policy-makers then decide how to achieve the targets, goals or
standards that the experts had recommended. For example, scientific panels might
specify figures for concepts such as a ‘threshold limit value’ or a ‘maximum residue
limit’, and then policy-makers might set rules to try to ensure that those figures
were not exceeded, or that they were not often exceeded.
The practice of portraying assessments of the risks and/or benefits of tech-
nologies, provided by officially appointed panels or committees of experts, as if
they were entirely uncontaminated by non-scientific considerations, least of all
political or economic considerations, is widespread and entirely orthodox; it is,
however, invariably misleading. Representations of such putative risks and/or
benefits of familiar or innovative technologies are inevitably constructed by hybrid-
izing normative with empirical considerations. When scientists working for
industrial interests are asked if they can provide sufficient data to enable their
employers to negotiate their way over regulatory hurdles, they are likely to con-
duct different studies from those that public-interest scientists could conduct when
asked to search for evidence that those products might pose some risks. Not only
may those two groups conduct different kinds of studies, they can also be expected
to interpret the available data in different ways and to judge them against different
criteria.
In a project called Late Lessons from Early Warnings, the European Environment
Agency (EEA) documented numerous examples in which incumbent authorities
had, in the name of science, asserted the absence of environmental risks or hazards,
only for evidence subsequently to emerge showing that the initial reassuring
narratives had exaggerated the reliability of apparently reassuring evidence, and
discounted evidence indicating problems (Gee et al., 2001; EEA, 2013a). Examples
included fish stocks, radioactivity, benzene, asbestos, halocarbons, diethylstilbestrol,
tributyltin and vinyl chloride.
That pattern highlights a key type of policy judgement – namely, how much
of which kinds of evidence are variously deemed necessary or sufficient to
recommend or decide to permit, restrict or forbid some technology or practice?
One of the devices that has contributed to the persistence of such flawed regimes
has been the practice of discreetly leaving it to scientific advisers to decide how
48 Erik Millstone

much evidence they deem necessary or sufficient for particular types of conclusions,
and choosing as advisers those people who could be characterized, in the British
cricket-derived idiom, as a ‘safe pair of hands’. Those arrangements have allowed
hybrid science-and-policy judgements to be misrepresented as if purely scientific.
Allowing complacent policy judgements to masquerade as if purely scientific can
serve to insulate those responsible for making or defending such judgements from
many forms of political accountability; after all, it is (supposedly) only scientific
experts who are qualified to adjudicate (Thatcher, 1999).
Incumbent authorities have often not only made misleading claims about the
scientific certainty of reassurances that some alleged aspect of unsustainability is
mistaken, they have also often claimed that such unsustainability problems as they
have acknowledged can be addressed uniquely well with their preferred techno-
logical solution. For example, claims are made that genetically modified (GM) crops
technology provides a uniquely appropriate solution to chronic hunger and mal-
nutrition in developing countries (Pollock, 2013; Anon., 2013a), or that nuclear
power provides the uniquely optimal solution to the challenge of decarbonizing
the production of electricity (HMG, 2009).
While some protagonists in debates about climate change have offered spuriously
precise forecasts of changes that may be anticipated, others have been far more
cautious. In its first report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) did not provide a single point estimate of future changes to average global
surface temperatures; rather, ranges were indicated, along with mid-points of those
ranges (IPCC, 1990). More recent IPCC reports have qualified the estimates of
those ranges with figures indicating levels of confidence in those estimates. No
protagonist offering a single point estimate of future changes of climate and/or
weather would nowadays be deemed credible by those with professional expertise
in climate change debates.

Debates about the safety and acceptability of GM foods

and crops
Examples of such tactics and narratives have emerged in the context of the dispute
between EU Member States and the European Commission on one hand and
the USA on the other, about the safety and acceptability of GM crops (Millstone
et al., 2008). In this context, it is remarkable that the biotechnology industry
endeavours to portray GM crops as a technology that could contribute to, or even
be essential for a ‘green transformation’ (Shapiro, 1996; Borlaug, 2000). Since the
late 1990s, the EU as a whole and/or several EU Member States have restricted
imports of some GM products deemed acceptably safe by the US authorities, which
resulted in a formal complaint to the World Trade Organization (WTO),
adjudicated under the WTO Dispute Procedures. In those cases, the US authorities
have argued that since their GM crop policies are based on sound science, any
assessment that reaches contrary conclusions must ipso facto be examples of either
‘bad science’ or be entirely unscientific (USA, 2004).
 Invoking ‘science’ in green transformations 49

Very similar tactics have been adopted by UK policy-makers. In 2009, a senior

official in the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA),
with responsibility for advising ministers on the assessment and approval of
GM crops, insisted that UK policy was decided solely by reference to scientific
criteria concerning safety, and based on and only on scientific considerations. When
I suggested that criteria relating to non-scientific considerations such as economic
and social factors could also contribute to policy-making, the official asserted that
the policy was, and should only be, decided by reference to scientific factors –
beyond that, adoption or rejection of particular products should be decided ‘by
the market’. When I pointed out that to be judged ‘by the market’ is paradigmatic-
ally an economic criterion, the official was evidently shocked (pers. comm.
DEFRA, May 2009). It had never occurred to him that a market-based criterion
might not be socially or politically neutral. Nor did he appreciate that the reluctance
by UK and EU citizens to accept GM foods could be based on considerations that
were not just about safety or transactions of exchange.
Empirical research into disputes about the regulation of GM crops, on both
sides of the Atlantic, has shown that when expert advisers reach different conclu-
sions they typically do so, not because only one side is doing good science or because
they are reaching contrary interpretations of shared and agreed evidence, but
because they are asking and answering different questions, and consequently
gathering and analysing different bodies of evidence (Millstone et al., 2008). In
October 2013, the European Network of Scientists for Social and Environmental
Responsibility (ENSSR) issued a statement in October 2013 entitled: ‘No scientific
consensus on GMO safety’ (ENSSR, 2013). It stated:

As scientists, physicians, academics, and experts from disciplines relevant to

the scientific, legal, social and safety assessment aspects of genetically modified
organisms (GMOs) . . . we strongly reject claims by GM seed developers and
some scientists, commentators, and journalists that there is a ‘scientific con-
sensus’ on GMO safety . . . and that the debate on this topic is ‘over’ . . .
the claimed consensus on GMO safety does not exist. The claim that it does
exist is misleading and misrepresents the currently available scientific evidence
and the broad diversity of opinion among scientists on this issue. Moreover,
the claim encourages a climate of complacency that could lead to a lack of
regulatory and scientific rigour and appropriate caution, potentially endan-
gering the health of humans, animals, and the environment. Science and
society do not proceed on the basis of a constructed consensus, as current
knowledge is always open to well-founded challenge and disagreement.
(ibid.)

That document was a response to repeated attempts to pretend that the safety of
GM crops, which had been approved by the US authorities, were consequently
known for certain to be entirely safe. In the USA, Paarlberg articulated such a
narrative in relation to GM foods. In Starved for Science: How Biotechnology is Being
50 Erik Millstone

Kept out of Africa, Paarlberg asserted that problems of chronic hunger and
undernutrition in Africa could and should be solved by cultivating and consuming
GM crops (Paarlberg, 2009). His analysis mistakenly assumed that people starve in
Africa because too little food is produced, rather than because they are poor. If
chronic hunger was merely a technical problem to which technology could
provide a solution, it would have been solved long ago. It persists because it is a
socioeconomic problem, not a technological one. An irony that Paarlberg and his
allies fail to address is that under conditions of severe socioeconomic inequalities,
introducing certain kinds of technological innovations can aggravate rather than
diminish the underlying problems (Griffin, 1974).

Spurious uncertainties and imprecision

Just as uncertainties can be opportunistically concealed or understated, they can
also be exaggerated. The range of issues, to which the tactic of exaggerating the
magnitude and significance of uncertainties has been applied, is almost as broad
as the range of examples of spurious certainty. One tactic has involved exploiting
the ambiguity as between ‘there is no proof of harm’ and ‘there is no evidence of
harm’. Evidence is often not conclusive, from which it certainly does not follow
that no relevant evidence is available. Policy judgements are invariably informed
by assumptions about how much, of which kinds of evidence may be deemed
variously necessary or sufficient to sustain decisions to permit, forbid or restrict
some products of practices, even though such assumptions often remained implicit.
In the USA, from the 1960s until the late 1970s, for example, the Food and
Drug Administration (FDA), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Occu-
pational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) regularly deemed a compound
carcinogenic on the basis of evidence from one variety of one species of laboratory
animals. Following the installation of the Reagan administration, the threshold
criterion was first increased to evidence from two different species, and then to
two different animals species administered the test compound by relevant routes
of exposure plus in vitro mutagenicity data (Proctor, 1995). Those changes repre-
sented political shifts in the criteria that data sets had to meet before US government
agencies were allowed to categorize a compound as carcinogenic. It was not the
science that changed, but the evaluative benchmarks against which the policy-makers
wanted the scientific evidence to be interpreted. In those processes, scientific findings
that were previously deemed reliable and sufficient were subsequently reinterpreted
as insufficient (Davis, 2007).
The debate in which the greatest efforts have been made to exaggerate the
magnitude and significance of scientific uncertainties has been in respect of climate
change and the impact of human industrial activities on global climate and local
weather. In this case, as indicated previously, there are serious uncertainties,
especially when it comes to forecasting future developments, but that is no justifi-
cation for exaggerating the uncertainties. To combat such exaggerations, a report
was issued jointly by the US National Academy of Sciences (US NAS) and the
 Invoking ‘science’ in green transformations 51

Royal Society of London (RSL) at the end of February 2014 (US NAS and RSL,
2014). The Foreword to that document asserted:

It is now more certain than ever, based on many lines of evidence, that humans
are changing Earth’s climate. The atmosphere and oceans have warmed,
accompanied by sea-level rise, a strong decline in Arctic sea ice and other
climate-related changes. The evidence is clear. However, due to the nature
of science, not every single detail is ever totally settled or completely certain.
Nor has every pertinent question yet been answered.
Scientific evidence continues to be gathered around the world, and
assumptions and findings about climate change are continually analysed and
tested. Some areas of active debate and ongoing research include the link
between ocean heat content and the rate of warming, estimates of how much
warming to expect in the future, and the connections between climate change
and extreme weather events . . . [but this] . . . publication makes clear what
is well established, where consensus is growing, and where there is still
uncertainty.

The initiative for that report was in response to numerous occasions on which
representatives of vested commercial and/or political interests have denigrated claims
about anthropogenic contributions to climate change by exaggerating the uncer-
tainties in the relevant science. Oreskes played an important role tracking such
occasions in US policy debates, not just in relation to climate change but also in
respect of numerous other technological policy controversies. She has documented
how:

for two decades, influential Republicans – initially in Congress and . . . in

the White House – in concert with determined allies in private industry
. . . have systematically denied, disparaged, and misrepresented scientific
information on topics relevant to public policy. The list is long: acid rain,
global warming, the efficacy of condoms in preventing the spread of sexually
transmitted diseases, the health impacts of excess dietary sugar and fat . . .
the status of endangered species . . . the therapeutic potential of adult stem
cells, and more.
(Oreskes, 2005, p75)

Oreskes and Conway have contributed by documenting some of the ways

in which organizations, and especially corporate interests, have invoked doubts
and substantially exaggerated policy-relevant uncertainties in this domain and
more widely (Oreskes and Conway, 2010). They reviewed numerous examples
of corporate and official responses to evidence that industrial products or practices
may be harmful. Oreskes emphasizes that ‘Some corporations whose revenues might
be adversely affected by controls on carbon dioxide emissions have . . . alleged major
uncertainties in the science’ (Oreskes, 2004).
52 Erik Millstone

That pattern has been especially pronounced in the USA, and while it may be
less prevalent in the UK and EU, it is far from absent (Hansard, 2014). Climate
sceptics can be found in the UK government as well as in corporations. A careful
reading of the four successive reports from the IPCC suggest that while it is not
possible to prove beyond all possible doubt that anthropogenic emissions of
greenhouse gases are destabilizing the earth’s climate, the evidential base has
strengthened and the conclusions of the IPCC reports have become increasingly
robust, though also reported in increasingly cautious and qualified ways (IPCC,
undated).
The task of definitely proving that anthropogenic releases of greenhouse gases
are responsible for observable changes to climate and weather would require having
access to a multiplicity of ‘earths’ upon which experiments could be performed,
but that is obviously absurd. Given that such ‘proof’ is unobtainable, and given
that the Earth is an open not a closed system, there will always be residual uncer-
tainties about the dynamics of global climates and the impacts of human activities.
The costs of failing to diminish anthropogenic climate change may nonetheless be
unsustainable. If we were to wait until the uncertainties had been substantially
diminished, very substantial harm may be a consequence, and by then adverse effects
might be irreversible.

Conclusions
The discussion has argued that while scientific knowledge about (un)sustainable
practices and technologies provides essential components for any adequate under-
standing of the need for green transformational changes, and of what will be required
to achieve such changes, scientific knowledge can never on its own be sufficient.
Moreover, selective portrayals, as well as downright misrepresentations, of what is
known and what is uncertain in our understandings are being deployed to delay
or prevent green transformational changes. If scientific knowledge and expertise
are constructively and legitimately to contribute to green transformational
changes, they can do so only if certain social, cultural and political conditions are
satisfied.
The claim that ‘knowledge is power’ has often been attributed to both Francis
Bacon and Thomas Hobbes (Bacon, 1597; Hobbes 1651). The assertion is,
however, slightly misleading. It is often the case that ignorance entails powerlessness,
and while knowledge might be necessary for power, it is certainly not sufficient.
If scientific knowledge and expertise are to contribute to green transformations,
or even just to enhance sustainability, the knowledge along with the attendant
uncertainties and the exercise of expertise, all need to be in the public domain.
Research has shown that power can often be exercised by controlling the creation,
diffusion and portrayals of scientific evidence. Moreover, power has often been
exercised in scientific-seeming deliberations in part by concealing the fact that power
was being exercised, which was possible only if those deliberations were conducted
secretively in closed meetings, with some or all of the evidence excluded from the
 Invoking ‘science’ in green transformations 53

public domain. Consequently, transparency is a condition for enhanced authentic

legitimacy, both scientific and political, at all levels, local, national, regional and
global.
In conditions of transparency, however, it will be evident not just that much
of the relevant sciences are incomplete, uncertain and equivocal, but also that
particular portrayals of the science, especially monolithic prescriptive portrayals,
are framed by crucial non-scientific assumptions. Those assumptions will be con-
cerned, among other questions with: What is to be counted as a benefit or as a
risk? What would count as relevant evidence? And how much of which kinds of
evidence can/should be deemed sufficient to license inferences to particular types
of policy prescriptions? Different assumptions concerning those sorts of issues have
often been the source of policy disputes. It is possible that explicit international
negotiations over such framing assumptions might diminish rather than exacerbate
international policy differences; we’ll have to try it to find out.
Stilgoe et al. (2006) have argued, in relation to scientific advice to policy-makers,
that there is an important difference between opening ‘windows’ or ‘doors’. In
relation to the former, citizens may watch and listen to the experts’ deliberations,
but cannot contribute to them – for example, by asking questions or providing
information. In the latter case, they may. Transparency and genuinely open doors
may therefore be essential, though they will not be sufficient.
Not only should sustainability-related, policy-relevant scientific evidence and
deliberations be in the public domain, but the ways in which scientific studies have
been designed, conducted, reported and interpreted need to be seen as framed by
non-scientific judgements about what is important and which are the objectives
to which the activities are oriented. If those framing assumptions are allowed to
remain implicit, politics will still be able to masquerade as if it were scientific; but
by making those framing assumptions explicit, the relationships between science
and policy can be assessed and, under appropriate conditions, politically legitimated
(Millstone, 2007).
If those framing assumptions, or at least the most important ones, were explicitly
to be articulated by policy-makers, scholars and citizens could then have a better
understanding of how competing claims and analyses have been constructed.
Under those conditions they could also make well-informed judgements about the
relative reliability of competing assertions about, for example, risks or benefits. In
those circumstances, the chances of scientific knowledge and expertise contributing
to enhanced sustainability, and even to green transformations, rather than as a
hindrance to enhanced sustainability, will be increased.
4
EMANCIPATING
TRANSFORMATIONS
From controlling ‘the transition’ to
culturing plural radical progress1

Andy Stirling
DOI: 10.4324/9781315747378-4

Introduction
Are green transformations too urgent, deep and pervasive to be reliably achieved
by democratic means? As suggested by the iconically influential environmentalist
James Lovelock, perhaps ‘it may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while’
(Hickman, 2010). Indeed, the main European Commission news website recently
queried whether democracy is actually an ‘enemy of nature?’ (Euractive, 2010).
As formally structured procedure, ‘democracy’ is often caricatured as an obstructive
or dispensable ‘luxury’ (Haan and Sierman, 1996). However, perhaps history
teaches instead that the only sure way to achieve any kind of progressive social
transformation is through unruly democratic struggle. These are the questions on
which this chapter will focus.
In short, the argument here will lead to a general heuristic distinction between
two ideal-typical forms of radical social change. On one hand, are ‘transitions’:
managed under orderly control, through incumbent structures according to
tightly disciplined knowledges, often emphasizing technological innovation, towards
some particular known (presumptively shared) end. On the other hand, are ‘trans-
formations’, involving more diverse, emergent and unruly political alignments,
more about social innovations, challenging incumbent structures, subject to incom-
mensurable knowledges and pursuing contending (even unknown) ends. By
reference to emancipatory struggles by excluded classes, ethnicities, slaves, workers,
colonies, women, young people and diverse sexualities, the chapter will argue that
it is repeatedly the latter that achieves the most profound (often rapid) radically
progressive social changes.
So, apparent contention between different meanings and practices of sustain-
ability and ‘democracy’ are not so much problems, but crucial parts of solutions.
Ecological viability and social justice are not competing ends to be traded off, nor
 Emancipating transformations 55

a single integrated and depoliticized ‘nexus’ of technical imperatives. What makes

them seem this way, is the expedient shaping of knowledge (as well as action), by
powerful interests. What ecological and social justice challenges actually require,
is not controlled ‘transitions’ driven by incumbent structures, but vibrant agonistic
political mobilizations towards more open-ended ‘transformation’. Far from
democratic struggle being an ‘enemy of Nature’, then, they may be each other’s
deepest hopes.

Nexus, necessity and nudge

A starting point lies in a growing body of science warning that the world is faced
with a ‘perfect storm’ of environmental threats. Even if not as existential as
sometimes implied for the Earth as a whole, there are grave implications for many
populations, livelihoods and societies. The resulting ‘nexus’ of new vulnerabilities
interacts with multiple prevailing forms of insecurity and injustice. As in these long-
established but socially remediable patterns, it is typically the least privileged people
who remain the most vulnerable.
These new scientifically framed threats are currently attracting unprecedentedly
intense attention in global governance. In many ways, this exceeds the consideration
afforded to older, more directly politically comprehensible vulnerabilities. The result
is unusual high-level willingness to contemplate ‘radical transformation’ in global
practices, institutions and infrastructures for the provision of food, water and energy.
If the rhetorics are taken at face value, possibilities are opening up for potentially
‘revolutionary’ kinds and scales of change.
Such is the intensity of these developments, that leverage is potentially emerging
not just for serious technical, organizational and discursive change, but for even
more substantive political dislocations. Yet exactly how this leverage plays out, is
open to modulation. The changes that occur may act in progressive ways, chal-
lenging concentrations of privilege and power. Or they may act more regressively,
to entrench some of these incumbent patterns. Crucial here, is that it often remains
rather non-specific and ambiguous what exactly will constitute these widely
mooted ‘green transformations’ or ‘transitions to sustainability’.
For instance, pressures for transformation towards zero carbon energy practices
may instead be redirected towards driving a global transition to climate
geoengineering. Visions inspired by distributed renewable resources may yield
instead a low-carbon transition based around centralized nuclear energy. Likewise,
imperatives for transformations towards ecologically sensitive forms of agriculture
respecting the diverse knowledges of farmers as open source innovators in different
settings may instead be harnessed towards transitions to ‘sustainable intensification’
strategies promoting ‘monoculture’ transgenic crops that maximize rents on
intellectual property and global value chains.
Choices between contending institutional and infrastructural pathways like
these – each variously claimed to be ‘green’ – are profoundly political. Yet these
choices are typically discussed in much existing ‘nexus’ or ‘green transition’
56 Andy Stirling

literatures in rather vague and apolitical ways. It is as if the key questions are simply
about whether to be ‘green’ or not, rather than about the radically different political
alternatives that make these claims. It is in this depoliticized atmosphere that it
becomes possible to pose the questions with which this chapter began – over the
relevance of democratic deliberation, contention and struggle.
This increasingly disempowering style of debate is reinforced by a growing
climate of ‘environmental authoritarianism’. Interventions by prominent global non-
governmental organizations (NGOs) help set the mood – for instance, by loudly
asserting that there are ‘one hundred months to save the planet’ (Hulme, 2010).
If they are lucky, such polemics will be forgotten before they are refuted. However,
they are widely repeated. The result is to further polarize politics simply around
compliance or rejection of particular apocalyptic assertions. Little space is left for
more nuanced scepticism or challenge over all-important details. Crucially, this
negative emphasis on uncompromising technical fears suppresses roles for demo-
cratic struggle over contending positive hopes.
Growing authoritarianism is also evident in the ways that many influential
institutions in environmental governance are increasingly deprioritizing previously
hard-won duties to be transparent, responsive and accountable to citizens and
public interests, in favour of more covert strategies for the ‘nudging’ of ‘users’ and
‘consumers’. Public, private and civil society organizations alike seem ever more
preoccupied with controlling and explaining their prior established ends and
means, rather than listening or adapting to criticism. Risk is repeatedly interpreted
in terms of reputation. Trust is addressed overwhelmingly as an appropriate
response by the powerless in favour of the powerful, rather than the other way
around.
Behind this, the roots of environmental challenges are increasingly located in
the ‘behaviour’ of ordinary people, rather than in the powerful vested interests
that so actively constrain and condition associated growing individualism, con-
sumerism and materialism. The diagnosis increasingly moves away from explicitly
political struggle, towards more apparently technical and psychologistic ‘behaviour
management’. By emphasizing the centrality of supposedly undifferentiated hard-
wired ‘human nature’, appreciation is attenuated for critical argument and demo-
cratic struggle. Attention is drawn even further away from the potential for
progressive political action to challenge particular incumbent interests. In this
‘end of history’ illusion, the contrasting environmental and justice implications are
lost, even of relatively proximate ‘varieties of capitalism’. Conflated into seemingly
amorphous depoliticized inevitability, the prospect for more diverse, creative and
progressive forms of social transformation are rendered even less imaginable.
The implicit expectation seems to be that the powers doing all the nudging
and controlling will somehow be kept benign simply by the manifest gravity of
the professed rationales. The more assertive and apocalyptic the envisaged threat,
the more desperately necessary this expectation. Yet neither history nor current
affairs suggest any guarantee that such expectations will be delivered. Many historic
 Emancipating transformations 57

examples can be found, where ostensibly progressive efforts at social transformation

actually reproduced familiar kinds of concentrated power structures in new forms,
often more entrenched (Arendt, 1963; Skocpol, 1979). When power finds itself
credibly able to invoke overriding missions to control (especially under a climate
of fear), the results can be even less positive. The disarming effects of superficial
appearances can make the dangers especially acute where initial motivations appear
progressive.
The world is a complex place and care should be taken with overly simplistic
analogies, but there do seem to be many grounds for more careful scrutiny of
environmental authoritarianism. The greater the genuine respect for ecological
imperatives, the greater this responsibility.

Anthropocene planetary domination

These authoritarian pressures are also reflected in scientific discourse. Here, even
geological history is subject to reinterpretations emphasizing the theme of control.
For instance, the established epoch of the Holocene is a tiny 11,700-year span,
oddly tacked on to the end of the preceding 1.6 million-year Pleistocene epoch.
Marking the point where Earth moved out of the last of a long series of glaciations,
there is little to distinguish the Holocene from previous Pleistocene interglacials,
such as to justify a new scientifically recognized epoch. The sustaining of relative
climate stability over such brief periods is not geologically unique. That all previous
epochs extend to many tens of millions of years compounds the anomaly. It seems
that general scientific considerations are trumped by more parochial anthropo-
centric excitement, for it is in the Holocene that specifically human activity greatly
intensifies.
The relevance of this to control arises because the subjective human excep-
tionalism that helps shape this scientific acceptance of an anomalously tiny Holocene
epoch is now being compounded by recent moves to add a further even more
eccentrically miniscule ‘Anthropocene’ epoch of just a few hundred years’ duration.
Crucially, this is defined explicitly by reference to notional ‘human control’ – even
‘domination’ (Vitousek et al., 1997; Crutzen and Schwägerl, 2011; Steffen et al.,
2011) – variously of ‘Earth’s ecosystems’ (Vitousek et al., 1997) or wider ‘biological,
chemical and geological processes’ (Crutzen and Schwägerl, 2011). And, as in
environmental authoritarianism, these conditions of control are ubiquitously
associated with an undifferentiated human ‘we’.
Given that ‘human control’ is already held to be so diagnostic of the
Anthropocene, it is paradoxical that much of this literature also calls urgently ‘for
identification of mechanisms amenable to human control’ (Ehlers and Krafft,
2006). If such mechanisms have not yet even been identified, one wonders how
current ‘control’ is already exercised? And why, if ‘control’ is so negative in retro-
spect, should it be seen so optimistically in prospect (Lövbrand et al., 2009)? In a
similar way to the ‘crisis of capitalism’ in Marxism, or ideas of grace in Christian
58 Andy Stirling

theology, a paradoxical conjunction appears here of described actuality with

prescribed urgency. It seems that the Anthropocene is framed from the outset as
much as a normative doctrine as a scientific analysis.
This leads to a further telling feature of ‘the Anthropocene’. As with ‘the
Nexus’ more widely, it is clear that the aggregate environmental impacts of diverse
global economies are truly devastating. However, for humans to exert unintended
impacts is very different from exercising collectively intentional control. Indeed, some
Anthropocene literature does acknowledge that even ‘self-control of mankind’
remains a speculative scenario (Faroult, 2009). Serious wider questions are raised
not only over what is meant by control, but who is doing it, how it is supposedly
enacted and on exactly what systems. After all, when has humanity as a whole
even undertaken – let alone controlled, still less achieved – any single explicitly
and collectively deliberate end?
Perhaps the confusion might be alleviated by redefining the problematic
Anthropocene concept in terms of human impacts, rather than notional human
‘control’, or substituting it with a similarly more careful definition of the Holocene?
There is anyhow a case for tracing global-scale human impacts back to the very
early Holocene (Zimov et al., 2011). And the difference between a starting point
a few hundred and a few thousand years ago is well below the chronological
resolution for comparable geological epochs. That this rather obvious course has
not been adopted confirms that ‘Anthropocene’ discourse is fulfilling a rather
particular political function. Crucially, this new category moves beyond the implicit
subjective acknowledgement of human impacts to a direct (ostensibly objective)
assertion of human ‘control’.
To be fair, a growing ‘Earth systems governance’ literature (Biermann, 2007) is
often more qualified in its treatment of notions of ‘Anthropocene’ control, referring
instead to apparently less deterministic notions of ‘governance’ and ‘stewardship’
(Chapin et al., 2011). However, substitution of more nuanced terms does little to
reduce the substantive tensions. ‘Governance’ is still frequently addressed in terms
of integrated knowledge, formal procedures, coercive instruments and individualistic
leadership. And, implying ‘control in absence of overarching authority’, even
‘stewardship’ is arguably not so much about diminished control, as diminished
accountability (Anon., 2013b).
What remains under-addressed is the general paradox that the more intensely
desired the control, the greater the necessity to comply with conditions for
tractability. Even an engineered artefact works only if designed in accordance with
inherent material constraints and propensities. No matter how much a governance
model might emphasize ‘polycentric’ coordination (Biermann et al., 2012b) (rather
than top-down hierarchy), then, if it remains subordinated to a particular agency
and ends, then the process is equally about control. And there are few more effective
means to assert iniquitous managerial control invisibly than by rhetorics of equal
collaboration. So, superficial shifts in terminology do little to alter the substantive
dynamics.
 Emancipating transformations 59

It is here that preoccupations with ‘planetary boundaries’ further illuminate

Anthropocene narratives (UN, 2013). These define the ‘safe operating space’ within
which global governance must strive to navigate a path (Rockström et al., 2009).
Despite resting on the supposed indeterminacy of ‘catastrophic tipping points’ (Hoff
and Rockström, 2013), planetary boundaries are routinely asserted as determinate
and precisely known (Rockström et al., 2009). Indeed, they are typically presented
as ‘non-negotiable’ imperatives, raising ‘absolutely no uncertainty’ and brooking
‘no compromise’ (Rockström, 2010). It is on this basis that ‘manuals’ are issued
(Newton, 1998) for taking charge of the ‘control variables of the Earth’ (Rockström
et al., 2009) and so achieving not just governance in the loosely coordinated sense,
but unprecedentedly ambitious forms of ‘planetary management’ (Faroult, 2009).
Presumptions of undifferentiated controlling agency are reinforced. Ends are further
subordinated to means. The discursive constraints on space for democratic struggle
seem more restrictive even than the material boundaries.
It is by appreciating this discursive dimension that the paradox may be reconciled
that ‘control’ is viewed retrospectively as negative, but prospectively as positive,
for – as in the other political and religious doctrines mentioned above – this is
how a retrospective diagnosis of ‘planetary domination’ can be recruited seamlessly
into a narrative prescribing prospective ‘planetary management’. Of course, such
pre-laden politicized implications are not unique to Earth systems governance. Other
areas of policy-relevant science and ‘global assessment’ are also widely recognized
to be similarly shaped by the cultural conditions under which they are produced
(Scoones, 2009). The Anthropocene narrative is just one particularly acute instance
of a general pattern that emerges when knowledge itself is recognized as political.
So, it is not as if such dynamics are entirely avoidable, nor do they somehow
necessarily render the implicated science thereby invalid. In no way do these political
dynamics in the presentation and interpretation of contemporary Earth science
detract from the need to question very seriously contemporary economic and tech-
nological trajectories. Indeed, it is precisely where imperatives for political
transformation are taken most seriously that the lesson takes a different form. In
short, science for policy holds responsibilities not only to be accurately reflective
of the objective systems it is concerned to represent. It is at least equally obliged
to be reflexive about the ways these representations are conditioned by subjective
systems in which ‘the science’ is produced. Without this, there are dangers that
Anthropocene rhetorics of uncompromising leadership, non-negotiability, certainty
and control will be taken much too literally. Planetary management should be careful
what it wishes for.

Democracy, sustainability and emancipation

So what of the queries with which this chapter began? Is democracy really an
‘enemy’ of transformations towards sustainability – a ‘luxury’ that should be ‘put
on hold’? Or is it rather sustainability that is vulnerable to longstanding powerful
60 Andy Stirling

forces that find associated transformative emancipations so threatening? If so,

maybe the real questions are about whether authoritarian appropriations by
incumbent interests, can make environmentalism itself an ‘enemy’ of the very forms
of democratic struggle that it gave rise to?
In the above spirit of reflexivity, these queries require careful thought about
the forces and conditions under which the answers themselves are shaped. And
this is as true of general talk of ‘democracy’ and ‘sustainability’ as of more specific
concepts like ‘the nexus’, ‘the Anthropocene’ or ‘planetary boundaries’. In all
these areas, understandings supposedly informing practice are typically at least as
much formed by it. In other words, knowing and doing are not so much distinct
as inseparable – especially when it comes to transformation.
One crucial initial reflection, then, concerns how to interpret ‘democracy’. It
is easy for loose usage to be misunderstood, appropriated – or strategically subverted
– by specific traditions, institutions or interests (Agamben et al., 2011). Any wider
understanding of democracy wishing to transcend such parochialisms (Li, 1997;
Sen, 2005; Leib and He, 2006) must relate at root to the general dynamics of power,
as featured prominently in the discussion so far. Here, the implications are as
profound for knowledge and discourse as for material practice.
In short, despite the plural, multidimensional and multiscale faces of power, a
constant common element shared across many different historical and cultural settings
is that power is about ‘asymmetrically structured agency’ (Stirling, 2014c). Social
norms, institutions and discourses concentrate diverse flows and experiences of social
agency in greatly varying ways. As a reaction to this, ‘democracy’ in the broadest
of senses can be seen not as any formal procedural end-state, but as a complex,
distributed never-ending struggle, for ‘access by the least powerful, to the capacities
for challenging power’ (Stirling, 2014c). Although the dynamics of power doom
any such success to be constantly provisional, the greater this access and the stronger
the capacities for challenge, the more effective the democratic struggle might be
judged.
Far from being in tension, then, this characterization of democracy as struggle
displays especially strong affinities with sustainability. Sustainability historically came
about through democratic struggle and remains formally defined by reference to
it (Brundtland, 1987). After all, sustainability was not elevated to the present highest
levels of global governance by the kinds of integrated, polite, orderly apolitical
procedures currently highlighted in elite planetary management literatures. Just
as in other transformative processes of democratic struggle for the emancipation
of classes, ethnicities, slaves, workers, colonies, women, young people and diverse
sexualities, this occurred through diverse, protracted, radically challenging and
overtly political agonistic struggles by subaltern social movements (Mouffe, 1999).
Take, for instance the development of issues around occupational hazards,
resource degradation, consumer chemicals, ionizing radiation, atmospheric pollu-
tion, water contamination and climate change (Gee et al., 2001; EEA, 2013b).
All were typically pioneered by subaltern communities of workers or affected
people, then picked up by social movements. In each case, it was recognition of
 Emancipating transformations 61

uncertainties that advanced progressive causes, not assertions of ‘uncompromising’,

‘non-negotiable’ certainties. Indeed, these imperatives were at each stage strongly
contested by precisely the authoritarian language now used by the kinds of main-
stream science and high-level governance institutions, which currently profess to
champion sustainability as ‘planetary management’.
The same is typically true not only of the problems highlighted by sustainability
concerns, but also of the prescriptions. Innovations such as wind turbines, ecological
farming, super-efficient buildings and green chemistry all owed their pioneering
origins and early development to subaltern social movements (Smith et al., 2013).
All were systematically marginalized, if not actively suppressed, by incumbent
interests in science, government and industry. These transformative responses were
nurtured not by controlling management, but by adversarial struggle. That so many
of these innovations have now become central elements in prospective trans-
formations to sustainability is despite, rather than because of ‘sound scientific’,
‘evidence-based’ elite policy discourse.
It was for all these reasons that early visions of sustainability went beyond merely
highlighting environment and social justice as outcomes. Increasingly forgotten
nowadays is that the Brundtland Commission, for instance, also made direct
reference to the agonistic processes through which these ends are best pursued.
For Brundtland, the entire sustainability vision was about achieving ‘greater
democracy’ (26: 16) through ‘effective citizen participation’ (26: 58). This was picked
up and strongly developed in the subsequent Agenda 21 programme. However,
this theme of democratic struggle has become increasingly subordinated to local
level implementation. Contemporary instruments like the Millennium Develop-
ment Goals (MDGs) also sideline this crucial process of agonistic struggle, amidst
the clamouring instrumental concerns with metrics and outcomes (Griggs et al.,
2012).
In conclusion, the links between democracy and sustainability are not just
contingent. At root, both are driven by, and towards, emancipation. And this is
as true of knowledge and discourse as of material practice. It is in this light that it
looks most dissonant, that contemporary high-profile debates about ‘sustainability
transitions’ should display such increasing preoccupations with contradictory
attributes like ‘certainty’, ‘leadership’ and ‘control’. It seems that the greatest need
is to emancipate understandings of transformation itself.

From transition to transformation

So much for the background in the general history and practice of sustainability,
but what has all this got to do with particular real-world prospective ‘sustainability
transitions’ on the ground? Even if the above account is right, does it really matter
that environmental authoritarianism tends to emphasize control over accountability?
What is the harm in a little over-egging of notions of Anthropocene ‘planetary
domination’? Might not a measure of over-assertiveness concerning the certainty
62 Andy Stirling

and non-negotiability of planetary boundaries at least help galvanize attention?

As has been emphasized, it is not as if existing efforts have hitherto been so
conspicuously successful.
The thrust of all the previously raised concerns is not to belittle the gravity or
urgency of the current nexus of imperatives around social justice and ecological
disruption. The crucial challenge is not whether to achieve the necessary radical
technological, political, economic and cultural changes, but how? Here, though,
particular care needs to be taken in the light of the preceding discussion, because
the shaping effects of incumbent power act on knowledge and discourse as well
as on more material structures. This means that neither words nor actions may
always be what they seem, sometimes even entailing their apparent opposites. It
also means that interventions expressly and sincerely motivated by progressive
interests (in the senses defined here by reference to power and democratic struggle)
may nonetheless sometimes end up being regressively counterproductive in their
effects. Analysis and action must get below expedient surfaces.
This is where there arises the importance of the distinction touched on in the
Introduction – between ‘transition’ and ‘transformation’. Transitions, it may be
recalled, are managed under orderly control, through incumbent structures
according to tightly disciplined technical knowledges and innovations, towards a
particular known (presumptively shared) end. This typically emphasizes integrated
multidisciplinary science directed at processes of instrumental management through
formal procedures in hierarchical organizations sponsored by the convening power
of government. Transformations, on the other hand, involve more diverse,
emergent and unruly political alignments, challenging incumbent structures, subject
to incommensurable, tacit and embodied social knowledges and innovations
pursuing contending (even unknown) ends. Here there is a much stronger role
for subaltern interests, social movements and civil society, conditioning in ambig-
uous and less visible ways the broader normative and cultural climates in which
more explicitly structured procedures are set.
Of course, the utility of this distinction is heuristic (provocative and catalytic),
rather than formal or definitive. The real value lies in considering implications on
a concrete case-by-case basis, by reference to real-world examples and settings.
Crucial devils will lie in details and positive or negative evaluations in the eyes of
beholders. And the point here is not to insist on particular definitions for specific
words. It is the implications of the ideas that matter. The contrast between transi-
tion and transformation is also not a dichotomy, because both real- world dynamics
and salient models will typically lie somewhere in between, and the two concepts
are not mutually exclusive – there are several ways in which each dynamic depends
on (and is partly constituted by) the other. The central point is rather that if the
distinction is not made (by whatever names), then governance knowledges and
discourses (as well as practices) in any given sector are vulnerable to systematic
subversion by incumbent interests to channel more around expediently controlled
transition than inconveniently emergent transformation.
 Emancipating transformations 63

Explored more thoroughly elsewhere (Stirling, 2014a and b), there is sadly not
the space here to develop examples in the desirable detail. However, the point is
nonetheless readily made by considering the radical implications of ‘transformat-
ions’, potentially displayed, for instance, by ecological agriculture, zero carbon energy
futures in general and renewable energy in particular. As already touched on, these
can be contrasted with characteristics of ‘transitions’ towards ‘sustainable intensi-
fication’ based on agricultural transgenics, or nuclear power (or even climate geo-
engineering) as large-scale responses to climate change. These latter transitions are
typically propounded by powerful incumbent interests within existing sectoral
regimes. The former possible transformations reflect knowledges, values and inter-
ests that are more marginal to the current constituting of these regimes. Charac-
terized, then, as a contrast between orientations for radical change driven alternatively
by powerful incumbent or relatively disempowered subaltern interests, it is only the
latter kinds of transformation that depend on clear roles for democratic struggle that
are worthy of the understanding adopted here.
More fine-grain features of this contrast between ‘transformation’ and ‘transition’
can be illuminated by considering in more detail the much-proclaimed global
‘renaissance’ in nuclear power (Nuttall, 2005; Toke, 2013). Of course, when
consideration is given to the actual patterns of investment and their relation to
other energy technologies, the objective reality of a global nuclear renaissance is
rather dubious, but the success of this rhetoric is unquestionable. Promulgated at
the highest political levels and by scientific authorities ostensibly unrelated to nuclear
supply chains, the effect is to condition wider knowledges and expectations in
powerful ways. The result in many countries is that political pressures for green
transformations in the energy sector, originally driven largely by public concerns
over nuclear power and sympathy for renewable energy transformations, are in
fact systematically channelled by apolitical ‘management’ discourse into transitions
more towards nuclear power (Stirling, 2014c).
Of course, general claims that nuclear power is ‘green’ or ‘sustainable’ remain
strongly criticized in any sense other than low operational carbon emissions.
Nuclear waste, weapons proliferation and accident risks – and their associated
authoritarian control structures – have long made nuclear an iconic target of the
green movement (Dorfman, 2008). The Brundtland Commission and follow-on
intergovernmental processes also generally treat this technology with suspicion, so
the language of ‘sustainability transitions’ is typically not used directly of nuclear
power. Although displaying many key diagnostic features of a controlled ‘transition’
outlined here, initiatives explicitly identified as ‘transition management’ in the energy
sector are typically linked with more popular renewable technologies. However,
it is precisely the central point here that it is the attributes of power dynamics in
knowledges and practices constituting ‘transition’ (by contrast with ‘transformation’)
that lead nuclear power in many countries to be the perverse beneficiary of
authoritarian inflections of decades of subaltern pressures that were typically
formatively forged disproportionately in opposition to nuclear power.
64 Andy Stirling

Further revealing examples of similar dynamics can be found in emerging global

governance of climate change – arguably (as documented elsewhere in this book)
the principal high-level arena within which issues of ‘green transformation’ are
currently played out. Key issues arise most acutely in the concluding paragraphs
of the recent summary for ‘policy-makers’ by the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC, 2013). That such an influential body chose (tentatively,
but nonetheless momentously) to highlight a possible transition involving the diverse
technologies of ‘climate geoengineering’ indicates the depth of the dissonance and
contradiction. So important is this for understanding the contrast being drawn here
that it is worth briefly recalling the magnitude of this disjuncture.
A ‘progressive’ global transformation towards zero carbon energy would harness
diverse proven viable renewable resources and innovations to deliver energy
services at the same time as eliminating carbon emissions and realizing other sustain-
ability benefits. Although the challenges of such transformations are undoubtedly
ambitious and daunting, it is clear that there exists a diversity of possible pathways
through which to address them. The obstacles to an entirely renewable global
energy system are not – as often claimed – about intrinsic limits on resources,
technologies or economics. Repeated detailed assessments show that the energy
service needs of a more heavily populated and equitable world enjoying radically
higher levels of well-being, can be cost-effectively met, entirely and solely through
diverse currently available technological and organizational innovations around wind,
solar, biomass, hydro, ocean and geothermal power (PwC, 2010; GEA, 2012; IPCC,
2012).
However, the climate geoengineering alternative raised by the IPCC (IPCC,
2013), by contrast, would use an array of speculative technologies and unpre-
cedented global institutions aimed solely at assuming human ‘control’ over the
planetary climate (Shepherd et al., 2009; Fleming, 2010; Ridgwell et al., 2012;
Ruddiman, 2005). Although requiring economic and political investment on a scale
similar to that required for direct transformation of energy infrastructures, most
forms of climate geoengineering would leave energy needs entirely unaddressed
(Morgan and Ricke, 2009; Bracmort and Lattanzio, 2013). And it is this manifestly
more speculative alternative that is gaining strikingly increasing high-level
worldwide attention beyond the IPCC as well. That a regressive transition built
around climate geoengineering is asserted in some quarters to present a somehow
more tractable governance challenge to a progressive transformation based on
renewable energy is an indication not only of the strength of entrenched vested
interests in this sector, but of their impact on wider structures, knowledges and
expectations.
These examples illuminate a general factor of enormous importance for
considering these contrasting dynamics of transition and transformation: the ‘fallacy
of control’ (Cunha et al., 1999). This can be found in various areas of psychology,
organizational studies and politics, where simple deterministic pictures of control
are all variously problematic. They are often better understood more as instrumental
fictions necessary for the assertion of privilege than as disinterested accounts of
 Emancipating transformations 65

actuality (Aldrich and Pfeffer, 1976; Krackhardt, 1990; Thornton et al., 1999;
Mintzberg and Waters, 2009). When stripped of this expediency, any real-world
instance of ‘control’ decomposes (in the same ways discussed earlier with respect
to the Anthropocene) into complex conditions of diverse mutually adapting inten-
tionalities and (in)tractabilities. As in that example, the possibilities of many
alternative accountings for causality among proliferating multitudes of nested
implicated factors leaves any particular tracing of ‘control’ in any given instance
significantly in the eye of the beholder (Power, 2000). And this is at least as true
in wider governance, as it is within organizations (Pfeffer, 1992; Parry et al., 1997).
In energy pathways, agricultural futures and climate change strategies (as
elsewhere), care must be taken that analysis of social dynamics does not – under
instrumental pressure of patronage to ‘see like a state’ (Scott, 1998) some particular
favoured ‘transition’ – simply entrench and perpetuate these misleading fallacies of
control. As the examples above suggest, such self-reinforcing channelling by
incumbency can all too easily lead to the opposite of the envisaged transformation.
Crucially, this applies as much when contemplating the exercise of nominally demo-
cratic, as of autocratic, power in ‘social control’. The difference lies not in the
notional source of legitimacy, but in the nature of ‘control’ itself. In other words,
even in the constituting of the concepts themselves, incumbency has a habit of
subverting the deepest understandings of what human ‘agency’ is all about.
For interests committed to achieving substantively radical transformation rather
than expediently aligned transition, then, political creativity and effort are perhaps
better invested instead in the diverse, unruly, agonistic interventions that are
suppressed by structures and discourses of control (and which they themselves
subvert). And since knowledge and action are not as separate and sequential as
prescribed in this same expedient fiction of control, truly transformative interventions
are better seen as combining both. Freed from such instrumental mythologies, then,
the formative energy of these ‘knowing doings’ lies not in their purported direct
controlling force, but in the combined effects with their wider reflexive social
reactions.
Drawn from underdocumented repertoires of subaltern movements, examples
of such potentially transformative ‘knowing doings’ might include ‘Trojan horses’
(Stirling, 2011). This is where an exercise in subaltern policy analysis or political
action which ostensibly takes one form, actually exerts its effects in entirely
different ways. Or – learning from past experience of insurgent struggle – there
are various forms of ‘political judo’ (Popkin, 1970), where it is the very strength
of incumbency that offers the principal opportunity for less powerful actors to
successfully contend against it. Also relevant is the potential for the ‘civilising effects
of hypocrisy’ (Elster, 1995). This is where incumbent power is conditioned
reluctantly to reorient itself in new directions by the incremental ratcheting of
tensions between discourse and practice.
Now is not the place to detail these kinds of distributed political moves. The
point is that just as ‘deflection by walls’ differs from ‘steering by compasses’, these
kinds of ‘knowing doings’ are not subject to the controlling force of a coordinated
66 Andy Stirling

transition. Instead, they involve more emergent distributed realignments around

diverse, but spontaneously shared aims. The parallels between ecology and society
strike another chord, for the transformative results quite closely resemble the
exquisitely abrupt shifts in direction arising in the autonomous and internally directed
flocking behaviours observable in many animals.
Similar patterns are arguably visible in culture change, where comparably radical
alterations of direction can occur without any overarching framework (either
of codified knowledge or structured action) simply by emergent coordination.
Indeed, this is arguably more characteristic of crucial dynamics in the most im-
pressively progressive of historical transformations also mentioned in this chapter
– in struggles for emancipating excluded classes, ethnicities, slaves, workers,
colonies, women, young people and diverse sexualities. Recognizing that such
processes are more like the dynamics of grassroots culture than high policy – and
more active than determined – the processes of transformation envisioned here
might be thought of more as the ‘culturing’ than the controlling of radical social
change.

Conclusions
This chapter took its cue from growing tendencies for high-profile actors in
sustainability governance debates to question (not only implicitly) the value of
democratic struggle. With unfeasibly short periods to ‘save the planet’, participation
is seen as a threat. Acknowledging any uncertainty is a weakness. Scepticism is a
pathology, dissent an unaffordable ‘luxury’. Responsibility is increasingly external-
ized away from particular political and economic structures and towards ‘human
behaviour’ in general – or humanity in an undifferentiated sense. Emphasizing
multiple kinds of catastrophe, there is a suggestion ‘to put democracy on hold’.
This chimes with emerging scientific discourses that emphasize and assert
the need for various kinds of domination and control. The Anthropocene is
expressly defined in these terms. Associated planetary boundaries are described as
the ‘control variables’ of the Earth. This is a world of ‘non-negotiable’ imperatives,
raising ‘absolutely no uncertainty’, brooking ‘no compromise’ and requiring strong
leadership. Governance is addressed not as a political process, but as a more instru-
mental procedure for ‘planetary management’ . . . ‘taking control of Nature’s realm’.
Democracy, in this light, can become the ‘enemy of nature’.
However, this emerging picture is strikingly at odds with the realities of
sustainability and the progressive social dynamics that gave rise to it. Both in its
prioritized outcomes and its constituting processes, sustainability has always been
centrally about democratic struggle. And though the two are mutually conditioning,
this is more about rudely unruly political contention against power than the kinds
of power-driven (and -constrained) ‘integrated knowledges’, ‘invited engagements’
and polite policy etiquettes of ‘planetary management’. Just as it was arguably only
in agonistic contention by social movements that high-level recognition of
 Emancipating transformations 67

environmental and social justice imperatives ever came about, so too is this the
best hope for sustaining them towards their promised aims.
It is this crucial lesson that current planetary management initiatives are most
in danger of forgetting. Without it, there is a serious vulnerability to ‘fallacies of
control’. These exaggerate the efficacy of intentionally structured determinism, not
because it is particularly effective in achieving radical social change, but because
the idea merely helps sustain existing patterns of privilege. The prevalence of this
fallacy is thus a particular example of how knowledge not only informs power,
but is profoundly shaped by it. If aspirations to radical social change are to have
real prospects for success, actions must be as transformative of these regressive patterns
in knowledge as of more material relations.
Perhaps transformation is better understood in terms of mutual relations of ‘care’
than of dominating ‘control’ (Bowden, 1997; Cluff and Binstock, 2001; Noddings,
2002; Frankfurt, 2004; Pellizzoni, 2004; Hagedorn, 2013). Deliberately enacted
this way, the ‘knowing doing’ of care can transcend the context-free absolutes,
assertive dualisms and idealized subjugations of control (Gilligan and Richards,
2009) – of neatly subordinated subjects over objects; relations after categories;
actions based on knowledge; effects determined by causes; ends driving means;
structure over agency (Held, 2005; Slote, 2007). The obdurate realities of the world
remain. However, in its rebalancing of relations between subjects and objects of
practice, a caring approach accommodates better than control the ways in which
transformative understandings and actualities are symmetrically co-produced with
action (Felt et al., 2013).
The knowing and doing of transformation are thus not separate, but intimately
interlinked. Neither alone is sufficient. As in the exquisite changes of direction
seen in flocking behaviours in nature, real social transformation is arguably only
truly achieved through a dynamic of diversity, creativity and democratic struggle
– equally in knowledge and action. Radical social change is therefore not about
controlled structures in knowing and doing, but about fractal patterns of ‘political
judo’, Trojan horses’ and ‘civilizing hypocrisies’ in turbulent flows of ‘knowing
doings’. Transformation is not achieved by deterministic structurings of social
control, but by counterpointing these with the subversive mutualities of care,
yielding more distributed culturings of radical change.
Where instead sustainability is addressed as a determinate technical end, rather
than as an emancipatory process for determining plural human and ecological ends,
it betrays its own foundations. Hope for genuinely progressive ‘green transforma-
tions’ are not about fear-driven technical compliance, but hope-inspired democratic
choice. This is the challenge of ‘emancipating transformation’.

Note
1 A longer, fully referenced version is available at: http://steps-centre.org/wp-content/
uploads/Transformations.pdf, accessed 2 July 2014.
5
THE POLITICS OF GREEN
TRANSFORMATIONS IN
CAPITALISM
Peter Newell
DOI: 10.4324/9781315747378-5

Introduction: from transitions to transformation

The ‘Great transformation’ – the ecological conversion of industrial societies
into a climate compatible, resource-conserving and sustainable world
economic order, requires far-reaching and manifold tasks to shape it, which,
in their make-up, are neither purely scientific and technological nor purely
social or political. The transformation process should lead to just and
sustainable governance over the use and management of global, regional and
local commons.
(Heinrich Böll Foundation, 2013)

Talk of great transformations is back in vogue. Though in some circles it never

went away, of course, human-induced climate change, in particular, is at the
epicentre of renewed attention to the need for (another) ‘great transformation’ amid
calls for a new, or third, ‘low carbon’ industrial revolution, new models of ‘green
growth’ (NEF, 2010; UNEP, 2011; OECD, 2011) or a ‘green deal’ (Lipietz, 2013).
The point of departure for such calls is the requirement for disruptive change in
the form of radical reductions in emissions and large-scale technological
breakthroughs as part of the pressing need for transition to a low- carbon economy
(WBGU, 2011; Heinrich Böll Foundation, 2013). For this reason there is increasing
interest in historical precedents of deliberate, large-scale orchestrated change in the
face of crisis (of the sort called for in the quote above), of when concrete strategies
for moving from one sociotechnical system and set of practices to another have
been successfully deployed that might offer relevant parallels to grappling with the
contemporary climate crisis.
It is around this twin sense of transformation both as historical process and
contemporary challenge that this chapter seeks to enlighten current discussions about
the politics and possibilities of change with historical lessons about how, when and
 Green transformations in capitalism 69

why such change has taken place previously. It does so by situating contemporary
debates about transitions to a ‘green economy’ within a broader historical context
of change within global capitalism. In particular, it offers some reflections on what
previous reorganizations in production and technology reveal about how, when,
why and for whom transformations occur under capitalism and what this suggests
about the prospects of today’s attempts to restructure the global economy along
low-carbon lines.
The world is not short of initiatives that claim to be pursuing such a goal
(Hoffman, 2011; Bulkeley et al., 2012). However, despite rhetorical embracing of
the concept of green transformations by governments, businesses and international
organizations, applied analysis of what a dramatic shift in the structures of produc-
tion and consumption would imply for alignments of political and economic
power that will be required to achieve and sustain a low-carbon economy is sorely
lacking. The premise of this chapter, then, is that much of the policy debate so
far, as well as existing academic scholarship on these questions, has understandably
focused more on the governance of transitions than the politics of transforma-
tion (Loorbach, 2007; Scarse and Smith, 2009; Verbong and Loorbach, 2012).
Interestingly, other literatures on different kinds of transitions place politics and
system change more centrally. In political science work on democratization,
‘transitions’ refers to wholescale upheaval or even revolutions in a political system
and mode of governing society, and the development industry often talks about
‘economies in transition’, meaning the wholescale reorganization of socialist
economies along capitalist lines, while for many Marxist scholars ‘the transition
debate’ is about the transition from feudalism to capitalism (Wood, 2002). The
point, however, is that current debates about green transformation adopt a more
apolitical reading of what is at stake. They have failed to adequately analyse either
the role of social forces in how change occurs in contemporary capitalism or to
provide a fuller political analysis of historical precedents about the politics of when
organized large-scale sociotechnical and economic change has occurred in the past
(albeit in pursuit of very different ends) and what lessons might be deduced for our
current predicament. It is precisely such a framework for political and historical
analysis of ‘green transformations’ that is proposed here.
I draw on work within different strands of political economy literature to develop
an understanding of the politics of green transformations and the relations of power
which enable and frustrate change. This approach is used to highlight the
importance of the following social forces in the politics of green transformations.
First, competition between different fractions of capital1 and their reliance on
particular types of energy for the success of their accumulation strategies (Newell
and Paterson, 1998). This builds on the idea that a key challenge of enabling green
transformations is to assemble ‘coalitions of the winning and the willing’: of actors,
including powerful fractions of capital, that will materially benefit from a new
wave of low-carbon growth and which compete to promote their role in enabling
such growth (Newell and Paterson, 2010). Put more bluntly, someone has to win
(or believe they can win) in capitalism for change to be realized and working out
70 Peter Newell

who this is likely to be and how they can be mobilized for lower carbon trans-
formations is a key task.
Second, the historically central role of labour in struggles to constantly ‘revolu-
tionalize the means of production’. While the power of labour movements has
been reduced in a globalized economy, the potential of green transformations to
threaten or create employment is a key battleground and will significantly affect
their chances of state and public support as the examples below illustrate.
Third, the state has a key role to play in enabling or frustrating transformations
as historical and contemporary evidence shows clearly (Mazzucato, 2011). This is
true not just in terms of supporting innovation and ‘picking winners’, but also
mediating the above struggles and conflicts between fractions of capital and
between capital and labour. The state also plays a central role in shaping and
being shaped by global institutions which potentially circumscribe (or globalize)
their control over energy (politics) through interventions in power sector reform
and liberalization processes (Tellam, 2000; Cho and Dubash, 2005).
Fourth, the role of finance in enabling technological revolutions and unsettling
incumbent regimes, in particular from the Industrial Revolution onwards (Perez,
2002). Given the heightened power of finance capital in the current phase of
capitalism, a key strategic challenge is whether and how this power might be har-
nessed to the goal of green, in this case low-carbon, transformations.
Highlighting these dimensions provides a basis for exploring what the role of
these social forces and relations of power in previous periods of capitalist
restructuring imply for current efforts to reorganize the energy base around what
regulation theorists refer to as a new ‘regime of accumulation’ and its associated
‘mode of regulation’.2 Reference to ‘Great Transformations’ in these debates also
invites reference to Karl Polanyi’s (1980 [1944]) insights into the disembed-
ding and re-embedding of the economy from society that began with the rise of
economic liberalism in nineteenth-century Britain through efforts to create ‘self-
regulating markets’ in land, labour and money by subjecting them to market
exchange, and the reaction this laissez-fair approach provoked in the form of a
‘double movement’ for the protection of society. Indeed, many scholars have sought
to underscore the relevance of these insights for contemporary debates in environ-
mental political economy (Dale, 2010; Peck, 2013; Prudham, 2013), although less
so around questions of environmental transformation per se. While it is possible
to argue that a Polanyian approach needs to include a wider range of forms of
domination and exploitation to effectively shed light on the nature of the current
triple crisis (financial–social–ecological) (Fraser, 2012; Selwyn and Miyamura,
2013), it remains a valuable point of reference for thinking about how the balance
of social forces in particular historical epochs has a profound impact on the ‘nature’
of transformation that is considered possible and desirable at a particular conjunc-
ture.
Taken together, a political economy approach provides the sort of understanding
of power and structure that is absent in much of conventional theorizing about
transitions and green transformations. A more explicitly political and historical
 Green transformations in capitalism 71

analysis allows us to move beyond glib statements about ‘green growth’ and ‘win–
win solutions’ to reveal the conflicts, trade-offs and compromises that are implied
by a fundamental restructuring of an economy and the relations of power which
will determine which pathway is chosen. The ‘incumbent’ regime of existing actors
and interests that benefit from ongoing reliance on a fossil fuel economy and that
have played such a decisive role in the development of capitalism over the last
century and beyond will not give up their position easily. Nor in all likelihood
will states that depend indirectly on the revenues generated by these actors and
that have, so far, shown little appetite for initiating structural change. Since energy
use, in particular, is closely correlated with growth, there is tremendous political
sensitivity around proposals to transform its provision and distribution. So what
will it take politically to create powerful coalitions of the ‘winning’ and the ‘willing’
that are able to shift the balance of political and economic power in favour of those
that stand to benefit from a low-carbon economy? What historical precedents are
there for such reorganizations in production and political power, and what can we
learn from them? Which historical, political and economic conditions appear to
be necessary for such change to occur and, more importantly, can they be replicated
given the current alignments of power in the global economy?

Lessons from history?

History teaches us how quickly industrial transformations occur through waves of technological
development, such as the introduction of electricity, based on innovation and discovery.
(Stern, 2014)
In order to inform the discussion below about the contemporary politics of green
transformation, I briefly refer to a series of pertinent historical examples so as to
reveal the confluence of forces that appear to be critical to enabling large-scale
deliberate sociotechnical, economic and political change. This builds on previous
histories of transitions (Correlje and Verbong, 2004; Geels, 2005b, 2006; Fouquet
and Pearson, 2012; Grubler, 2012; Pearson and Foxon, 2012), which emphasize
factors such as the role of prices, science and human capital (Allen, 2012), or, as
in the quote above from Nicolas Stern, ‘innovation and discovery’. However, rather
than view the technological and the social context which supported a particular
sociotechnical transition in isolation, the emphasis here is on identifying the under-
lying political, historical and material factors that enable large-scale transformations
to take place which will inform our understanding of contemporary developments.
This means being attentive to prevailing systemic conditions and alignments of
power given, for example, that ‘The transition to coal was punctuated by the Atlantic
social revolutions and the Napoleonic wars; the transition to oil by two great wars
and a mighty world depression’ (Moore, 2009, p6), underscoring the links between
energy, production and world order (Rupert, 1995). As well as reading politically
the significance of these types of examples in terms of the actors and interests that
propelled them, the analysis will also reflect on the extent to which they have
contemporary resonance and application.
72 Peter Newell

One obvious challenge to drawing such parallels lies in the basic fact that no
larger scale transformation (as opposed to a more discrete shift in technological or
social practices) to date has been motivated explicitly by the imperatives of dealing
with environmental crises per se, even if dwindling access to resources, for example,
has been a key driver of innovation and social change (witness the push for alternative
and renewable energy as well as energy conservation provoked by the 1970s oil
crisis). Another challenge is around the role of intent, design and vision in relation
to these transformations and what this implies about the role of the state in particular:
whether the key transformations in capitalism have really been steered (rather than
enabled and enforced) by the state, and what this suggests about the willingness
and ability of contemporary states to assume such roles. With the benefit of hindsight,
it is easy to ascribe motivations and read plans into key changes, but it is unclear
that reorganizations of the economy, even as drastic and unprecedented as the
Industrial Revolution, were done by conscious design or implemented ‘from above’.
Restlessness on the part of capital was the key. Likewise, while in retrospect it
is tempting to ascribe linearity and unity of purpose to them, in the historical
moment in which they were unfolding, as now, pathways are experienced and
understood as multiple, contested and competing trajectories whose destiny or
success cannot be anticipated or known in advance. This uncertainty structures the
way in which different actors engage with transitions and which transformations
they hedge their bets on and invest in, or seek to resist, as we see below in relation
to the role of finance capital and the state in particular. By invoking historical
examples, the point is not to underestimate what might be novel or unique about
the nature of the challenges associated with ‘green’ transformations in terms of their
scale (across regions, sectors, levels of decision-making and involving such a
breadth of actors) and the time-frames within which they have to occur, or in
relation to the particular role of expert knowledge, for example. It is rather to shed
light on how capitalism has been transformed previously, and particularly its
energy base, in ways that it is now being called upon to do again.

The Industrial Revolution

The transition to coal was driven both by its cheapness and abundance, and the
fact that wages were relatively high in Britain at the time, creating a demand for
labour-saving energy technology (Allen, 2012, p17). Marx recognized the
superiority of coal over water from the point of view of capital in the following
terms:

The flow of water could not be increased at will, it failed at certain seasons of
the year, and above all it was essentially local . . . Not till the invention of Watt’s
second and so-called double-acting steam-engine was a prime mover found
which drew its own motive force from the consumption of coal and water,
was entirely under man’s control, was mobile and a means of locomotion.
(1974 [1867], p499, emphasis added)
 Green transformations in capitalism 73

Likewise, the drive for the creation of a railway infrastructure was the need to
enable exchange on an increasing scale. Marx called the railways the ‘crowning
achievement’ of the industrial economy for their ability to connect a single inter-
acting economy, just as the steamer enabled the multiplication and intensification
of the capitalist economy incorporating ever more parts of the globe, providing
the basis for a ‘gigantic export boom’ in which world trade increased by 260 per
cent between 1850 and 1870 (Hobsbawn, 1997, pp48–49). Central to the expansion
of manufacture and trade were improved systems of transport and the ‘new sources
of energy and raw materials opened up in response to the appetites of industry’
(Cox, 1987, pp143–144). Thus, an expansion in productivity and technological
development under capitalism increased the quantity of energy throughput that
was required to expand the accumulation of capital, and the operations of capitalist
production became dependent on a constant supply of raw materials that could
sustain its operations on an ever-greater scale. Whereas previous modes of pro-
duction primarily operated within the ‘solar-income constraint,’ which involved
using the immediate energy captured and provided by the sun, by mining the earth
to remove stored energy to fuel machines of production, capitalist production broke
‘the solar-income budget constraint, and this has thrown [society] out of ecological
equilibrium with the rest of the biosphere’ (Daly, quoted in Clark and York, 2005,
p406).
For Huber, then, ‘fossil fuel represents a historically specific and internally
necessary aspect of the capitalist mode of production’ whereby the late eighteenth-
/early nineteenth-century ‘energy shift’ from biological to fossil modes of energy
– at the time meaning coal – coincided with the dramatic social shift toward the
generalization of capitalist social relations (Huber, 2008, pp105–106). This helps
us to understand energy as a ‘social relation enmeshed in dense networks of power
and socio-ecological change’ (Huber, 2008, p106), such that changes to those
relations of power will inevitably be required to displace an energy order. At the
pinnacle of the networks of power resting on this base of production in the
nineteenth century was the British state, which assumed a central role in under-
pinning an expanding world economy and liberal world order on its own terms:
the Pax Britannica (Cox, 1987).
There is a sense here in which the embrace of new energy sources was born
of both the frustration with the limits of existing energy systems (to the ambi-
tions of capital in terms of productivity and labour costs) and the abundant
availability of an alternative. Whereas in the current situation the interests of capital
in general are, for the most part, well served by an ongoing dependence and even
expansion of fossil fuels as discussed below, even in the face of pressures to leave
large reserves of them ‘in the ground’. There is a degree of carbon ‘lock-in’ (Unruh,
2000) that has resulted from the creation of trading and transport infrastructures
dependent on and requiring the type and scale of energy inputs that arguably only
fossil fuels can supply. Anticipation of a new wave of accumulation will be vital
to future shifts from one energy source to another.
74 Peter Newell

Fordism
Besides production, what about transformations in consumption? Perhaps unsur-
prisingly, transformations in consumption have generally aimed to increase the
consumption of resources and material products, as with the Fordist era, which
brought with it the need for new systems of transportation and a reorganization
of the production process. If the Industrial Revolution laid the foundations for
‘industrial civilization’, then the era of Fordist mass production also brought with
it a requirement for mass consumption of the goods being produced in the factories
of mid twentieth-century America.3 This mass consumption has come to be ultim-
ately dependent on the provision of cheap energy ‘to power privatized automobile
transport and electrified/heated single-family homes’ (Huber, 2008, p110). The
specific underpinnings of the Fordist model, however, were the twinning of a model
of economic expansion based on mass production: the manufacture of standard-
ized products in huge volumes using special purpose machinery and unskilled
labour with the creation of a consumer base to absorb the fruits of this up-scaling
of production. Higher wages had the by-product of giving workers the means
to become customers, which nurtured a culture of consumption necessary to
reproduce the ‘cycles of production/consumption necessary to sustain the regime
of accumulation’ (Paterson, 2007, p107).
The pursuit of ‘auto-mobility’ and mass car ownership, for example, in the form
of the Volkswagen dream for all German workers to own a car, or President
Hoover’s 1924 election promise to provide ‘a chicken in every pot; two cars in
every garage’ (quoted in Paterson, 2007, p115) helped to cultivate a mass consumer
base for oil (as petrol and its by-products) through individualized transport, even
at the expense of the deliberate destruction of urban infrastructures. Part of this
history involved deliberate campaigning to dismantle and disband rail and other
mass transit public transportation infrastructures in order to force greater reliance
on and demand for cars. Peter Dauvergne shows how entrepreneurs such as Henry
Ford and Alfred Sloan at General Motors ‘vastly expanded markets by reducing
profit margins, lobbying policy makers, advertising new models, designing cars for
obsolescence and destroying alternative forms of transport such as the electric trolley’
(2008, p35). The latter was achieved by the ‘auto-industrial complex’ forming
holding companies to acquire transit firms, demolish trolley lines and then replace
them with GM buses, providing financial and technical assistance to municipalities
to switch from rail to road systems and financing supportive politicians. The state
then played its part in realizing ‘the car’s potential in accelerating accumulation’
(Paterson, 2007, p115) by providing motorway infrastructure and banks provided
the credit and loans to enable debt-fuelled consumption.
In terms of lessons for the current predicament, first the drive to stimulate
increased consumption by states and corporations is notable as a way of addressing
crises of overproduction, cast in the Fordist era and repeated many times since,
and presents a huge challenge for more radical green transformations. The way in
which increased consumer spending and consumption has become the default mode
 Green transformations in capitalism 75

for getting economies out of crises was observable once again in the wake of the
latest financial crisis from 2008, where the appeal to consumers, almost as their
primary duty as citizens, was to spend more to buoy the economy, even if this
implied increased personal indebtedness. This highlights the scale of the challenge
facing anti-consumerism groups such as Rising Tide and Enough and other
movements seeking to challenge unsustainable patterns of consumption, especially
given that the introduction of new sources of energy has historically tended to
increase overall consumption (Fouquet and Pearson, 2012, p2). Histories of energy
transition also point to the fact that consumer willingness to adopt new technologies
and accept new energy sources depends on the enhanced benefits they are perceived
to provide (Fouquet and Pearson, 2012, p2). Yet it will be very difficult for
renewable energies to compete with the comfort and reliability of fossil fuels. The
same is perhaps true for the alleged personalized freedom that the car provides.
Second, the importance of assuring a social contract or pact between capital
and labour emerges as key to attempts to reorganize production, and has impli-
cations for debates about the prospects of a ‘just transition’ and, in particular, how
labour might benefit from a switch of industrial base to lower carbon forms of
energy: the US$4tn industry that is sustaining a large number of jobs and growth
according to some estimates (Jacobs, 2012b). Pursuing the ‘just transition’ means
making sure the transition to a lower carbon economy is a fair one (Swilling and
Annecke, 2012). This is often about bringing on board the potential losers from
a transition to a low-carbon economy, those whose jobs and livelihoods are
dependent on fossil fuels (such as in the mining, oil and car sectors that have been
so central to previous and the current regime of accumulation),4 and being explicit
about the trade-offs, compensation and forms of retraining that may be required
to make transition socially just and palatable. There are emerging cases of how
fossil-dependent economies have tried to do this (Evans, 2010), for example, of
cities in Germany losing jobs in coal and setting up solar industries, but clearly it
has to go beyond how individual communities blighted by deindustrialization
adapt or seek to identify new accumulation strategies on to wider decoupling
strategies of energy use from growth. On the positive side, it can be about selling
the potential of renewable energy that ‘renewable energy is poor people’s energy’,
as groups like Earthlife South Africa do, demonstrating job-creation potential of
different energy pathways (2013). However, it needs to be explicit who gains what
in such transitions.
There is perhaps also a great, but thus far largely unrealized potential for alliances
with potential losers from climate change, such as farmers who might lose out
from declining yields and unpredictable rainfall patterns, for example, which are
often mobilized in powerful unions such as the UK’s National Farmers Union. Or
with potential winners such as public sector transportation workers who would
benefit from large-scale investments in public transport. This is why it is so im-
portant to get mass movements on board, such as trade unions, those with extensive
reach, mass appeal, perceived legitimacy and reach (Obach, 2004). Indeed, there
are examples of localized emerging collaborations between environmental groups,
76 Peter Newell

‘green business’ and trade unions (Newell and Mulvaney, 2013). For instance, the
Just Transition Alliance (JTA) is a coalition of environmental justice and labour
organizations based in California, in the US. Together with frontline workers, and
community members who live alongside polluting industries, it seeks to create
healthy workplaces and communities. It focuses on contaminated sites that should
be cleaned up, and on the transition to clean production and sustainable economies
(JTA, 2011).
Third, the example of ‘auto-mobility’ above shows how powerful actors sought
to destroy one set of infrastructures and build another which ‘locked in’ use of
their preferred technology. In the current context we can see both how incumbent
regimes work hard to discredit support to niches around claims of their incom-
patibility with existing infrastructures, as the gas and nuclear industry is doing at
the moment with regard to wind and solar energy around claims of problems with
intermittency and transmission (Leggett, 2014), but also how an overriding com-
mitment to preserving a particular infrastructure of grid-based energy privileges
some energy providers over others, particularly the fossil fuel and nuclear industries.

Globalization
What is the significance of the fact that green transformations, if they are to take
place, will have to unfold in an increasingly globalized and integrated global polit-
ical economy? By the mid to late 1960s pressure was mounting to reconfigure
the landscape of power between states and capital, and to renegotiate the Fordist
compromises between capital and labour around full employment and union
rights. The push was towards more flexible forms of accumulation in which the
social forces of production would be recast once again, this time along more
transnational lines aimed both at disciplining labour and accessing new sites of
accumulation (Robinson, 2004). The current neoliberal order subsequently
emerged from the late 1970s onwards, but whose project of monetary discipline
and global integration has deepened and intensified during the 1980s and 1990s
(Cox, 1994; Harvey, 2005). In terms of green transformations, what is significant
is the intensification of resource exploitation associated with the spatial and tem-
poral reorganization of capitalism, alongside which a disciplining of state autonomy
was required to lock in states to an integrated neoliberal world order, overseen in
particular by the hegemonic power of the US (Panitch and Gindin, 2012). As with
the Industrial Revolution before it, this required increasingly expansive and
efficient networks of commodity circulation, especially revolutions in the means
of transport and the competitive struggle to reduce the costs of circulation to an
absolute minimum.
The contemporary neoliberal context in which transformations have to occur
is significant, among other things, for its potential impact on the autonomy of states
to pursue green transformations. In particular, there is the obvious need for
regulation and steering at a time when many states have relinquished, or been forced
to relinquish, control over the key parts of their energy sectors (such as generation,
 Green transformations in capitalism 77

distribution and transmission) as a result of energy and power sector reform

programmes promoted by the World Bank in particular (Tellam, 2000; Cho and
Dubash, 2005). The role of ‘disciplinary neo-liberalism’,5 practised by key inter-
national institutions and multilateral development banks, in constraining the policy
autonomy and developmental space of poorer countries over whom they exercise
control through their lending practices (Gill, 1995; Gallagher, 2005), raises key
questions about what instruments states have available to address the challenges of
decarbonizing their economies when many have ceded direct control over their
energy sectors. At the same time, as host to a suite of Climate Investment Funds
and serving as the trustee of the Green Climate Fund, the World Bank and other
donors are in a position to use their structural power in ways that promote lower
carbon energy pathways, even if the record to date is mixed at best amid continued
large-scale lending for fossil fuels (WRI, 2008). Either way, these examples pose
a challenge to assumptions in debates about transitions management about how
much autonomy and power most states have in reality to pursue their preferred
transition pathways, or to manage transitions on their own terms.
Given the unequal and uneven global economy in which green transformations
will have to occur, the uncritical pursuit of the ‘green economy’ also runs the risk
of reproducing injustices of the fossil fuel economy unless attention is paid to
inequities and injustices in the production or supply of energy technologies.
Examples include the use of toxic chemicals by immigrant and female labour in
the production of solar photovoltaics (PV) cells (Newell and Mulvaney, 2013);
green grabs for biofuels (Fairhead et al., 2012); displacement for carbon-financed
wind-farm projects (Böhm and Dabhi, 2009) or the lithium rush in Bolivia for
batteries for electric cars. This is about addressing the creation or exacerbation of
poverty in the production of energy technologies and reducing scope to displace
and allocate burdens in unequal and uneven ways within the global political
economy between and within states.

Financialization
It may also be the case, however, that shifts in power as a result of the global
reorganization of capitalism might create opportunities to destabilize incumbent
regimes. I am referring to the interest that powerful actors in this current phase of
neoliberalism – global finance – have shown in decarbonization. The centrality of
finance in the making of global capitalism has already been emphasized in general
terms. Its role in the era of post-Fordism has also led to claims of a finance-led
regime of accumulation being the dominant growth model in the contemporary
global economy from the late 1970s and early 1980s (Aglietta, 2000). This section
seeks to reflect on the historic role of finance in literally fuelling the industries and
underwriting carbon-intensive infrastructures, and what this suggests about the role
it may play in supporting and benefiting from a shift away from a structure of
production based largely on the extraction and consumption of fossil fuels. Although
current debates about transitions and transformation place technology centrally in
78 Peter Newell

their vision of how to move towards a lower carbon model of development, Perez
(2002) shows that finance capital is crucial to the Schumpetarian ‘waves of creative
destruction’ that challenge and dislodge the power of incumbents. Here it is
suggested that this will be vital to disinvesting in fossil fuels, such that the twist in
the story could yet be about the rise of a finance-led regime of accumulation and
its role in accelerating decarbonization.
Historically, finance capital has been vital to unsettling existing technologies,
industries and bases of political power. Carlota Perez’s (2013) work reminds us of
the key role of finance in supporting previous historical transitions – the ‘grand
experiments’ she refers to ‘when unrestrained finance can override the power of
the old production giants and fund the new entrepreneurs in testing the vast new
potential’. Examples include the technological revolutions produced in the
Industrial Revolution, what she refers to as the ‘age of steam and railways’, and
around ‘oil, automobile and mass production’ in the Fordist era described above,
for example (2002, p11). Indeed, as Arrighi notes: ‘Throughout the capitalist era
financial expansions have signalled the transition from one regime of accumulation
on a world scale to another. They are integral aspects of the recurrent destruction
of ‘old’ regimes and the simultaneous creation of new ones’ (2010, ppxi–xii).
This raises the question of whether the interests of different fractions of capital
– finance or money capital on the one hand, and productive capital concentrated
in fossil fuels on the other – can be played off against one another for the purposes
of producing a shift in the energy regime. While certain ‘base technologies’
(Storper and Walker, 1989) may characterize eras of capitalism, as Buck notes, it
is important not to ‘confuse particular manifestations of capitalism – that is,
particular historical social formations – with capitalism itself, thus under-estimating
the flexibility of the beast’ (2006, p60). If there is ‘one essential feature of the general
history of capitalism’, Braudel claims, it is ‘its unlimited flexibility, its capacity for
change and adaptation’ (1982, p433). Might it be possible, then, that climate change
can be reworked as an opportunity for growth where fossil fuels can be replaced
by, for example, a ‘solar revolution’ (Altvater, 2006, p53)? As Marx and Engels
famously stated, the bourgeoisie ‘cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing
the means of production’ (1998 [1848], p28). Technological dynamism is at the
heart of capitalism and, as a consequence, its technological trajectories are not
necessarily set in stone. ‘Capital, as value in motion, does not care about what it
makes, the machinery used or the motive source. It cares only about its own self-
expansion and valorization’ (Buck, 2006, p63). These are the incessant waves of
creative destruction that need to be harnessed towards the goal of a low-carbon
economy.
Recognizing the heightened power of finance in this phase of capitalist
development means asking questions about the dilemmas and opportunities of trying
to harness that power to the project of decarbonization, which include some of
the following. First, the pressure to disclose: from the US Securities and Exchange
Commission rulings, for example, forcing companies to disclose information about
 Green transformations in capitalism 79

greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions alongside their financial reporting. Or from the
UK Companies Act 2006 (Strategic Report and Directors’ Report) Regulations
2013 which require all UK quoted companies to report on their greenhouse gas
emissions as part of their annual Directors’ Report, which affects all UK incorp-
orated companies listed on the main market of the London Stock Exchange. Or
from the wave of shareholder activism that has emerged over the last ten years.
The year 2005 saw a record number of shareholder resolutions on global warming.
State and city pension funds, labour foundations, religious and other institutional
shareholders filed 30 global warming resolutions requesting financial risk and
disclosure plans to reduce GHG emissions. This is three times the number for
2000–2001 (Newell, 2008).
Disclosure is the first and necessary step to applying and enforcing pressure on
corporations to disinvest in fossil fuels, and there is growing evidence of successful
disinvestment campaigns targeted at governments, corporations and universities.
To date, 22 cities, 2 counties, 20 religious organizations, 9 colleges and universities
and 6 other institutions have signed up to rid themselves of investments in fossil
fuel companies, and Norway’s US$815 billion sovereign wealth fund – the world’s
largest – has already halved its exposure to coal producers. In addition to these
disvestment announcements, many major banks and financial institutions have
limited or halted their lending to coal projects (Ecowatch, 2014).
There is also evidence of some interesting alliances emerging between environ-
mentalists and finance capital. Examples include the Carbon Disclosure Project
(CDP) that works with 655 institutional investors holding US$78 trillion in
assets to help reveal the risk in their investment portfolios and aims ultimately to
sensitize investors to climate change as an opportunity as well as a threat. Michael
Jacobs (2012b) refers to the ‘stranded assets’ that many investors may be left
with if states get serious about climate change and force companies to leave the
‘oil in the soil’ and the ‘coal in the hole’ if ambitions to keep warming below
2 degrees are to be achieved. By some calculations, between 60 and 80 per cent
of coal, oil and gas reserves of publicly listed companies are ‘unburnable’ if the
world is to have a chance of not exceeding global warming of 2°C. Disclosure
strategies such as these provide one means of repositioning investments currently
viewed as assets rather as liabilities (Newell and Paterson, 2010). In the words of
Carbon Tracker which is advancing this approach, ‘the two worlds of capital markets
and climate change policy are colliding’ because major institutional investors are
starting to think about these issues such that ‘there will be increasing pressure from
stakeholders for explanations about how capital is being allocated’ (Carbon Tracker,
2013).
It is not that these actors do, or have to care about climate change. The question
is whether most investors care what they are investing in as long as they get a
return. Some 60 per cent of trading on stock exchanges is high-frequency trading
where automated systems are used to track price changes and follow them
(MacKenzie et al., 2012). If technologies and services in the low-carbon economy
80 Peter Newell

are seen to be the promising investments, the money will flow. However, it needs
a strong steer, as Kirsty Hamilton’s work with financiers, aimed at establishing what
it would take to really shift investments into renewable energy, makes clear. Long
(long-term time-frames so commitments are not reversed by change of government
or political expediency), loud (strong price signals) and legal (regulation and legal
lock-in) were the key messages that came through about what would be required
to bring about such a shift in strategy (Hamilton, 2009). And powerful though
these actors are, governments for the most part have not been bold enough to
chart a clear course out of fossil fuels. Witness, for example, the deletion of text
at Rio + 20 calling for reductions in fossil fuel subsidies that currently stand at
around US$600 billion a year.
In terms of the analysis here, the key point is that finance, as one powerful
fraction of capital whose interests might yet be delinked from the idea that the
interests of capital in general, in most cases continue to view their interests as best
served by an accumulation regime largely dependent on fossil fuels. In this sense,
the strategies described above build on a longer history of attempts by activists to
engage financial actors as a way of breaking up the bloc of industrial power
traditionally opposed to action on climate change (Leggett, 1996; Paterson, 2001).

Theories of change
The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born;
in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.
(Gramsci, 1971)
We are entering the declining decades of the fossil fuel era, that brief episode of human time
when coal miners and oil workers moved an extraordinary quantity of energy . . . up to
the earth’s surface, where engines, boilers, blast furnaces and turbines burned it at an ever
increasing rate, providing the mechanical force that made possible modern industrial life . .
. electrical power and communication, global trade, military run empires and the opportunity
for more democratic forms of politics.
(Mitchell, 2011, p231)6

It is clearly too early to call time on the current fossil fuel energy regime and assume
the confidence to attribute it the characteristics of a temporary, transient phase in
the history of socioecological evolution, as Tim Mitchell does in the quote above.
Or to have the luxury to look beyond it, sure that a new energy order is in the
process of being born out of the current interregnum (to borrow a phrase from
Gramsci in the quote above), even if we are not yet sure what form it will take.
While the ‘morbid symptoms’ produced by the old order are clear for all to see,
the new order still lacks a powerful author. Gramscian scholars often refer to such
a moment as an interregnum: a period between the decline of one order and the
rise of another. Likewise, claims in some quarters that the ‘liberal–productivist’
model is experiencing a ‘great crisis’ (including tightly interwoven financial,
social and environmental aspects) which ‘marks the end of a capitalist model of
 Green transformations in capitalism 81

development’ (Lipietz, 2013, p127) seem premature, even if we might have

sympathy with the claim that ‘there will be no exit to this great crisis without a
change in the whole model and in particular without a strong shift in the climate-
energy nexus’ (Lipietz, 2013, p134).
The examples of positive change above should not detract from the issue of
what to do about the intransigence and resistance of what is referred to in the
transitions literature as the ‘incumbent regime’: those actors that benefit from the
status quo and are thus likely to resist change. In many ways, it is business as usual
for the world’s most powerful companies that continue to operate as if climate
change is not a serious constraint on their activities. The Greenpeace report Point
of No Return (2013) looks at how a group of 14 giant ‘carbon bomb’ projects that
are currently in planning and development is on track to single-handedly increase
global greenhouse emissions 20 per cent by 2020, making it near impossible for
the world to avoid runaway climate change. This includes proposals for giant
open-cast coal mines in China and Australia, plans to increase offshore oil and gas
extraction in the Arctic and off the coast of Brazil, and plans to expand development
of Canada’s tar sands. We have seen far less discussion of putting limits on these
plans. The actors behind them are not threatened by the green economy debate.
They will invest in a ‘green economy’ too and hedge their bets, as with BP’s
commitment to go ‘Beyond Petroleum’ in which renewable energy amounts to
1 per cent of their portfolio. It is worth sharing a quote from former Shell chair-
man director, Lord Oxburgh, where he stated:

If you look at it from oil companies’ point of view, effectively what they’re
doing at the moment is continuing business as usual, and sticking toes in
water in a number of areas which might become important in future. But
at present there is a relatively poor business case for making significantly greater
investment in these new areas . . . so when I agree that they may not be
investing enough, that is if you like the point of view of a citizen of the
world rather than a shareholder in one of the companies.
(Strahan, 2009)

This is a far more difficult political economy. Neither the climate change regime,
which is still seeking to develop a post-Kyoto legally binding agreement, nor carbon
markets (where prices of carbon are at record lows), nor governments are sending
powerful signals to the worlds of finance and industry that the future lies in
sustainable low-carbon energy. This will be key. While it continues to be profitable
and legitimate to increase exploitation of new reserves of fossil fuels – even in the
most extreme ways and with the most devastating consequences (tar sands, fracking,
drilling in fragile arctic environments, etc.) – finance will not shift with the speed
or at the scale required for more radical lower carbon transformations. As noted
above, we need loud, long, legal signals about the direction of change, the like of
which have not yet been forthcoming – in fact, quite the opposite. The dash to
82 Peter Newell

gas and the advent of fracking may relieve the US of some pressure to use warfare
to secure future supplies of oil, but we would be wise not to underestimate the
resilience of the fossil fuel energy regime, nor the power of the interests that sustain
it and benefit from it, whatever its social and environmental costs. This should
chime a note of caution with regard to Mitchell’s optimism about the imminent
demise of the fossil fuel order. As Huber notes: ‘Any analysis of a mode of production
beyond capitalism, or the possible emergence of an “alternative energy economy”,
must come to grips with the deep embeddedness of fossil-energy in the most basic
forms of commodity circulation’ (Huber, 2008, p112). As the current political
economy attests, energy issues are at the epicentre of not only the geopolitics of
empire and the global climate crisis, but also the more banal, everyday reproduction
of capitalist social life.
Such an account also implies a critique, however, of the idea that transitions,
or indeed transformations, can be largely organized from above through ‘transi-
tion management’, visions or blueprints without the acquiescence of powerful
fractions of capital. This is not to downplay the role of the state per se, given its
willingness to intervene on behalf of capital in the ways described in the examples
above. Rather, it is to suggest that the ‘animal spirits’ of capitalism in their restless
pursuit of profit through innovation and (creative) destruction will be decisive.
There was no blueprint for previous industrial revolutions. We run the risk,
therefore, of having a mismatch between the theories of change implicit in many
understandings of what is implied by low-carbon energy transitions and what
historical experience seems to suggest about how, when and why change occurs
in capitalism.
Hence, a reading of the landscape of power exposes the enormity of political
lock-in: the interests and the durability of the order, but also the scope for radical
change as we have seen with the shift from coal to oil and now as the oil econ-
omy faces a growing challenge from a renewed ‘dash to gas’ and the spectre of
climate change. In doing so, however, this chapter has also highlighted the danger
that capitalist inequalities and patterns of exploitation will persist in the constitu-
tion of a lower carbon green economy unless there is serious attention to the need
for a ‘just transition’ involving new social compacts and deals involving capital,
labour, state and civil society. The evolving nature of the global capitalist system
has both intensified and rescaled the processes which have brought about the current
predicament for society and constitutes the terrain on which near-term strategies
aimed at addressing climate change and challenging the energy order which fuels
it, will have to be developed. It is precisely an understanding of this terrain, how
it has been formed historically through innovation, exploitation and struggle,
disembedding and re-embedding, that highlights the dilemmas and contradic-
tions facing progressive movements today. Although signs of immediate and drastic
change are not abundant, there is significant movement from below, and it is worth
recalling that transitions, let alone transformations, take decades or often centuries.7
Widespread public and political engagement with climate change is only 30 years
old at best and in its heightened form probably only 10–15 at most, which,
 Green transformations in capitalism 83

set against the long durée of capitalist development, is a very short space of time
indeed.
Given the abundant problems and apparent limits of the ability of the existing
economic system to adequately oversee a ‘green transformation’, the contours of
what such a transformation might look like are unclear. While we can observe
‘moves’ in a Polanyian sense, it is harder to discern a ‘double-movement’ at work.8
Despite a level of common buy-in to the language of transition and transformation,
it is evidently a contested and deeply politicized terrain. Discourses of green growth
naturally seek to reduce transformation to technological innovation and hype about
the possibilities of a new round of ‘greener’ accumulation (Wanner, 2014). As well
as critiques of the inherent impossibility of a truly ‘green capitalism’, given the
tendency to deplete the very resource base upon which the economy depends to
reproduce its own conditions of existence (what has been called the second
contradiction of capitalism) (O’Connor, 1998), green growth narratives downplay
the politics of the transformation. Indeed, one reading of the current situation would
interpret much of the current discourse about win–win opportunities for growth
that is ‘green’ as precisely an attempt to depoliticize critique and attention to the
limits of growth and its destructive environmental effects (Brand, 2012a; Wanner,
2014). There is an intense debate unfolding about whether technological trans-
formation and market innovation are enough to produce the radical shifts that are
acknowledged to be needed, or whether in the proper sense of transition (in its
political rather than sociotechnical meaning) a change of order is required and will
inevitably result from a reordering of production and finance, for example. The
political struggle is, on the part of the incumbent historical bloc, to render climate
change and associated nexus challenges as entirely manageable within a global-
ized capitalist political economy, albeit one in which nature is properly priced and
the animal spirits of capitalists suitably shepherded, and on the part of critics to
suggest that a growth-oriented market-driven economy is structurally incapable of
addressing these challenges, and that the idea of a green transformation within
capitalism essentially amounts to a contradiction in terms. In other words, a great
deal of political work goes into establishing the boundaries around the terrain of
what is up for discussion and by whom.
An account such as this might rightly be accused of privileging macro
transformations by only focusing on episodes of major restructuring and reordering
of the economy because of its attempt to link contemporary calls for a ‘green
industrial revolution’ to relevant historical examples. It is certainly the case that
this discussion has downplayed the role of smaller scale, bottom-up, inadvertent
or disorganized transformations – in values and norms, behaviours, and sites of
resistance – which might challenge prevailing structures and orthodoxies. By
engaging with existing power structures and alignments of interests and incentives,
other sites of potential transformation are inevitably obscured or neglected.
However, it is the case that the terms of transition are currently being set by and
for a set of existing regime and landscape actors whose power to enable and frustrate
particular types of green transformation needs to be understood and challenged.
84 Peter Newell

Rather than look for evidence of the circumstances in which political revolutions
come about as a more radical account might demand, I have assumed here that
capitalism will form the context in which green transformations will have to emerge,
at least initially and embryonically, and therefore that they will be subject to the
dynamics of power pertaining to this model of organizing the economy. To be
clear, though, the starting point was explicitly to look for precedents of more radical
reorganizations in the structure of the economy of the sort I believe are required
again now. I do not share the view, therefore, that a combination of appropriate
market signals and improved technologies or better governance will be sufficient
to produce a serious, deep or lasting green transformation of the sort that is required
to properly create a sustainable economy. That is not to say that technological
transformation will not be possible or that effective responses to some aspects of
sustainability challenges could not be forged. It is possible to envisage a project of
decarbonization that is made compatible with the growth imperatives of capitalism,
a form of ‘climate capitalism’ (Newell and Paterson, 2010), but across the range
of resource limits which a growth-obsessed capitalist economy pushes up against,
where rebound effects means that resource savings are often reinvested in greater
resource use, and the way responses to these challenges tend to employ spatial and
temporal fixes to move crises around rather than resolve them, the picture is less
optimistic. The longer term goal, therefore, has to be a transformation of capitalism
rather than a transformation within, but that we have to start the analysis on the
terrain of the here and now and the actually existing political economy, as it is,
not as we would like it to be.

Notes
1 Marxists use the concept of fractions of capital in different ways to refer to a particular
stage in the circuit of capital – i.e. ‘finance capital’, ‘commodity capital’ etc. or sometimes
in relation to sectoral interests – i.e. ‘mining’ or ‘agricultural capital’ where interests are
understood in relation to their political representation within policy processes (Clarke,
1978; van der Pijl, 1998, p3).
2 The concept of the regime of accumulation refers to the way in which production,
circulation, consumption and distribution organize and expand capital in a way that
stabilizes the economy over time. The modes of regulation required to stabilize these
regimes include the law, state policy, corporate governance and cultures of consumption.
3 The term gained prominence when it was used by Antonio Gramsci in his essay
‘Americanism and Fordism’, in his Prison Notebooks.
4 Lipietz claims that ‘creative destruction’ through a green transport revolution would
suppress 4.5 million jobs in the production of individual cars but create 8 million jobs
in collective transport (Lipietz, 2013, p13).
5 Disciplinary neoliberalism refers to the ways in which the scope for legitimate state action
and progressive democratic politics is circumscribed by global trade, and investment
accords and the rights of capital over states begin to take the form of a ‘new
constitutionalism’, protected by international law (Gill, 1995).
6 Mitchell’s claim is based on the fact that the era of abundant oil appears to have ended,
given that the world is using up stores of petroleum faster than new supplies can be
discovered and the need to reduce fossil fuel consumption in order to tackle climate change
(Mitchell, 2011, pp231–233).
 Green transformations in capitalism 85

7 Individual sectoral and service energy transitions typically unfold over 40–130 years while
aggregate transitions involving the whole economy could take centuries (Fouquet and
Pearson, 2012, p2).
8 As Mittelman suggests, the term ‘move’ rather than movement is used by Polanyi to
indicate the proto forms by which social forces ‘waxed and waned’ before ultimately
giving birth to a political organization that begot a transformation (Mittelman, 1998, p867).
6
THE POLITICAL DYNAMICS OF
GREEN TRANSFORMATIONS
Feedback effects and institutional
context1

Matthew Lockwood
DOI: 10.4324/9781315747378-6

Introduction
Why do green transformations in some countries appear to have more momentum
than in others? As other contributions in this book make clear, there are multiple
interpretations of what transformations to more sustainable economies and societies
might look like. However, even with relatively limited and mainstream conceptual-
izations, such as decarbonization of the economy or the growth of renewable energy,
there are large variations between countries in how far they have progressed over
the last two decades.
Whatever form green transformations take, some basic features of their
political dynamics will be common to all. There are some fairly obvious factors
that help determine where such transformations are more likely to start – for
example, the absence of a powerful coal lobby (Steves and Teytelboym, 2013) or
a more green-minded population (Harrison and Sundstrom, 2010). However,
sustainable transformations are likely to take some time – for example, at least two
or three decades for decarbonizing energy systems and economies. A key corollary
of this is that successful transformations not only require instigation, but also have
to be politically sustained for long periods. Coalitions need to be created around
a number of different objectives (see Schmitz, Newell, this book), but they also
have to be kept together and expanded over time. Eventually, as the costs of more
sustainable technologies and processes come down, green transformations should
become economically self-sustaining, led effectively by a new green demand
paradigm (Perez, 2013). However, until that stage is reached, public policy is needed
to lead the transformation. Such policy will tend to be highly political because
it effectively involves a process of creating and managing rents to pay for the
development of greener products and processes (Schmitz et al., 2013).
 Political dynamics of green transformations 87

In this chapter I argue that the sustainability of green transformations depends

heavily on the political effects of policies aimed at bringing about transformation. These
effects in turn either strengthen or weaken support for such policies, causing posi-
tive or negative feedback effects and divergent policy paths. In the political science
literature such knock-on effects are known as ‘policy feedback’. My focus here is
on public policy-making, since this will inevitably be needed for large-scale trans-
formations of economies, but I would argue that the same set of issues also apply
to campaigns and other actions by social movements or civil society organizations.
Unless they create some form of positive feedback through their actions or ideas,
such movements and organizations will not be able to lead significant transform-
ations. Especially for transformations relating to global sustainability problems
(including most ‘planetary boundaries’), this dynamic is crucial, since such problems
in themselves are not seen by the majority of people as sufficiently urgent to prioritize
action, or pose severe collective action challenges that block change.
The political effects of policies depend in part on how policies are designed.
However, both policy design and their political consequences will also be affected
by the nature of underlying institutions and dominant ideas, which vary between coun-
tries (Morgan et al., 2010). The factors of policy feedback and underlying institutions
are likely to play a major role in shaping the speed and likely success or failure of
transformations, since they help determine the political dynamics of transformation.
They also point to the possibility of trying to accelerate transformations.
Below, I explore these issues through a number of comparative examples, a
particularly useful approach, since it allows the examination of divergent pathways.
In the following section, I focus on renewable energy policy, so it is useful first
to briefly consider the political forces and relationships at work in the energy sector.
I then examine the concept of policy feedback and how it can be a useful analytical
tool for understanding the dynamics of renewable energy policy in Germany, the
UK, India and China. The role of institutional context is then discussed and the
case studies revisited. The chapter concludes with some reflections on the approach,
its relation to the issue of social justice, and implications for accelerating green
transformations.

The politics of energy

In modern energy sectors there are broadly three groups of actors that are important
for political dynamics: energy providers, policy-makers and users of energy (e.g. Scarse
and Smith, 2009, p710). The relationships between these groups of actors ultimately
determine investment, technological change and outcomes such as greenhouse gas
emissions, all of which will have further feedback effects on actors (Figure 6.1).
Energy providers can in principle be of any size, from individuals to multi-
national corporations, and privately or state owned, although in most contexts
the politically important incumbent actors are large companies. Their investment
decisions, especially for new technologies, will be shaped heavily by incentives,
risks and regulations set by policy-makers. Once made, these decisions create vested
88 Matthew Lockwood

Policy makers
• Politicians
• Civil servants
• Regulator
• Public bodies (universities,
state banks)

Policy and Electoral/political Political

regulation Lobbying pressure narratives

Energy industries Energy users

Selling energy • Households
• Incumbent energy firms
• New entrants • Business (industry,
• Supply chain firms Buying energy commercial etc.)
(revenue) • Civil society

Investments Vested interests User practices Investments

Outcomes
• Infrastructure
• Technological change
• GHG emissions

FIGURE 6.1 Political and economic dynamics in the energy system

Source: Lockwood et al., 2013.

interests that shape the subsequent actions of incumbents in energy markets. This
is particularly so in the energy sector because infrastructures are so long-lived, and
so give a heavily path-dependent nature to regimes and transitions. However, large
energy firms are rarely passive and usually seek to influence policy actively through
a range of means, including direct lobbying, secondments to government and sitting
on technical committees that shape markets, all backed up with the threat of invest-
ment strikes (Jessop, 1990) or divestment leading to the lights going out. In privatized
and liberalized markets, a key objective for incumbents in influencing regulation
and policy will often be to maintain high costs of and barriers to entry in markets
(e.g. Stigler, 1971), meaning that new and potentially innovative new companies
will find it harder to enter the energy sector.
However, in addition to being lobbied by energy providers, politicians will also
pay attention to the relationships they have with energy users, which encompasses
both the general public and businesses outside of the energy sector. Political elites
may also be concerned about climate change and want to see change towards low-
carbon energy, either because that is what the public want, or because of personal
conviction. Among businesses, large, energy-intensive users tend to lobby strongly
against policies that increase energy costs, while other businesses may support
transitions because they see opportunities for revenue in low-carbon products and
services, and in owning renewable energy assets. This split in views can even run
 Political dynamics of green transformations 89

within a single company – for example Siemens, which manufactures both wind
turbines and conventional turbines for coal and gas power plants.
Overall, much of the process by which policy-makers shape the institutions that
govern the energy system is effectively a balancing act between the perceived
interests of energy users with those of energy provider incumbents (Peltzman, 1976).
This is what makes a sustainable energy transition so challenging, because policy-
makers have to find some way of managing this balance through a process of pro-
found change.
This framework is very general. The actors and relationships in any actual case
will depend on the institutional context. For example, in many OECD (Organ-
isation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries, the energy sector
has been liberalized, and incumbents are large (often multinational) private cor-
porations. In countries like China and India, most energy companies remain state-
owned, giving their relationships with policy-makers a different quality. There
will also be differences in the relationship between policy-makers and energy
users, determined especially by differences in the nature of politics between coun-
tries. This can apply even between countries with apparently very similar polities.
For example, Germany and the UK are both mature European democracies, but
Germany’s proportional representation electoral system means that environ-
mentally minded voters have enjoyed much stronger political representation
through its Green Party, whereas in the UK the first-past-the-post system prevents
this, and the route to influencing policy goes via environmental campaign organ-
izations. In non-democratic systems, such as China’s, the relationship between
political elites and mass publics is obviously different again, as political pressure comes
not through voting but through different kinds of demands from a range of actors,
from urban communities protesting about pollution, to local governments seeking
to maximize economic growth (Lampton, 2014). However, even in authoritarian
China, ensuring that energy is available at an affordable cost will still be a major
concern of political elites (e.g. Yuan and Zuo, 2011a).

Feedback effects and renewable energy policies

Policy feedback effects

The idea that policies can have political effects is now a well-established idea in
political science, with a number of applications in areas such as welfare and
pensions policy (e.g. Béland, 2010). As Skocpol puts it, ‘Policies not only flow
from prior institutions and politics; they also reshape institutions and politics, making
some future developments more likely, and hindering the possibilities for others’
(quoted in Patashnik and Zelizer, 2009, p1).
In a classic essay on such effects, Pierson (1993) distinguishes a number of
potential routes for such effects. One is that policies distribute resources and create
material incentives, which can work to create or strengthen particular social interest
groups: ‘Public policies often create “spoils” that provide a strong motivation for
90 Matthew Lockwood

beneficiaries to mobilize in favor of programmatic maintenance or expansion’

(Pierson, 1993, p599). Second, policies can also transform state capacities and institu-
tions, changing the administrative possibilities for government initiatives in the future
and affecting later prospects for policy implementation. For example, policies that
involve the collection or generation of new types of information then make possible
other kinds of policies dependent on that information.
Most importantly, feedback effects can work via what Pierson calls the ‘mass
public’, transforming the interests, identity and political participation of large
groups of people. For example, the introduction of social security in the US created
the conditions for the invention of a new social category (‘retired people’) and the
formation of the politically powerful American Association of Retired Persons
(AARP). Another important mass public policy feedback effect can occur where
a policy induces large numbers of people to make commitments or investments
that it subsequently becomes ‘both expensive and politically perilous’ (Béland,
2010, p575) to reverse, thereby ‘locking in’ the policy decision (see also Pierson,
1993, p610).
As well as the allocation of material or political resources, there are also what
Pierson calls ‘interpretive effects’ (1993, p611), where policies may produce ‘cues’
for parts of the electorate that ‘help them develop political identities, goals, and
strategies’ (ibid., p619). Particular policies can become iconic of particular political
approaches and help mobilize support for or opposition to that approach, above
and beyond any material effect. Given the complexity of modern life, policies can
generate ‘focusing events’ or cues for social actors, but in that process also ‘heighten
the visibility of some social and political connections while obscuring others’.
Much of the policy feedback literature has tended to focus on cases of positive
feedback, not least because it is in these cases that policies become successfully
entrenched. As Pierson (2000, p259) notes, positive policy feedback is one of the
drivers of increasing returns in politics, which by analogy from economics (e.g. Arthur,
1989) creates the lock-in noted above. Increasing returns also make political pro-
cesses path-dependent, in the sense that small details of policy design or institutional
context will lead to rapidly diverging paths if one involves positive feedback and the
other does not. By contrast, negative political feedback effects undermine policies and
limit their transformative reach (Pierson, 1993, p600; Béland, 2010, p575). This is
particularly important for understanding the political dynamics of attempted green
transformations, since such transformations often involve additional financial costs
and challenges to vested interests, which can quickly create opposition.
Overall, whether and how quickly transformation occurs depends on the
balance of positive and negative effects, whether policies can be amended to improve
that balance, or indeed whether new and more transformative policies are feasible
(Weaver, 2010, p138). Where policies have strongly positive feedback effects they
become successfully locked in, but where there are both potential negative and
positive feedbacks there can be a ‘snakes and ladders’ pattern whereby what appear
to be similar policies can diverge according to which feedback effect dominates
(Weaver, 2010).
 Political dynamics of green transformations 91

These considerations clearly apply to the example of renewable energy raised

above. Most countries have some kind of support policies for renewable energy,
yet in some countries these have not gone very far, whereas in others they have
taken off. It might be argued that contrasts are simply due to the extent or generosity
of subsidy, but this in itself begs the question of how higher levels of subsidy (which
are clearly seen in countries like Denmark and Germany) are politically sustained.
One factor which might be expected to have an influence on the knock-on
effects of policies is policy design (Pierson, 1993; Patashnik and Zelizer, 2009).
Apparently small differences in policy design may lead to quite big differences in
who can access the benefits from the policy, how those benefits are distributed,
what the cost is and who bears that cost. Different policy approaches can also have
varying interpretive effects, resonating strongly or falling flat with existing or new
constituencies, and leading to large divergences in political sustainability. In the
case of renewable energy policy design, a key issue is how different designs affect
the political dynamics of the energy sector discussed above, and in particular the
balance between producers and users.

Germany and the UK

Germany and the UK provide contrasting examples of how policy feedback has
produced different pathways in the growth of renewable energy. At the start of
the 1990s, neither Germany nor the UK generated significant amounts of electricity
from renewable sources. In Germany, policies adopted from 1990 onwards led to
rapid sustained growth in renewable electricity capacity, which actually accelerated
after 2000. In the UK, renewable electricity was also eligible for support from around
the same time, but growth has been much slower. By 2012, total renewable
generation in the UK was around 11 per cent of total demand, less than half
the share in Germany. The growth of renewables has generated negative feedback
effects in both countries, especially opposition on grounds of cost. However, a key
difference is that Germany’s policy approach created considerable positive feedback
effects which are largely absent in the UK, leaving the policy there far more
politically exposed and currently in some trouble.
The growth of renewables in Germany has undoubtedly benefited from higher
levels of environmental awareness and stronger opposition to nuclear power than
in the UK. However, the nature of the policies adopted in the two countries has
also been distinctively different. Germany’s policies have offered stable, technology-
specific prices to renewable generators (fixed prices from 2000) and a guaranteed
market. By providing attractive returns with low risk and ensuring grid connection
(Mitchell et al., 2006), a key aspect of the feed-in tariff was that its benefits could
be accessed by a range of groups, including farmers, households, cooperatives,
schools, small businesses and municipalities, rather than large energy companies,
which were, in fact, excluded from the policy. The policy supported a range of
technologies, not only wind but also solar photovoltaics (PV), biomass and
anaerobic digestion. The fact that conservative farmers in areas such as Bavaria
92 Matthew Lockwood

benefited from the policy was particularly important for keeping Germany’s centre-
right political party on board.
A coalition of political support for renewable energy rapidly grew through the
1990s (Jacobsson and Lauber, 2000, p266), created partly by the development of
vested interests, with 340,000 Germans having invested around €12 billion in
renewable energy projects by the early 2000s (Sawin, 2004, p25). There were also
political effects that worked via the strengthening of interest groups, with an
increasing professionalization of renewable energy associations, amid strong support
from the Green Party and the Ministry of the Environment (Laird and Stefes, 2009).
In addition, because renewables policy was linked to industrial policy, especially
from the late 1990s onwards, employment in factories producing wind turbines
and solar PV panels created a new constituency in favour of a strong renewables
policy, especially in the former East Germany.
This wide coalition helped to maintain and strengthen renewables policy – for
example, it was the involvement of municipalities in the 1990s that prevented the
collapse of solar PV (Jacobsson and Lauber, 2006, p266). When the first renewable
energy law was threatened by legal action by the large utilities in the late 1990s
and the government proposed a reduction in feed-in rates, the Green Party
mobilized a wide coalition of environmental groups, solar industry associations and
companies, trade unions and regional politicians to successfully oppose the changes
(Jacobsson and Lauber, 2006, p265).
Germany’s renewable policy has not been without negative feedback effects. It
provoked strong opposition from the incumbent energy companies and over time
the overall cost to energy consumers has grown, despite sharp falls in the prices of
wind turbines and solar panels. At the same time, some of the employment benefits
have evaporated as solar PV producers have been undercut by Chinese imports.
Nevertheless, despite current debates about cost, the growth of renewable energy
in Germany looks set to continue to enjoy broad support. The main political party
opposed to further expansion lost all its seats in the 2013 parliamentary elections,
and the German government pressed strongly for a national renewables target to
be part of the European 2030 package in early 2014. The new government has
introduced reforms to reduce some subsidies and spread their costs more widely,
but planned growth in renewables remains unchanged.2
In the UK, policy took a different course. From 1989, renewable energy was
in theory eligible for support through an auctioning policy, although in practice
very little capacity was built (Mitchell and Connor, 2004). In 2003, a Renewables
Obligation (RO) was introduced, which placed an obligation on large energy
companies to source a certain proportion of generation each year from renewables.
This created a market for renewables, but with a price that was not certain, and
one which basically rewarded the cheapest technology (on-shore wind). As a result,
almost all investment in new renewable energy under the RO was by large
companies able to bear the price risk, and was concentrated in wind only (Mitchell
et al., 2006). In terms of Figure 6.1 above, while German policies had begun to
transform the structure of relationships in the sector, breaking down the distinction
 Political dynamics of green transformations 93

between providers and consumers, UK policy reinforced those structural divisions.

A small and badly run grants programme supported a trickle of investment in solar
PV by households, but this was at a tiny level compared with Germany. Eventually,
in 2010, a feed-in tariff for small-scale renewables was introduced, but following
explosive growth in solar PV, tariff rates were quickly scaled back. Only in 2013
has the desire to reduce risk for larger investors led the UK to finally embrace a
version of feed-in tariffs more widely.
The policy design of the RO has created weak positive feedback effects, and
left the growth of renewables in the UK exposed to considerable negative feedback
effects. Large energy companies have made the largest investment in renewables,
but they also have existing high-carbon assets, and the companies have been half-
hearted advocates for renewables at best. Their ambivalence has also affected interest
group formation, with one organization (RenewableUK) representing larger
companies and another (the Renewable Energy Association) the small-scale
renewables lobby. During the debate about the introduction of a feed-in tariff in
the UK, these two groups were unable to agree. The UK has also so far failed to
develop a strong industrial policy and supply chain for renewable energy, meaning
that employment effects are nowhere near as politically important as they have
been in Germany, and that a narrative about the importance of ‘green jobs’ is not
yet taken for granted.
At the same time, the dominance of large corporate interests in renewables has
produced stronger negative feedback effects. One issue is planning. Whereas in
Germany around half of onshore wind turbines were owned by farmers or local
cooperatives in the late 1990s, in the UK 98 per cent were owned by large energy
companies or developers, which have no link to or stake in the local society and
economy (Pollitt, 2010, p36). Szarka (2006, p3046) argues that ‘It is clear from
fieldwork contacts with anti-wind protesters in Britain . . . that one cause of rejection
is the feeling of injustice engendered by outside firms who exploit a local resource
and impose burdens, but offer no community benefit or compensation’. Moreover,
and again in contrast with Germany where tariffs were adjusted to help investors
in less windy sites, the RO has incentivized developers to seek out the windiest
sites, which often tend to be in ecologically and visually sensitive areas.
The fact that much of the financial benefit from renewables policy has been
captured by large energy firms, which have become extremely unpopular since
the mid-2000s due to price rises, suspected profiteering and high executive salaries,
also leaves UK policy particularly exposed to the negative feedback effects of cost.
Germany’s renewable electricity support programme has so far cost about four times
what the UK has spent, as a share of national income (OECD, 2013, p48). Despite
this, rifts on the future of renewable power in the political elite and the media are
stronger in the UK – with, for example, proposals to halt and even reverse on-
shore wind expansion – creating considerable political uncertainty and a chilling
effect on investment.
Overall, in Germany, renewables policy appears to have maintained a dominance
of positive over negative feedback effects through spreading the benefits of the
94 Matthew Lockwood

policy widely through society. Policy-makers, not without controversy, have tried
to solve the problem of how to manage interests during transformation discussed
above not so much by balancing them but by beginning to transform energy users
into producers and challenging incumbents directly. It was not clear that this was
intended at the start of the policy, but it has evolved in such a way as to produce
this outcome. In the UK, by contrast, policy has benefited incumbent producers,
but the problem of balancing this approach with the interests of users has become
increasingly fraught over time.

India and China

This framework can also be applied in the very different settings of countries like
India and China. These countries are still at a relatively early stage of transformation
in terms of renewable power. For example, despite rapid growth (Lewis, 2011;
Sharma et al., 2012), wind power as the leading technology in both countries still
only provided 2.5 per cent of total electricity generation in India in 2011 and 1.5
per cent in China. Policy feedback effects are likely to be much weaker at this
stage. However, both countries also have ambitious targets for renewable energy,
and the policy feedback approach can help identify how far, and where, these
ambitions are likely to encounter political problems.
Investment in wind power in India has historically been driven by capital subsidies
and tax incentives, including accelerated depreciation (AD). This policy has drawn
in investors from a wide range of businesses (who also seek on-site power generation
given the unreliability of the Indian grid), and also fostered substantial development
of wind farms by wind-turbine manufacturers themselves in a so-called ‘vertically
integrated’ model (Benecke, 2011; Shrimali, 2014). Interestingly, in terms of
Figure 6.1 above, this policy approach means that the distinction between energy
providers and consumers is again broken down, but unlike as in Germany, only
for industrial and commercial customers, not for domestic customers, and with
quite different political effects. Additional support mechanisms have also been
introduced over the 2000s, including feed-in tariffs at the state level, a ‘generation-
based incentive’ offered by the central government and a renewables obligation
on (largely state-owned) electricity companies, but not all of these are functioning
particularly effectively (Shrimali and Tirumalachetty, 2013).
The cost of feed-in tariffs for wind is incurred by state utilities and passed on
to customers. While the relatively small role of wind means that this is not yet a
major problem, in some states, utilities and regulators have begun to worry about
the sustainability of such costs and are pressing for a move to an auctioning policy
(Kanchan, 2013), which has been successful in bringing down generation costs in
solar PV (Deshmukh et al., 2011).
At the same time, support via accelerated depreciation has also produced
negative feedback effects, not so much via electricity consumers as via the federal
budget. In theory, this route leads ultimately to taxpayers, but the nature of Indian
politics means that mechanisms of accountability are limited and the pressure for
 Political dynamics of green transformations 95

cuts to support mainly comes from reformist policy-makers themselves. Accelerated

depreciation covers other investments in addition to wind farms, but overall it is
responsible for almost half of India’s foregone tax revenue from the corporate sector
(Bandyopadhyay, 2013), and has come under increasing pressure from a government
interested in fiscal reform. In 2012, the allowance for wind investments was slashed
and the generation-based incentive was cut, leading to a sharp slowdown in new
investment.3
If wind, and indeed large-scale solar PV investments grow on the scale envisaged
by national targets for renewables, a further negative feedback effect may arise
through competition for land. Early so-called solar ‘ultra-mega power plants’ are
being sited on government-owned land, but clashes over the siting of renewables
in farming communities are not unknown and informed observers argue that without
benefits for local communities this will be a potential problem for the growth of
renewables in future.4
Against these negative feedback effects, positive effects are also likely to play
some role. India has favoured local turbine manufacturing through import duties,
although its industrial policy for wind has been nowhere nearly as active as China’s
(Lewis, 2011). The leading turbine manufacturer, Suzlon, estimates that the wind
industry is creating around 40,000 jobs a year. Also important, as in Germany, will
be popular ownership of, or participation in renewables, with a large increase in
solar PV on domestic roofs anticipated, partly financed and/or owned by energy
services companies.
China’s wind boom originates from 2003, when the government introduced a
policy of auctioning opportunities to build wind farms on pre-selected sites, with
preferential loans and tax conditions, grid access and other infrastructure provided,
while at the same time placing obligations on state-owned power generation
companies to generate a certain proportion of electricity from wind, and on state-
owned supply companies to buy a certain proportion of electricity from renewable
sources (Lema and Ruby, 2007; Lewis, 2011). The approach has incentivized a
very rapid expansion of investment in wind capacity, with less attention to quality.
There have been problems with poor turbine performance, lack of grid access and
poor maintenance, and increasingly frequent incidents of turbine failure (Wang
et al., 2012; Zhang et al., 2013). From 2009, a feed-in tariff policy was introduced
to try to address some of these issues.
The key success of China’s policy has been in building up what is now a globally
successful wind industry through a highly active industrial policy (Lewis, 2011;
Wang et al., 2012; Lema et al., 2013). This has led to positive feedback effects both
through employment (in 2008 an estimated 1 million people were employed in
the Chinese renewables industry, mostly in wind (Li, 2010)) and export earnings.
These effects can be expected to grow further if the Chinese wind industry can
further develop its position and if global wind markets hold up.
As in India, much of the political dynamics of the wind energy boom in China
play out between large energy companies and policy-makers. At the national level,
the state has been keen to promote a wind industry that is now a major exporter.
96 Matthew Lockwood

Local governments are often keen promoters of smaller wind farms, which do not
require state-level approval because they bring tax revenue, provide jobs and help
local industry (Zhang et al., 2013, p338). Energy companies, meanwhile, have mixed
interests. Grid and supply firms have to buy wind energy, but to some extent have
been allowed to pass costs through to consumers and in any case have soft budget
constraints as state-owned enterprises. State-owned generation companies have
invested heavily in wind power because of the requirement on them to meet their
portfolio targets, which affects their ability to obtain permission to build more
conventional (coal and nuclear) capacity. Such companies own more than 80
per cent of China’s wind capacity (Zhang et al., 2013, p338).
The costs of wind and other renewables in China are now financed from a fund
set up by a surcharge on consumers’ bills (Yuan and Zuo, 2011a). The surcharge
is still fairly low, but has been increased several times since the mid-2000s. In spite
of this, the renewables fund is still facing shortfalls and, as a result, there have been
delays in payments to wind developers since 2010 (Davidson, 2013). The most
recent increase to the surcharge has involved a doubling for industrial customers
but no change for domestic customers, a reverse of the German policy by which
most industrial users were exempt from such charges. At the same time, feed-in
tariffs have been somewhat scaled back, especially for solar PV. However, the overall
political effects of negative cost feedback are likely to be limited. This is because
the Chinese government sets electricity prices centrally and consumer prices have
been kept low, including for industrial users (Rutkowski, 2013).
In China, then, policy has been kept on track by strong positive feedback via
the development of wind as industrial policy and by more direct control of energy
companies by the state. The potential negative feedback effects of costs falling on
electricity consumers is likely to remain small as long as the state continues to keep
power prices low. In effect, in terms of Figure 6.1 above, the Chinese state is
using its huge fiscal resources to act as a buffer between providers and users.

The role of institutional context

Diversity in social and economic institutional systems

In addition to the nature of policies themselves, we might also expect the wider
discursive, institutional and political context in which policies are made and
implemented to also have an influence (Pierson, 1993, p602; Patashnik and Zelizer,
2009, p3). As discussed above, it is these contexts that determine the exact nature
of the structural relationships between energy providers, users and policy-makers
(see Figure 6.1 above) in different countries.
First, the range of options for policy design which are acceptable in any
particular context will to a great extent be prescribed by what are sometimes called
‘policy paradigms’ – i.e. interpretive frameworks of ideas and standards that are
‘embedded in the very terminology through which policy-makers communicate
about their work . . . influential precisely because so much of it is taken for granted
 Political dynamics of green transformations 97

and unamenable to scrutiny as a whole’ (Hall, 1993, p279). Particular policy para-
digms are in turn often associated with particular institutional systems. For example,
Schmidt (2002) argues that in Britain policy has been dominated by a neoliberal
paradigm, linked to a liberalized market institutional system and a politics deeply
influenced by Thatcherism. By contrast, Germany’s distinctive ‘social market’
paradigm complements a set of more deliberative economic institutions, while
France’s paradigm of dirigisme is a good fit for an institutional system in which the
state plays a prominent role.
Beyond policy design, institutional systems may also influence the articulation
of policies and political effects – i.e. how far positive and negative feedback effects
are likely to arise, and whether these effects are amplified or dampened. Many
policies for green transformation are essentially economic policies, involving taxes,
subsidies and other forms of state or institutional support, so economic institutions
are particularly important. For example, a renewable energy support policy can
offer a subsidy, but how far investment in renewables actually takes place depends
on how far financial institutions complement that policy and provide credit on
acceptable terms. Equally, a country with labour market and welfare systems that
produce high levels of poverty and inequality may find it hard to place the costs
of renewable energy support on energy bills, as this amplifies the political effects
of a negative policy feedback to the point of crisis.
The importance of context for policy feedback effects suggests that differences
in speeds and paths of green transformation in different countries may be related
to institutional diversity across countries. There are many approaches to understanding
such institutional diversity (see e.g. Crouch and Streeck, 1997; Schmidt, 2002;
Morgan et al., 2010), and considerable debate over whether it is possible to classify
countries into particular ‘varieties of capitalism’ (Hall and Soskice, 2001; Crouch,
2005a; Hancké et al., 2007) or the relevance of those models for countries outside
of Europe (Carney et al., 2009; Schneider, 2009). However, common to all these
approaches is the idea that different countries do have distinctive systems of social
and economic institutions that complement one another and which evolve over
time (Crouch, 2005b; Streeck and Thelen, 2005). We can therefore expect such
systems to have significant implications for the speed and path of a green
transformation.

Germany and the UK

Returning to the cases of Germany and the UK, there are several contrasts in
institutions and discourses which may help explain why Germany adopted a policy
that had the potential to create stronger positive feedback effects, and also why
that potential was realized more fully.5
The Renewables Obligation (RO) was chosen in the UK explicitly as a
mechanism that attempted to mimic a market – i.e. not setting a fixed price – and
avoided an explicit technology-specific focus. It was seen as superior to the
German feed-in tariff specifically for these reasons. This approach was entirely
98 Matthew Lockwood

consistent with a policy-making environment in the UK dominated by a neo-

classical, and often neoliberal, economic paradigm. In Germany, the neoliberally
minded finance ministry was also opposed to a technology-specific feed-in tariff.
However, the wider German policy paradigm was more influenced by the concept
of ‘Ordoliberalism’, a social market approach developed in Germany after the Second
World War, which laid much greater emphasis on active government intervention
to ensure competition and prevent monopolistic or oligopolistic market power
(Toke and Lauber, 2007).
Ordoliberalism also turned out to be far more consistent with the idea of an
active industrial policy – and therefore a mission-oriented green industrial policy
(see Mazzucato, this book) – than the UK’s policy paradigm. In the UK, govern-
ments since the 1970s have largely been sceptical of any directed form of industrial
policy, with the Treasury in particular a major opponent. More widely, many
comparative analyses of economic institutions placed emphasis on the much greater
degree of coordination among industrial companies and the state in Germany
compared with the UK (e.g. Hall and Soskice, 2001; Schmidt, 2002).
Other aspects of Germany’s institutions have also turned out to play important
roles in facilitating both the implementation of its renewable policy and in
increasing its net positive political feedback effects. Much of the investment by
non-corporate actors in renewables has been supported by state finance in the form
of the KfW bank, channelled through a network of local and regional banks which
know their clients personally. The UK has no equivalent financial institutions.
In Germany, higher energy costs for consumers have not produced quite the
same political backlash as in the UK, partly because higher levels of welfare and
lower inequality in Germany make fuel poverty and squeezed incomes in the middle
less acute problems (Crepaz 1998; Iversen and Soskice, 2006).
Below the level of national political economy, German federalism and decen-
tralization has also meant that municipalism is strong, at least compared with the
UK’s currently highly centralized system. Both municipal and regional govern-
ment in Germany have been highly supportive of various aspects of renewables
growth, and many municipalities in Germany still own energy supply and genera-
tion businesses that have given them a vehicle for investment. In the UK, such
companies disappeared after the Second World War.

India and China

In the case of India and China, there are similarities as well as differences in
institutional context, which partly explains why they initially adopted similar
support policies for wind that focused on capital costs and directed subsidy towards
those institutions that play a leading role in their respective political economies –
state-owned enterprises in China and family-owned corporations in India (e.g.
Taylor and Nölke, 2008). Both countries have also historically embraced significant
state intervention on the economy (although China to a greater extent than India),
 Political dynamics of green transformations 99

including active industrial policy. Chinese provinces and many Indian states also
have state-owned energy utilities with soft budget constraints, a situation which
has given policy-makers more room for manoeuvre in the balance between pro-
viders and users, and has also softened negative policy feedback that might work
through private sector incumbents.
However, one key difference between the two countries that helps explain why
the pace of wind expansion is currently faltering in India and not in China is the
unwillingness of policy-makers in India’s central government to continue to
subsidize wind via accelerated depreciation. This unwillingness can be explained
in part by the policy paradigm of the current Indian government led until 2014
by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who has pursued a series of reforms over
the last decade aimed at liberalization, tax simplification and fiscal consolidation
clearly influenced by the ideas of orthodox economics.

Conclusion
What constitutes a green transformation will be open to contestation, but for any
kind of transformation actually to occur it must be politically sustainable. Alliances
for transformations need not only to be formed but also maintained and expanded.
In this sense, if policies (or actions or campaigns by social movements) are to be
successful in bringing about green transformations, they must be self-reinforcing,
creating constituencies for their own implementation and expansion.
In terms of the concepts explored here, this means that policies must have a
preponderance of positive feedback effects over negative ones if they are to
become ‘locked in’. For many sustainability problems, including climate change,
this represents a major challenge, since transformative policies fly in the face of
existing high-carbon lock-in and will challenge existing vested interests, norms and
institutions. In that sense, policies for green transformations are always likely to
encounter negative feedback.
Here I have argued that an important factor in the balance between positive
and negative feedback effects is the design of policies, using a number of com-
parative case studies. For example, Germany’s policy approach has been to distribute
subsidies from policy relatively widely and use industrial policy to create employ-
ment, both of which have created important positive feedback effects to offset
the inevitable negative feedback on the costs of the policy. This is not so much a
case of grassroots innovation from below (see Smith and Ely, this book) as mass
appropriation of innovation from above. The UK’s renewable support mechanism
has done neither of these things, leaving subsidy to be captured by large and highly
unpopular energy incumbents and the policy exposed.
I have also argued that both policy design and political effects in turn will depend
in part on institutional systems and dominant policy paradigms present in a country.
Again, taking the contrast between the UK and Germany, a technology-neutral,
market-mimicking policy was the natural fit for the liberal policy paradigm in the
100 Matthew Lockwood

former case, whereas an industrial policy for renewables was very difficult to get
going, in contrast to Germany’s more managed, coordinated institutional system
and discourse.
Most of the analysis in this chaper focuses on two sets of comparisons, one
between Germany and the UK, and the other between China and India. However,
it is also worth briefly considering what can be learned from comparing Asia with
Europe. The first region has fast-growing rising powers with young populations,
whereas the second is now economically sclerotic and fiscally constrained. This
implies that, for a number of reasons, we might expect renewable energy policy
to have a greater degree of political sustainability in the Asian countries, especially
China. The Chinese state has deep pockets, which enables it to limit the negative
feedback arising from costs to consumers. Both India and China can expect to create
exporting industries in renewable energy on a greater scale, certainly than the UK.
Both are at a much earlier stage of mass deployment. However, they could still
learn from the different experiences of Germany and the UK, and be aware of
both the political opportunities and potential traps that arise from policy design.
What are the lessons from this approach, if any, for accelerating green
transformations? One is simply that climate policy-making, which is dominated
by economics, should include more consideration of the political implications of
policy. To some extent, policy-makers already do this in a self-censoring way,
avoiding policies they think will be too controversial with some groups, but they
rarely think about deliberate strategies for positive feedback. In this sense, we should
learn from the German experience. The creation of positive feedback effects in
renewable energy policy in Germany was not an initially explicit aim; rather, this
aspect emerged as an unintended consequence of policy design. However, this does
not mean that feedback aspects of policy should not be thought about from the
start; indeed, there is precisely an opportunity to do so. As the political dynamics
of policy unfold over time, a strategy of adaptive management may also be impor-
tant, responding to opportunities for positive feedback or the threats of negative
feedback as they arise. To some extent, the German case again provides a fairly
successful example of this.
A second implication is that countries with institutions that are less supportive
of positive feedback effects should seek to change their institutions or develop new
ones. This is a controversial area, with some arguing that institutional systems cannot
be changed and others that they can. The key thing seems to be that what matters
for learning from others is institutional function rather than form.
Finally, the approach taken here also throws some light on the relationships
between social justice and green transformations. Policies which spread the benefits
of transformations more widely – for example, Germany’s employment in renew-
able supply chains in the deprived north and east of the country, are likely to produce
valuable positive feedback effects and be more sustainable. A different perspective
on the issue is to pose the question the other way round – i.e. does greater social
justice make green transformation easier? Again, the experience of Germany and
 Political dynamics of green transformations 101

the UK would suggest that it does, because the better off are the poorest in society,
the more able they are to bear some part of the costs of transformation and able
to claim some share of the benefits

Notes
1 I am grateful to Carlota Perez, Hubert Schmitz and the other contributors to this book
for comments on earlier drafts, and to Ashwin Gambhir for discussions on India’s wind-
energy policies. The framework used here for analysing the politics of energy was jointly
developed with Caroline Kuzemko, Catherine Mitchell and Richard Hoggett. This work
was supported by The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)
[EP/K001582/1].
2 Available online at: www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2014/04/germany%E2%80%99s-
renewables-reforms-are-a-step-towards-giving-energy-sector-back-to-big-corporations/.
Accessed 16 June 2014.
3 Available online at: www.business-standard.com/article/companies/restore-accelerated-
depreciation-scheme-for-wind-sector-suzlon-114020900114_1.html. Accessed 16 June
2014.
4 Personal communication, Ashwin Gambhir, PRAYAS.
5 See also Laird and Stefes (2009) for a similar analysis of Germany and the US.
7
GREEN TRANSFORMATIONS
FROM BELOW?
The politics of grassroots innovation

Adrian Smith and Adrian Ely

DOI: 10.4324/9781315747378-7

Introduction
Throughout the history both of modern environmentalism and development
there has existed an insistent undercurrent of practical, grassroots initiatives seeking
socially just and environmentally sustainable forms of production and consump-
tion (Smith, 2005; Hess, 2007; Rist, 2011). In North and South, in cities and
rural settings, networks of activists, development workers, community groups and
neighbours have been generating bottom-up solutions for sustainable development
– solutions that respond to the local situation and the interests and values of the
communities involved. Initiatives have flourished, and struggled, in sectors as diverse
as water and sanitation, housing and habitats, food and agriculture, energy, mobility,
manufacturing, health, education, communications, and many other spheres of
activity. We call this grassroots innovation (Gupta et al., 2003; Seyfang and Smith
2007).
Some grassroots innovations have developed into widespread practices, such as
car clubs across many cities in Europe. In a few cases, what began as grassroots
activity has evolved into substantial green commercial activity in new industrial
sectors, such as wind energy, whose dominant designs can be traced back to grass-
roots activism and alternative energy cooperatives. On occasions, the mainstreaming
of grassroots innovation can involve input from and hybridization with research
and development in more conventional institutions for science, technology and
innovation (Ely et al., 2013). Hybrid forms emerge through scaling-up that, while
sometimes denuded of the grassroots vision, remain novel to other adopters, such
as socially responsible corporations operating to different frameworks. In the case
of wind turbines, while smaller scale, community-based initiatives continue, engin-
eering development and commercial mainstreaming has scaled up into the form
of much larger turbines in utility-scale wind farms relatively less disruptive to adop-
tion within prevailing energy institutions.
 Green transformations from below? 103

On other occasions, grassroots organizations pioneer, adapt and develop novel

uses of new (high) technologies emerging out of more conventional innovation
systems. An example here is vibrant explorations into new forms of commons-
based, peer-produced goods and services using versatile digital design and fabrication
technologies in FabLabs and Hackerspaces today.
Policy and business is slowly taking notice of this bottom-up innovative activity.
Agendas for inclusive innovation, open innovation and social innovation (highly
relevant to green transformations) are drawing grassroots innovation to the attention
of elite national and international agencies (OECD, 2012; World Bank, 2012).
Grassroots activity attracts interest as both a source of potentially inclusive or socially
valuable ideas and practices, worthy of scaling up, and as a relevant field of
experience from which programmes for inclusive, social or green innovation
might learn.
Not all business and policy incumbents welcome such developments. Policies
for promoting corporate renewable energy models have been resisted by fossil energy
interests, for instance. Neither does everyone in the grassroots welcome main-
streaming either, where there can be reactions to elite co-option and distortion of
visionary innovations. The resurgence of citizen and community energy initiatives
in recent years is a countervailing example in energy, for instance.
Such political features in grassroots innovation can go much further and much
deeper. Grassroots innovation movements can pursue an active and critical
alternative to elite trajectories of innovation. Innovative initiatives in agroecology,
for example, resist the encroachment of corporate-led agricultural biotechnology.
Movements experimenting with commons-based, peer-production in grassroots
digital design and fabrication, and their vision for open hardware and software within
a knowledge commons, are actively opposing and resisting the institutions of
proprietary intellectual property at the heart of conventional innovation institutions.
In cases such as these, grassroots innovations are not simply contributing novel
ideas and practices for green transformations, but contesting the very principles
and character of these transformations.
So the questions guiding this chapter are, what transformations are envisaged
and contested from ‘below’, and how does the politics of grassroots innovation
manifest itself? In answering these questions, green transformations from below
become infused with a politics that involves issues of autonomy and institutional-
ization, ingenuity and contested knowledges, and objects and mobilization.
This chapter illustrates its argument with examples from grassroots innovation
movements at different times and places. In the following section we introduce
grassroots innovation by exploring three different framings and approaches to the
phenomenon evident in practice and research. We then contrast grassroots
innovation with more conventional innovation approaches, which typically involve
research institutions, firms and investors. The politics of grassroots innovations in
green transformations is understood through relationships with conventional
approaches to innovation. Then follows consideration of the political dynamics
generated by attempts to insert appropriable ideas and practices arising through
104 Adrian Smith and Adrian Ely

grassroots innovations into mainstream innovation processes. We then look at how,

in contrast, grassroots innovators can sometimes be less pliant and fit into main-
stream agendas, and instead mobilize and press for transformations to mainstream
innovation processes. This leads to questions about power and struggles for demo-
cracy in innovation processes, before we return the question of how green
transformations emerge from below.

Grassroots innovation: between policy fixes and political

mobilization
Grassroots innovators have been present at all the high-level summits devoted to
the environment and development. They were at the ‘hog farm’ at Stockholm in
1972 and in 2012 were at Rio+20 at the Cúpola dos Povos in Flamengo Park.
Displays at these events exhibited practical examples of how human needs could
be defined and met more sustainably. Whether through their decentralized
renewable energy designs, agroecological practices, eco-housing techniques, water
and sanitation services, community workshops and remanufacturing facilities,
complementary currencies, fair trade and solidarity economy arrangements, or a
myriad of other initiatives, these grassroots innovations present practical anticipations
of more sustainable societies (Ely et al., 2013). In the context of this book, we
might say they suggest green transformations from below.

Grassroots ingenuity
Some approaches towards grassroots innovation frame activity as a reservoir of
ingenuity to be supported and tapped into. At its most precise and circumscribed,
grassroots innovation is defined as a process generating creative solutions to
development challenges arising within local communities, through the knowledge
and inventive activities of individuals or groups in those communities. Social
movements and policy institutions can help cultivate this activity by scouting
for grassroots ingenuity and supporting innovators in the development of their
initiatives. Development support can involve the provision of financial, technical
and marketing resources. It can bring the innovator into contact with more con-
ventional development and technology institutions, where expertise helps formalize
the innovation into a form that can diffuse more readily or transform it into a scaled-
up form. Arrangements are made for the original innovator to benefit from this
process – for example, through some form of intellectual property provision.
Assistance is provided for meeting regulatory or commercial standards require-
ments.
Examples of grassroots innovation of this kind include the thousands of examples
documented by the Honey Bee Network and associated Society for Research and
Initiatives for Technologies and Institutions, and Grassroots Innovation Augmen-
tation Network in India, now supported by government through the National
Innovation Foundation. Specific innovations include agroecological approaches
 Green transformations from below? 105

reducing the need for irrigation or synthetic inputs (Gupta, 2013), or a particular
kind of clay fridge that is now patented and on the market (Fressoli et al.,
forthcoming 2014). Broader examples include movements that have seen small-
scale turbine experimentation in communities in Denmark to develop into the
multimillion dollar wind-power industry that we see today (Ely et al., 2013).
Under this ingenuity framing, innovations move from inside grassroots activity
outwards: it is the ingenuity and knowledge of individuals and groups in their local
communities where the process begins (to the extent that it is possible to locate
beginnings). Innovation arises in a specific, grassroots socioeconomic location.
Support and assistance translates the innovation into more mobile, diffusible forms
that work in other socioeconomic locations, including perhaps markets or larger
scale applications.

Grassroots empowerment
A broader and more expansive definition of grassroots innovation includes ideas
and innovations whose origins may have begun outside a grassroots setting, but
whose appropriation and adaptation to local communities and their socioeconomic
situations is carried out with grassroots groups in control over the process and
deciding who benefits from the outcomes (Smith and Seyfang, 2013). Here the
initial movement is more from the outside coming into the grassroots (Bell, 1979),
and with the intention of providing grassroots innovators with new resources and
capabilities that empowers them. Such a definition includes those strands of the
appropriate technology movement, or attempts in participatory design, where
the intended beneficiaries are put at the heart of the development process.
The Social Technologies Network (STN) based in Brazil involved until recently
over 900 organizations (as of 2011) from across Latin America collaborating in the
generation, dissemination and reapplication of innovations for sustainable
development. An important aspect of the STN is the recognition of the need for
local learning and innovation when attempting to replicate a social technology in
a different place from where it was developed (Miranda et al., 2011) – a focus
on grassroots empowerment rather than scaling up in which the communities in
question are passive recipients.
It can be argued that the more expansive view weakens the notion of grassroots
innovation by opening it up to the kinds of consultancy-driven, participatory
development already prevalent in many places, and whose good intentions are
confounded at times through unreflexive application that disempowers com-
munities, or empowers them selectively in ways not welcomed by the recipients.
Anil K. Gupta founded the Honey Bee Network precisely because he was frus-
trated with his experience in development consultancy that ended up extracting
and undermining knowledge and innovation in local communities. Donor-
driven projects can impose or develop models (for the next job) through their
grassroots engagement, rather than helping grassroots ingenuity flourish. Honey
Bee’s development of scouting techniques, working in the languages of the
106 Adrian Smith and Adrian Ely

communities concerned, careful recognition of individual inventors by name, etc.

(Gupta, 2013) reflect this concern to focus and build grassroots ingenuity, rather
than expropriate it.
Certainly, the risks exist. Grassroots innovation can be co-opted as the latest
term for the development industry, providing a new way of thinking about a
relatively passive site for either appropriating ideas or inserting ready-made solutions,
with little reflection on the grassroots as active subjects in innovations and
appropriations of their own.
In our view, however, this is a criticism that calls for greater reflexivity towards
grassroots innovation processes rather than circumscribed definitions. Even tightly
defined notions focusing on grassroots ingenuity can involve encounters beyond
the communities concerned. Even well-intended assistance for grassroots ingenuity
can transform it through, for example, the introduction of intellectual property
for the purposes of protecting benefits, standardizing for purposes of scaling up,
and commodification for the purposes of attracting investment and marketing.
All are processes that decontextualize the innovation and turn it into an object
removed from the originating grassroots processes. More positively, the inevitable
tacit knowledge and local experience required to domesticate any technology
can provide some levers for local communities to influence the introduction and
development of ‘solutions’ arising initially from beyond. This can include resisting
or neglecting the innovation and in practice, we find that many grassroots innova-
tions involve a bricolage and hybridization of indigenous and imported knowledge,
skills, objects, resources, and so forth.
So another framing of grassroots innovation focuses not so much on the location
of ingenuity, as on the power relations involved in developing solutions and the
ways that grassroots actors can be empowered or build their own power to exert
greater influence over developments in their social worlds, but also co-opted and
overwhelmed by more powerful agendas. Certainly, appropriate technology
projects in the past were intended to empower the target beneficiaries (in some
cases whether the beneficiaries wanted them or not), and included instances where
this was done clumsily and failed to attend fully to local power relations, or served
to co-opt certain groups and issues.
One example illustrating this dynamic is the Cisterna (or ‘One Million Cisterns’)
programme that sought to bring water to rural communities in Brazil. As originally
conceived, the initiative introduced possible designs and materials for rainwater
harvesting to communities, but it was the communities themselves that developed
their capabilities through the build process and who exercised autonomy over the
water they provided for themselves. Building the power to do grassroots innovation
can be a strongly held aspiration. When the Brazilian government sought to accel-
erate the provision of rainwater harvesting by distributing more rapidly installed
plastic water-butts, the pioneering social movement organized protests to remind
the Cisterna programme about the ethos behind the original self-build process.
Simply installing this technology provided neither the space nor processes for
development workers and local community members to address issues that affect
 Green transformations from below? 107

how the systems would be used. Unlike the government view on scaling up, the
grassroots initiative was about more than providing families with water. There was
a desire to address local power relations that affected not only access to water (and
the injustices arising from reliance on water tanked in by vendors) but to expand
it to other development issues too. In its original form, Cisterna attempted,
through the organization of the self-build process, to build up capabilities for
addressing social change, thereby giving people the confidence and power to
organize themselves, articulate demands, do projects and coordinate their mainte-
nance. Protests in the region subsequently reinstated a self-build track into the
programme (Fressoli et al., 2014).
A similar ethos can be found among some participants and promoters of FabLabs
and Hackerspaces, and the grassroots use and development of digital fabrica-
tion technologies. It is argued the development of technical proficiency in specific
projects is accompanied by the cultivation of wider and deeper social capabil-
ities that have wider application, and can build among participants the power to
do further grassroots innovation and participate practically in other develop-
ments. However, the processes of empowerment do not stop with capabilities. The
experience of the initiatives within the People’s Science Movement in India
indicates how the organization of alternative economic arrangements can be an
important underpinning to the subsequent effectiveness of any grassroots capabilities
realized through innovative initiatives (Abrol, 2005). Specific improvements in
productive processes in rural sectors like leather and food processing, required con-
comitant adaptations and developments in economic organization, such as creating
co-operatives and negotiating new relations between occupations (and sometimes
having to transcend cultural divisions of caste) in order for the innovations to be
put to work by people. We pick this point up on below.

Encountering institutions of science, technology and

innovation
Grassroots innovation movements present contrasting approaches to innovation
compared to conventional science, technology and innovation (STI) institutions.
The protagonists involved, their priorities and practices are typically distinct from
the actors and processes policy-makers envisage when, say, promoting innova-
tion systems for clean technologies. The mechanisms for developing innovations,
through incentives, investments and forms of appropriation, look and operate
differently. And there are contrasts in the forms of knowledge production emblem-
atic for each. Table 7.1 provides a schematic contrast between mainstream STI
institutions and grassroots innovation movements.
While the emphasis among grassroots innovation movements is ‘exercising
control over the innovation process’ (Letty et al., 2012, p1), in practice such control
can require engagements with more powerful STI institutions. These encounters
can take the form of partnerships with investors and firms in the scaling up of an
innovation, for example, or with public research laboratories in the upgrading of
TABLE 7.1 Mainstream STI institutions and grassroots innovation movements’ approaches to innovation

Primary Priority Principal Sources of Forms of Sites of Predominant Emblematic

actors values incentives/ investment appropriability innovation forms of technological
drivers knowledge fields
Mainstream Universities, Scientific Market State/ Intellectual Laboratories Scientific Biotech, ICTs,
science, public labs, advance, demand and corporate property and R&D and technical nanotech
technology commercial for-profit regulation/ funded, framework institutes, knowledge
and firms, innovation/ science venture strongly boardrooms
innovation ministries and not necessarily competence capital biased towards and ministries,
other public focused on patent-based market-based
institutions, social innovation firms
international inclusion
funding
agencies

Grassroots Civil society, Social justice/ Social needs/ Development Not Community Local, Organic
innovation NGOs, social not necessarily cooperation aid, appropriated projects and situated food,
movements movements, focused on and community by individuals participatory knowledge/ small-scale
cooperatives for-profit community finance, – seen as processes, indigenous renewable
innovation empowerment donations, common social knowledge energies,
state funding goods movements water
sanitation
Source: Fressoli, M., Arond, E., Abrol, D., Smith, A., Ely, A. and Dias, R. (2014) ‘When grassroots innovation movements encounter mainstream institutions: implications
for models of inclusive innovation’, Innovation and Development, Vol. 4, No. 2, pp277–292.
 Green transformations from below? 109

designs and techniques, and inclusion in the programmes of governments, aid

agencies and business initiatives to assist marginalized groups (Cozzens and Sutz,
2014).
So the two worlds characterized in Table 7.1 actually interpenetrate one another.
In practice, we see a much more dynamic, complex and messy field of hybrids and
contestations working across the poles of grassroots and conventional STI presented
in Table 7.1. Much of the politics of green transformations from below will derive
from where participating groups are coming from in approaching a grassroots inno-
vative activity, how they are seeking to push and shape developments, as well as
the political strengths and creative capacities of the groups involved in these
negotiations, and how they are situated in terms of wider power relations.
Nevertheless, the analytical simplification in Table 7.1 points to a basic political
dynamic in green transformations from below: whether one is seeking to insert
the grassroots innovation into conventional STI institutions, or whether one is
seeking to mobilize around the grassroots innovation as emblematic of an insistent
need for new forms of innovation institutions, and new processes for doing
innovation. So even though grassroots innovations are perceived, understood and
approached by various actors in multiple ways, at heart tensions emerge between
strategies for bottom-up innovative activity that seek to adapt it into forms
amenable to assistance from prevailing STI institutions, and more overtly political
sensibilities whose aims are to transform the institutions of innovation and to open
them up through mobilization of grassroots innovation activity.
As Fressoli et al. (2014, p6) elaborate, insertion of grassroots innovations has
more of a technical, policy fix temper to it:

From the point of view of grassroots innovation movements, insertion

means fitting into prior spaces of innovation and playing by or adapting to
the rules of dominant institutions, technologies, regulations, etc. The reverse
side of the same movement may happen at the locus of top-down engage-
ment, where mainstream institutions seek to insert and capture ideas, elements
and even models from grassroots innovation movements, adapting them to
their own agendas and practices.

The scope for doing green transformation differently and pursuing alternative
pathways in grassroots innovation is reduced by insertion. Fressoli et al. (2014, p7)
go on to argue:

If this occurs, giving way to policy disagreements, or if mainstream STI

institutions are impenetrable to GIM [grassroots innovation movement]
proposals, a second mode of engagement can arise. This happens when there
is mobilisation or resistance of grassroots to incumbent regimes, with the aim
of developing pathways toward alternative innovation systems. In this way,
mobilisation implies direct attempts to transform the spaces of innovation
by challenging the dominant practices, technologies, power relations and
110 Adrian Smith and Adrian Ely

discourses . . . [that] may eventually force the incumbent regimes to change

their models, and/or lead to autonomous experimentation with new socio-
technical arrangements.

Where the former, insertion view positions grassroots innovation as generating

appropriable object solutions (technological artefacts or social innovations), often
accompanied by a desire to select and scale up those that look promising under
prevailing institutions of science, technology and innovation, the latter, more polit-
ical view interprets grassroots innovation as an attempt to recast institutional
priorities through mobilizations that entail a politics-of-doing, and whose awkward-
ness or unfamiliarity to elite institutions underscores how the latter exclude and
marginalize many people and perspectives in innovation. Such ‘technological agit
prop’, as Mike Cooley once called it, suggests not just why but how institutions
need to change. An alternative way of framing grassroots innovation arises, which
is to view it as expressing a grassroots politics of sustainability through the processes
of practical reasoning.
Note that politics is involved in both forms of encounter. Insertion generates
a politics through the particularities of its selective approach to grassroots innovation,
just as responses to political approaches to grassroots innovation generate a wider
politics too. One can see this in the appropriate and alternative technology move-
ments in the 1970s. One can glimpse it today in maker movements for grassroots
fabrication. Pressures to conform and provide solutions on elite terms, and grass-
roots reactions to the criteria and norms of any appropriations to scale are argued
to underpin the politics of grassroots innovation. And one can witness a push back
or resistance to this in attempts to mobilize alternative principles for innovation,
such as commons-based peer-production, and renewals of practice that recuperate
more holistic grassroots solutions following selective insertion, such as in some forms
of agroecology. Indeed, one can argue that a dialectical relation between these two
positions is what drives grassroots innovation movements over time. It is also likely
to shape any future green transformations from below.

Inserting the grassroots into mainstream innovation

Policy interest has returned to grassroots innovation in recent years against a
backdrop of growing attention to inclusive innovation. The OECD (2012), World
Bank (2012) and many national governments have produced reports, held events
and set up initiatives to try to promote models for more inclusive innovation. Levels
of attention have been paid to innovation beyond more formalized institutions and
systems – a situation not seen since appropriate technology in the 1970s and 1980s,
and when the OECD had its own Centre for Appropriate Technology, like many
other organizations.
Aspirations for supporting grassroots ingenuity and promoting innovation
processes that empower have to be unpacked into questions about empowering
for whom, to do what and why, questions about the credit or recognition for
 Green transformations from below? 111

solutions that emerge, and about the distribution of costs, benefits, risks and
uncertainties involved. While well-designed initiatives need to be clear on these
matters, and the best involve the intended beneficiaries themselves, encounters that
adapt and insert grassroots innovation unreflexively into STI institutions ignore
the way engagements are framed in the first place. So, for example, it is often
presumed that grassroots innovations need to be scaled up or replicated widely,
and this then feeds back to become a criterion for supporting particular grassroots
initiatives.
Or, to put it another way, the performance of a grassroots innovation may
be associated narrowly with a particular artefact of the initiative and measured
according to conventional policy criteria, such as a community energy initiative
being assessed in terms of the quantity and costs of electricity provided. What these
instrumental readings of grassroots innovation miss is some of the purposes and
framings of the people involved in the initiative. In the case of community energy
initiatives, this can include feelings of community identity, a sense of justice and
claim over local renewable resources like the wind and sun, and promoting a degree
of social and economic self-determination in matters of (electrical) power.
Beyond individual artefacts, approaches such as the number of designs, patents
or other forms of intellectual property provide an indicator of the volume of
‘grassroots ingenuity’ (combined with the attention and support paid to it).
Aggregating the value added from such grassroots innovations provides another
(economic) output metric. It is common, for example, to hear arguments made
about the potential to scale up a grassroots innovation or to replicate across a great
number and variety of locations. Alternatively, calls have been made to develop
indicators and other measures of grassroots innovation (Letty et al., 2012). A
reasonable point is made that policy interest in grassroots innovation will be attracted
only when the scale and significance of grassroots innovation activity is quantified
in some general way. And if this can be done using metrics already appreciated by
policy-makers, such as jobs or value added, then so much the better. Such activity
may help raise the profile and credibility of grassroots innovation in the eyes of
elite innovation institutions, but it also represents grassroots innovation in particular
ways familiar to elites, and not necessarily how all activists promoting alternative
innovation pathways would wish it to be represented.
The emerging world of grassroots digital fabrication is an example of where
multiple framings and metrics converge, clash and contest one another. The
increasing accessibility of relatively affordable, yet increasingly versatile machine
tools (such as laser cutters, 3D printers, milling machines) and design software (such
as computer-aided design freeware and hacked scanners) are increasingly being taken
up by a grassroots maker movement that is connecting on-line through social media
platforms and physically at meet-ups, maker faires, and in community workshops
such as hackerspaces, makerspaces and FabLabs. Ideas, designs and collaborative
projects are shared on-line and off-line in these digital and physical spaces.
In some cases, this activity is self-organized, in other cases it receives institutional
impetus and support through universities, or charities, or government programmes.
112 Adrian Smith and Adrian Ely

In the latter case, interest in grassroots digital fabrication rests in concerns to engage
people (especially younger people) in design, manufacturing and entrepreneurship.
Institutions frame makerspaces and digital fabrication as a useful way for future
workers to experiment in what they see as an industrial transformation and
renaissance. For others, however, such as hacker activists drawing parallels with
the free software movement, grassroots digital fabrication is about the demo-
cratization of production and consumption, and a contribution to a knowledge
commons that includes open hardware designs. Others concerned about sustain-
ability see grassroots digital fabrication offering the promise of a closure of localized
production–consumption loops, and through hands-on, collaborative involvement
in material processes of provision, it is hoped that post-consumer values may be
cultivated (Thorpe, 2012).
So with grassroots digital fabrication, as with other areas of grassroots innovation,
we see multiple framings in play that contain institutional insertion in some cases,
but also involve aims for political mobilization. Grassroots digital fabrication
provides a new stream of talent, ideas and innovations for appropriation for
capitalist institutions, but at the same time, the seeds of an alternative, commons-
based, peer-produced, sustainable and democratic future. The kinds of resources
flowing to these spaces of grassroots digital fabrication, the agendas attached, the
ways they are governed, the meaning and symbolism involved, and their conse-
quences, will be contested through these framings.However, as we see in the next
section, those contests for grassroots innovation are shaped also by their interplay
with broader and deeper political economies.
In sum, the institutional insertion of grassroots innovation looks to initiatives
through prevailing institutions for the environment, development and innovation.
Grassroots innovations are selected as promising and worthy of support, or marginal
and neglected, on the basis of their fit to STI institutional priorities and pressures
for reforming fixes. Under such circumstances, grassroots innovation is transformed
rather than being transformational.

Mobilizing a grassroots politics of practical reasoning

Grassroots innovators and innovation movements can sometimes welcome institu-
tional support and assistance. Indeed, grassroots innovations can arise for very similar
instrumental reasons – a fix to a problem, meeting a need unserved by markets or
states. Mutual ground can be found between the grassroots innovation and the
resourceful STI institutions that can help it to scale or diffuse. However, this is
not always the case. At times, it is the norms, assumptions, aims and practices
of prevailing institutions that are precisely the problem, and which the grassroots
innovation is responding to through creating an alternative norm, assumption, aim
or practice. Other forms of social mobilization for changing norms etc., such as
protests, strikes, boycotts, media campaigns, litigation, manifestos, and so on seek
rights and recognition from societal institutions. In contrast, grassroots innovation
movements involve people in the practical development of alternative activities.
 Green transformations from below? 113

They are engaged in a politics of doing, as much as discussing. In working on the

social and technical aspects of alternative ways of, say, harvesting rainwater, they
undertake a practical reasoning in the politics of water supply in development.
Formal institutions have a hard time recognizing, let alone accommodating this
more political appreciation of grassroots innovation. Indeed, the whole point of
some grassroots innovation movements is to challenge and unsettle prevailing
institutions for innovation and development. When workers at Lucas Aerospace
developed an alternative corporate strategy for their company in 1976, for instance,
they were deliberately challenging not just company strategy, but also the wider
political economy of technology development. Arising through grassroots trade
union organization, the alternative plan was a novel response to management
announcements that thousands of manufacturing jobs were to be cut in the face
of industrial restructuring, international competition and technological change.
Instead of redundancy, workers argued their right to socially useful production. In
promoting their arguments, shop stewards at Lucas attracted workers from other
sectors, community activists, radical scientists, environmentalists, pacifists and the
Left. The Plan became symbolic for a movement of activists committed to inno-
vation for the purposes of social use over private profit. Supportive polytechnics,
union organizations and local governments provided resources and spaces for activists
to develop their ideas, products and argument.
The Lucas Plan, and others like it, included designs and prototypes for
alternative, socially useful products, but they also went much further. These plans
included market analyses and economic argument; proposed employee training and
the development of new technologies, such as computers, that enhanced and
broadened skills; and suggested reorganizing work into less hierarchical teams that
bridged divisions between tacit knowledge on the shop floor and theoretical
engineering knowledge in design shops.
Business and government rejected the plans. The idea that a grassroots movement
of workers, their communities and social activists had a democratic right to
participate in the design, production and marketing of goods and services seemed
simply incredible to business and government elites, or, more seriously, was
discomforting, unwelcome and even threatening. Even leaders in the trade union
establishment were reluctant to back this grassroots initiative, wary that its precedent
would challenge privileged demarcations and hierarchies. The critical point here
is that the practical process of developing prototypes – in community workshops,
for instance – was seen as an activity in and for political mobilization.
Recalling the movement now, what is striking is the importance that activists
attached to practical engagements in technology development as part of their politics.
The movement emphasized tacit knowledge, craft skill and learning by doing
through face-to-face collaboration in material projects. Practical activity was cast
as ‘technological agit prop’ for mobilizing alliances and debate. Some participants
found such politicization unwelcome. However, in opening prototyping in this
way, activists tried to bring more varied participation into debates and enable wider,
more practical forms of expression meaningful to different audiences, compared
114 Adrian Smith and Adrian Ely

to speeches and texts evoking, say, a revolutionary agent, socially entrepreneurial

state or deliberative governance framework.
Activism in socially useful production dissipated in the face of industrial restruc-
turing and relocation, and an emerging Thatcherite political agenda antithetical to
active industrial policy. With hindsight, the movement was swimming against the
political and economic tide. At the time things looked less clear cut. Ultimately,
however, the alliances struck, the spaces created and the initiatives generated were
swept aside as concern for the social shaping of technology was left to market
decision. Some practices had wider influence, such as in participatory design, albeit
it in forms appropriated to the needs of capital rather than the intended interests
of labour. Conventional institutions took instrumental advantage of the diversity
of novel practices opened up by a more politically inspired burst of grassroots
innovation activity.
Today, in FabLabs, Hackerspaces and other forms of makerspace discussed above,
people are coming together under very different circumstances to work materially
on shared technology projects, using digital fabrication and design tools. Social media
opens these engagements in distributed and interconnected forms. Web platforms
and versatile digital fabrication technologies allow people to share open-hardware
designs and contribute to an emerging knowledge commons. The sheer fun
participants find in making things often in personal projects is imbued by others
with excited claims, for the democratization of manufacturing and ushering
alternative principles for innovation through commons-based peer production.
There is a political mobilization to some of this doing.
Grassroots digital fabrication rekindles ideas about direct participation in
technology development and use. Grassroots projects, involving the cultivation of
tacit knowledge and skills, are also about crafting solidarities. Project-centred
discussion and activity is linked to debate and mobilization around wider issues.
In the context of green transformations, it is argued by some that these facilities
not only help localize sustainable production–consumption, up-cycling, fixing and
repair, but they might also promote post-consumerist cultures. Getting involved
in design and fabrication shifts a sense of well-being away from the consumption
of objects, with attendant chains of short-lived satisfaction and repetition, and
towards the cultivation of skills, knowledge and collaborative relationships in
differently satisfying, less alienated processes of social production (Thorpe, 2012).
However, as pointed out, there are other interests in makerspaces less attendant
towards such cultural or political mobilization, and see instead participatory
incubators for prototyping and experimenting that will help bring on stream a new
generation of entrepreneurs, designers and engineers. And, of course, participants
in these spaces may simply be there for the fun of doing their personal projects,
unaware or indifferent to these wider social inscriptions and mobilizations.
Other recent attempts to mobilize community ingenuity to serve environmental
(especially climate change) and social (inclusion and cohesion) goals have emerged
from local experiments in Europe. Again with long historical precedents, the
emergence of the ‘transition towns’ and ‘energy descent action plan’ narratives,
 Green transformations from below? 115

and the growth of the ‘transitions network’ (www.transitionnetwork.org) over the

past decade points towards grassroots innovation as a force for green transformations
from below in the global North. Despite the profound structural barriers holding
back these initiatives from generating wider political change, proponents continue
to celebrate ‘the power of just doing stuff’ (Hopkins, 2013).
Studies of community agriculture projects, a ‘grassroots innovation’ as defined
by Seyfang and Smith (2007), have pointed to the plurality of objectives motivating
communal growing – beyond environmental sustainability to include support for
disability, education, health and community, confidence, welfare and skills (White
and Stirling, 2013). Under these circumstances, the authors point to external funding
programmes as ‘windows of opportunity’ that brought diverse intermediary actors
together in collaborative ways – even if conflicting positions re-entrench once
funding comes to an end (White and Stirling, 2013). Such examples can be seen
either as inserting policy fixes (public support for non-government actors to work
towards policy objectives) or instances of political mobilization (the opportunities
that such initiatives present for communities and wider actors to position themselves
in relation to oppositional regimes that perpetuate structures of unsustainable and
socially exclusive systems of food production).

Power to do innovation, power over innovation and

democratic transformations
Historical reflection on earlier grassroots innovation movements, like those for
socially useful production, turns attention to the power relations that will matter
for these more recent initiatives and a need to address power when considering
green ‘transformations from below’. Grassroots innovation can range from a
necessary response to social challenges, to an accessible and fun way to express
creativity. Across this diverse range of activity, people are exercising a power to
innovate. However, when some of those grassroots innovations seek wider
influence (and not all do), then the same people can still struggle to obtain spaces
and resources to be innovative because they lack power over the agendas of elite
innovation institutions, such as those determining which innovations attract
investment for production and marketing, and under what social criteria.
Of course, in trying to go about innovations for sustainability in ways quite
different from elite institutions, and struggling precisely due to the power of those
prevailing institutions, then grassroots innovations reveal in very visible and practical
ways some of the structural constraints to green transformations from below.
Grassroots innovations provide a practical critique of prevailing economic, social
and political relations in innovation, but they also point to some alternative
possibilities, were those structural constraints to be challenged more powerfully
and effectively. It is no coincidence that some grassroots innovations have in the
past become emblematic for wider social movements seeking wider and deeper
changes, such as environmentalists, feminists, post-development activists. Socially
useful production was emblematic in its time, but others have included wind energy,
116 Adrian Smith and Adrian Ely

organic food and rainwater harvesting, traditional medicines, manufacturing, free

software, and others. Today, campaigners for a knowledge commons, campesino
rights, socially just sustainability transitions, and so forth evoke emblematic grassroots
innovations also. The travails but also possibilities of grassroots innovations in tune
with movement aims point to both critique and alternative at the same time. This
dual feature of grassroots innovation movements allows them to switch between
insertion and mobilization strategies and vice versa, or even combinations, in ways
that not only respond to the context, but also as a deliberate attempt to retain
autonomy and exercise influence (Fressoli et al., 2014).
Shifting power relations are thus significant for grassroots innovation: the power
to do innovation and power over innovation agendas (cf. Holloway, 2002).
Insertion involves power relations between the grassroots and innovation
institutions through the way grassroots novelties are selected and developed. Who
is in control of these processes? What principles are in play over decisions and
selections? This can be articulated as questions of mobilizing for more democratic
innovation.
Drawing on grassroots debate and experience as presented in this chapter, then,
a democratizing innovation agenda would address the opening up and
transformation of innovation institutions towards deeper and more meaningful
grassroots participation. Practically, that means thinking of more democratic arenas
for establishing research agendas, funding decisions, universities, research institutes,
venture and investment capital, training and skills programmes, prototyping
infrastructures, marketing, and so forth. It also means building networks and
coalitions between these arenas, where the potential can be demonstrated through
acts, amplified by lobbying, and win influence through alliances. These are political
challenges about opening up innovation systems and making systems accessible to
citizens.
What this means, in our view, is that even as we witness the gradual reorientation
of dominant techno-economic paradigms and sociotechnical regimes towards a low-
carbon agenda, or some other international priority mediated by markets, such as
resource efficiency and the circular economy, the wider sustainability of such ‘top-
down’ activity will not go uncontested. We may see an unfolding of ‘clean
technology’ promoted by large investors, corporations and entrepreneurial states,
and an attempt to install a co-evolving framework for sustainable development by
elites. However, if we look carefully enough, then we will also notice it is
accompanied by a more unruly, anarchic and messier exploration of everyday
sustainabilities involving the kind of practical reasoning evident in grassroots
innovation. Indeed, the latter may continue to be the fount of genuinely creative
sustainability solutions, just as it has been in the past.
The practical challenges for these grassroots innovation mobilizations remain
considerable and uncertain. One practical possibility arising from some grassroots
initiatives suggests lobbying for a scaling down of innovation systems (cf. scaling
up of innovations), and providing innovation facilities and institutions where
people live. This has been attempted a little with science shops and technology
 Green transformations from below? 117

networks in the past, for example, and is being rediscovered and explored through
makerspaces and citizen science initiatives today. None of this is a panacea. Other,
more demanding and difficult practical steps need to be explored also. There is
not space to develop them here, but it connects to other chapters in this book
(e.g. see Stirling, Leach and Scoones).
Whatever gets considered, experience suggests that we need to guard against
idealizing or even romanticizing grassroots activism in design, experimentation and
development of innovations. People do not respond automatically to the provision
of a material facilities and training programmes. The spaces need to be in tune
with the contexts in which people live; they have to be designed and cultivated
carefully, through on-going community development processes. People have to
be supported in gaining confidence within these more structured spaces. Nor
will everyone wish to take up this support. Questions of inclusion, exclusion,
participation, and so forth are just as pertinent in these grassroots spaces as they
are in mainstream innovation institutions. Issues abound around expertise, knowing
how and knowing what skills, tacit knowledge and practices that push the
scope and flexibility of both high and low technological options. The point is that
the kinds of networked spaces and grassroots innovation activity flourishing today
allows experimentation and learning in democracy itself and what democratizing
innovation can mean practically.

Conclusions
The questions motivating this chapter were about what kinds of transformations
are envisaged and contested from ‘below’, and how does the politics of grassroots
innovation manifest itself?
Grassroots innovations involve very heterogeneous, dynamic and messy
processes. Frameworks for thinking and action in this area include those of
‘grassroots ingenuity’ and ‘grassroots empowerment’, but they are not the only ones,
and we touched on a structural critique framing towards the end of the chapter,
but there are others too. Within these different framings, grassroots innovation
movements often aim to challenge and transform existing systems that fail to serve
social needs across localities, or to enable ‘greener’ (see Chapter 1) directions of
development neglected by elite agendas. As such, movements for grassroots
innovation are driven by a plurality of visions and purposes, including those emerging
from within the grassroots itself, but also from beyond in the domains of formal
innovation, environment, and development institutions and structures. Our
argument tried to simplify and introduce some analytical clarity by drawing a contrast
between these policy insertion and political mobilization views of grassroots
innovation. Each can emerge from within or beyond the grassroots, as has been
illustrated by examples from diverse national contexts and current attention paid
by international organizations.
What distinguishes these two broad approaches to grassroots innovation is their
relationship to prevailing institutions. Looking to grassroots innovation within
118 Adrian Smith and Adrian Ely

existing institutional frameworks and seeking to insert promising ideas and practices
results in the transformation of grassroots innovation processes into object forms.
Conversely, a more political approach to grassroots innovation seeks to transform
wider institutions through the possibilities that grassroots innovation activities offer
for mobilization. Only the latter is really about green transformations from below.
Whether in the global North or South, these imply more anarchic, messy and
ongoing processes of change in contrast to the ordered and mechanical transitions
envisaged within ‘green economy’ narratives.
Historical studies suggest that structures of political economy are vital in enabling
or constraining the possibilities envisaged for ‘transformations from below’. The
potential for communities to exercise their power to ‘do’ innovation is made so
much easier by concurrent power ‘over’ innovation agendas, pointing to the
centrality of struggles for democracy in green transformations. At the same time,
the actual process of innovating at the grassroots itself serves to shift the democratic
balance and to (re-)position power at the grassroots level.
Thus the perspective on grassroots innovation developed in this chapter views
it as expressing a grassroots politics of sustainability through processes of practical
reasoning across local activities. The politics of grassroots innovation manifests itself
through practical experimentation, learning, organizing and mobilization that
enables communities to position themselves in opposition to the unsustainable and
unjust systems that to a significant extent characterize our world, and to build up
their power to develop alternatives. In continuing to negotiate and attempting
to enact ‘transformations from below’, grassroots innovation movements are
challenging the conventional boundaries, definitions and agendas of more elite
innovation institutions, e.g. elite emphasis on a capital-intensive ‘cleantech’ and
financialized green economy. At heart, this is a struggle over the democratization
of innovations and green transformations.

Acknowledgements
Research underpinning this chapter comes from a variety of projects funded by
UK Research Councils. We are grateful to colleagues collaborating in these
projects. For their collegiality and insights we wish to thank Dinesh Abrol, Elisa
Arond, Jacob Barnes, Rachael Durrant, Tom Hargreaves, Sabine Hielscher,
Mariano Fressoli, Mari Martiskainen, Jin Park and Gill Seyfang.
8
MOBILIZING FOR GREEN
TRANSFORMATIONS
Melissa Leach and Ian Scoones
DOI: 10.4324/9781315747378-8

Introduction
In building green transformations, vital sources of energy, imagination, knowledge,
experience and practice lie in citizen action and mobilization. However, such
movements take on different forms in different places and at different moments in
history. As argued elsewhere in this book, there are clearly multiple green
transformations required today, but how can they come about, and what role do
collective organization, mobilization and activism play in this process?
Social movement theory identifies the framing of issues, the construction of
identities, the mobilization of resources and the galvanization of networks as key
features of movements (Leach and Scoones, 2007). Yet the capacity to contribute
to green transformations also depends critically on the relationships between
movements, networks and their institutionalization, and on the relationships
between particularistic, locally grounded practices, and claims and action focused
on wider forms of transformation. Green transformations, as argued elsewhere in
this book, involve challenges to investment and infrastructure, practices and
power relations that involve both private and public sector actors, and extend up
to global scales. We argue here that the effectiveness of mobilization in the politics
of green transformation hinges on how far vibrant local action and agendas that
make space for citizens’ own concerns are able to articulate with and mount
challenges to global forces.
In this chapter, we explore and evaluate these dimensions in relation to case
studies where movements have emerged to urge green transformations of different
sorts – in small farm production and markets, in agricultural technology, and in
urban design and living. In each of these cases different types of movements have
formed and evolved, framing the green transformation challenge in different ways
and navigating tensions along the movement institutionalization and particularism
120 Melissa Leach and Ian Scoones

wider transformation, local–global axes in different ways. We also note other

contexts where a quieter, more hidden form of transformation occurs through shared
practice, linked to particular cultural–political modes of organization. We conclude
with a brief discussion of the implications of these differences for alliance building
for green transformations and the political challenges this suggests.

Green movements: a simple typology and a very brief

history
Not all movements conform to the banner-waving activist image of the media
stereotype. Indeed, there is a wide variety of forms and styles, some more resonant
with this image, others much less visible. A movement can be defined broadly as
a collective response binding different people in ‘practised engagement through
emergent solidarities’ around a particular issue, or set of issues (Leach and Scoones,
2007, p16, drawing on Ellison, 1997). Green movements have often been theorized
as exemplars of new social movements (Della Porta and Diani, 2006), and there
is a large literature that explores such dynamics of contentious politics (e.g. Tilly,
1978; Tarrow, 1998; McAdam et al., 2001, 2003). Today, at least three types of
‘green’ movement are evident (cf. Szerszynski, 1997; Jamison, 2001).
First, there are those green movements associated with lifestyle change, focus-
ing on shifts in individual behaviour and practice. Such movements are usually
rooted in local networks and often part of ‘alternative’ lifestyles, linked to other
movements associated with, for example, food and housing. They may be more
broadly linked through wider networking and, while clearly political in the sense
of a personal commitment to change, many do not overtly campaign in the
public political sphere, arguing that change must be emergent from individual,
community-based and local efforts. There has been a long tradition of such
lifestyle-centred movements in Europe and North America from the 1960s
onwards, while in other parts of the world they have been associated with
protecting the political and cultural autonomy of particular groups (e.g. indigenous
people’s movements, peasant movements) as well as religious organizations (e.g.
Buddhist retreats, Ghandian ashrams), often with much longer traditions.
Second, there are activist organizations and networks that form around particular
issues. These are more confrontational and aim to tackle wider policy issues
through direct action and protest. From the classic Greenpeace whaling protests
of the 1970s to the climate justice or anti-GM campaigns of today, such movements
have had high visibility, often with visible impacts. In many ways these have
symbolized the environmental movement in the global North that came to promi-
nence in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and led to the creation of organizations
from Friends of the Earth to Greenpeace to the Sierra Club. Many of these
organizations have themselves changed, responding to shifts in the cultural and
political landscape, but the radical, activist edge has not been lost. From the late
1990s, certain green movements and campaigns became increasingly allied to anti-
 Mobilizing for green transformations 121

capitalist movements, including those convened by the World Social Forum from
its founding event at Porto Alegre in 2001, and more recently the ‘Climate Justice’,
‘Occupy’ and ‘Anonymous’ movements. Such movements, even if focused on a
particular environmental or social issue, have developed a larger critique of the
way that contemporary neoliberal capitalism has affected the environment, and social
and political life, and has acted to undermine rights, producing inequality and
poverty.
Third, some green movements over time, or through splits in original groupings,
have become increasingly professionalized, forming more formal organizations, and
arguing for a place at formal policy tables and intergovernmental negotiations to
put the green case. An important spur to this was the major UN Conference on
Environment and Development held in Rio in 1992. Its predecessor in Stockholm
in 1972 had hailed the arrival of the environmental movement on the international
stage and was the moment when many organizations formed, led by visionaries
such as Barbara Ward, author of Only One Earth (Ward and Dubos, 1972) or inspired
by the likes of Rachel Carson, author of the classic environmentalist text, Silent
Spring (Carson, 1962). However, it was in 1992 that environmental issues hit the
mainstream, backed by detailed analysis and argument in the World Commission
in Environment and Development report, Our Common Future (Brundtland, 1987),
and then crystallized in the establishment of international conventions and the
bottom-up process Agenda 21 (UNEP, 1992). Such institutionalization has, of
course, presented strategic and tactical challenges, with co-optation and reformist
managerialism being balanced against access and influence. However, since the 1990s
and the rise of environmental concerns in national and international policy arenas,
such organizations have become increasingly influential, striking up important
achievements in a range of areas from biodiversity protection to climate change
to sustainable development goals, and even making inroads into business through
organizations such as the World Business Council on Sustainable Development.
Whether such groups can be classified as ‘movements’ is a moot point, however.
Some self-define not as such, but as non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Many
in the more activist groupings will dismiss organizations that engage closely with
the mainstream as co-opted ‘sell-outs’, no longer grounded in real citizens’ concerns
or challenges to the status quo. However, whatever the classification, the important
point is that today there is a huge array of groups, more or less formally organized,
committed to green transformations of different sorts. They have different
organizational forms, different framings of the problem and different proposed
solutions; they have different strategies and tactics in respect of the politics required,
and they are networked in different ways, not always working together
harmoniously.
Drawing insights from the Honey Bee Network in India, Anil Gupta (Gupta,
2013) usefully argues that movements (grassroots action) must interact with
networks (that link different grassroots forms) in order to embed and spread ideas
and change, and must be supported by institutions (embracing larger organizations)
122 Melissa Leach and Ian Scoones

if there is any hope of sustaining change within bureaucratic and policy struc-
tures. Each cannot achieve a successful and radical transformation alone. There are
inevitably tensions, but Gupta argues that these are productive ones, as long as the
movements can hold the more formal institutions to account and the network
continues to serve the movement participants. The challenge is how to avoid new
institutions becoming separated from their network and movement base, and how
to keep the networks active so that they are continually generating new ideas and
innovations, and avoid getting co-opted by increasingly formalized and powerful
institutions in the mainstream. The movements we discuss below have embraced
such networking and institutionalization challenges and opportunities to different
extents, and in different ways, shaping their abilities to contribute to trans-
formational change.
These case study mobilizations, like many others, are reflective of a particular
social–political–cultural process that emerged in Western Europe and North
America in the late 1960s, while picking up on other traditions of protest and
mobilization, notably Ghandian organization and philosophy in India, and radical
social movements protesting against dictatorship in Latin America. Today, such
traditions often blend with Western environmentalisms, as new forms emerge
through global networking and linkages afforded by international travel, Internet-
based communication and global networking, especially among a politically vocal,
globalized middle class. Yet in other settings, with a different history, culture and
politics, there may be other forms of organization whose ‘green’ features and com-
mitment to transformation are less recognizable – at least to Western-influenced
commentators. We turn to these instances later, asking if there are other forms of
less visible but potentially transformative mobilization that are important, and need
attention and support if a truly global set of green transformations is to unfold.

Towards green transformations: three cases

In the following sections, we discuss three different cases of mobilization, exploring
how four dimensions of social movements identified in the literature – framing,
identity, resource mobilization and networks (Leach and Scoones, 2007) – play
out in practice in different cases and settings, in interaction with dynamics along
a spectrum from movement to institutionalization, and a focus on particular local
issues, to wider global concerns. It is in relation to these interacting dynamics that
we address the politics of mobilization in each case, and the contradictions and
tensions as well as opportunities and challenges that arise in creating green
transformations.

La Via Campesina and food sovereignty

La Via Campesina – the peasants’ way – emerged in the late 1990s around a
constellation of groups, particularly in Europe and Latin America, wanting to defend
 Mobilizing for green transformations 123

the rights of small farmers in the face of pressures from large-scale corporate
agriculture supported by government and international policy (Desmarais, 2007).
A vision of small-scale peasant farming rooted in local markets and economies was
developed that adopted the term ‘food sovereignty’ as its rallying cry (Rosset, 2003).
A particular strand of this argument, confirmed in a series of statements and
declarations, urged the adoption of ‘agroecology’, which posed a distinctively green
agenda. Agroecology emphasizes working with nature not against it, and using low
external inputs that are non-polluting, and that do not rely on large-scale corporate
input suppliers of seeds, fertilizers, and so on (Altieri, 2009). There are overlaps,
of course, with the longer established organic movement and other agri-food move-
ments (Jamison, 2012), but the emphasis here is on the process of farming, its
groundedness in local ecologies and its relationships with economic structures, as
well as the product itself.
Since its origins the movement has grown, with some suggesting that today it
is the largest social movement in the world.1 This growth has meant the movement
has encompassed more and more interests and issues, including linking up with
indigenous people’s movements, the women’s movement, migrants’ movements,
workers’ unions, consumer groups, and more. This ‘big tent’ approach has enabled
articulation with a range of global forces and challenges. However, it has brought
with it tensions, and for some a lack of strategic focus, and failure to concentrate
on particular political actions. The Nyeleni declaration, produced through an
intensive negotiation among movement participants, is the nearest thing that exists
to a political manifesto, and it presents a utopian ideal across a huge range of issues.2
As an organization, La Via Campesina has evolved from a very loose federation
of groups that found common ground in and around the World Social Fora and
other events, to a more structured arrangement, with a General Coordinator
(currently from Zimbabwe, previously from Indonesia), a central committee,
advisory groups, training events, demonstration sites and a regular series of meetings
where members from across the movement gather. With its powerful slogan,
‘Globalise the struggle, globalise hope’, there is an attempt to forge a united alliance
across diverse groups around a global issue. Focused campaigns on particular issues,
whether around ‘land grabbing’, ‘GMOs’, or corporate agriculture more generally,
provide moments for mobilization (Borras et al., 2008).
Together with others, there has been considerable energy invested in recent
years in two major international policy processes. First was the International
Assessment for Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD)
that culminated in a report in 2009 that, while presented in the language of an
international report sponsored by the World Bank, reflected many of the aspirations
– and some key language – of the movement. The IAASTD, or at least selected
sections of it, has become a focus for mobilization, and a source of authority and
legitimacy (Scoones, 2009). Second has been the UN Food and Agricultural Organ-
ization’s Committee on Food Security (CFS). This is the first UN process where
non-governmental representation (not just observer status) is permitted. This has
124 Melissa Leach and Ian Scoones

allowed movement activists to become involved in intergovernmental negotiations

– for instance, around the ‘Voluntary Guidelines on Land Tenure’ that were passed
in 2013, as well as the High Level Panel of Experts’ discussions around such issues
as ‘land grabbing’.
Thus, movement framings centre on the themes of food sovereignty and
agroecology, and the associated challenge to corporate control of the agri-food
system. It is argued that small-scale, peasant farming can indeed ‘feed the world’
through agroecological practices, if only the system was more just and less skewed
towards incumbent corporate interests. Identities are constructed in relation to a
somewhat idealized notion of the ‘peasant’ or ‘small-scale farmer’, seen as struggling
for self-determination and autonomy in the face of monopoly capitalism and the
depredations of neoliberal markets (Guzmán and Martinez-Alier, 2006). The
resources mobilized have been significant, less in financial terms although there
are important backers, but in terms of the intellectual, organizational and mobil-
ization capacities of movement participants and their allies in other movements,
among radical academics, and in some cases within government agencies, in
international organizations and among some political leaders.
This building of the movement over 20 years has nevertheless faced challenges,
not least in the uncomfortable relationship between local concerns and political
action on a global stage. The ‘ideal type’ peasant deployed in global campaigns
very often does not exist. A strategically deployed essentialism in wider movement
discourse may sit uneasily with the lived realities of people on the ground. Many
people juggle different livelihoods – in town, in the rural areas, across occupations
– and rarely follow the autonomous peasant route. Equally, by attempting to encom-
pass consumers, workers and others in the overall frame, the potential class and
political differences may disrupt a seeming consensus. Consumers may not be aligned
with producers, and workers not with their farmer employers, so the coherence
of a struggle against capital may sometimes fray at the edges.
Equally, the edicts about how to farm in an ‘agroecological’ way are resisted by
those keen to use more modern technologies, arguing that these too can create positive
environmental and livelihood impacts if used sensitively. A technological funda-
mentalism sometimes undermines the credibility of the argument in certain contexts,
especially when the struggle to provide food and livelihoods is especially pressing.
Such ideals, it is argued, may be all well and good in a richer context, where people
are prepared to pay for the privilege of ‘green’ agroecological products, but when
poverty and hunger stalks, such rich-world luxuries may not be possible.3
That said, La Via Campesina and the food sovereignty movement more broadly,
with its building of networks and its increasing institutionalization, is making inroads
into mainstream global debates. Once dismissed as the radical fringe, now food
sovereignty and smallholder rights are being debated in international fora, with the
UN announcing that 2014 is the Year of Family Farming, while on the ground
and in the more local struggles, the radical edge and activist momentum is being
maintained.
 Mobilizing for green transformations 125

Genetically modified (GM) crops

A similar and overlapping set of mobilizations has occurred especially from the mid-
1990s around genetically modified (GM) crops in different parts of the world. These
have revolved variously around environmental concerns with crop genetic diversity
and ‘superweeds’, human health issues, as well as a wider debate about corporate
control of seeds and farming futures (Schurman, 2004). Alliances have formed
between diverse groups, each framing the issue in a different way. A hybrid network
of different actors has created something akin to a movement, but with hugely varied
characteristics. Contrary to the claims of some that this was all an orchestrated
conspiracy by powerful European environmentalists, the evidence shows a
variegated response, all rooted in local concerns and contexts. By and large, the lead
actors have been relatively rich, educated and middle class, claiming support in
different forms from farmers’ organizations and movements, including La Via
Campesina. However, perhaps in contrast to the bottom-up peasants’ movements
of food sovereignty, the anti-GM campaigns have been characterized by a set of
relatively elite alliances, with transnational characteristics, yet local roots.
Taking what Marc Edelman calls a ‘messy, close up view of collective action’
(Edelman, 2001, p286) we can get an insight into the texture of such a movement,
its tactics and strategies, successes and failures, and draw out some broader lessons
for mobilizing for green transformations more generally. In a comparative study
of anti-GM activism in Brazil, India and South Africa, Scoones (2008, p339)
concludes:

They galvanize selective and strategic alliances among different and diverse
groups around a variety of issues. Some would dismiss these as incoherent
and poorly substantiated, but together they often add up to an alternative
perspective on agrarian futures to the standard neoliberal line, even if some-
times poorly articulated and partially contradictory. Such positions are the result
of complex, hybrid coalitions of interests and ideas, and, as discussed, do not
represent a particular, defined set of (class) interests. With their global
connections and elite, educated, urban leaderships, they can be seen as often
very detached from rural realities and agrarian struggles. But the resonances
and connections are definitely there . . . and the strength of their appeal, and
the political force that they potentially have, lies in the way such connections
– between local, national and global issues; rural and urban; producer and
consumer; elite and poor – are constructed and mobilized.

Comparing countries and regions where GM activism has emerged highlights

the importance of contrasting political cultures (Jasanoff, 2005). Such cultures suggest
different options and open up different spaces for debate. Thus, in some settings
close alliances between movements and political parties were possible, allowing for
a penetration of political and bureaucratic structures to effect change. In other
contexts the legal system created space for protest. The media is also an important
126 Melissa Leach and Ian Scoones

space for raising questions and has been used very effectively by GM movements,
even if the storylines are excessively dramatic. Thus, in Europe the spectre of
‘Frankenstein foods’ or ‘Terminator’ genes, even if strictly unscientific, allowed an
otherwise constrained debate to enter the public sphere. Wider, more direct-action
style protests have also characterized anti-GM campaigns, including consumer
boycotts and ‘trolley dumping’, or crop burning and the destruction of field trials.
Other campaigners have taken a more positive stance, demonstrating alternatives
that are sustainable and based on local seed systems, and open access research and
development. Demonstration projects have proliferated, under a variety of banners,
showing that ‘other worlds’ are indeed possible (Levidow and Carr, 2007).
Different campaigns at different moments in different regions have focused on
different elements of the debate, whether on consumer health, farmers’ rights or
environmental impacts. This has resulted in some tensions. As Scoones (2008, p340)
notes: ‘Holding a broad front often means engineering strategic silences about some
tough issues, with contradictions and tensions held in abeyance. But avoiding some
of these deeper issues may also mean the unravelling of coalitions and alliances’.
Not everyone in the movement has agreed with all these tactics, and intense debates
have emerged about the pros and cons of each.
Two decades since the start of the movement, has there been progress towards
a greener, more sustainable form of agricultural technology? Success has been patchy.
There has been retreat and roll-back over time, not least because controlling the
distribution of seeds is nigh on impossible. Thus in India, GM crops were
distributed ‘by stealth’ by entrepreneurs with the quiet acceptance of the property
rights holding companies (Herring, 2005) and in Brazil the flood of GM seeds across
the border from Argentina was unstoppable. In the context of a rapidly liberalizing
agriculture seeking external investment in a neoliberal market economy where
government capacity for regulation was weak or non-existent, the opportunities
of sustained opposition were, of course, limited. Corporate messaging has also shifted
in response. Having dramatically lost the public relations war at the outset, GM is
now marketed as an environmentally sound alternative to agrochemicals, and in
some quarters as a technological response to climate change. Others argue that
GM per se is not the problem but the corporate control of agri-food systems, and
that publicly funded and regulated alternatives – from China and beyond – offer
sustainable alternatives.
Much as the rearguard responses of the techno-optimists aiming to tackle
environmental problems more generally exclude politics, so have these responses
from corporate agriculture and their backers. Yet many of the anti-GM campaigns
have got trapped in the terms of this discourse, often as regulatory systems and
legal cases require it, and have not articulated effectively the larger political critique.
The limits to green transformations in this case thus concern less a disarticulation
of local and global concerns as networks build and become institutionalized, and
more a depoliticization of the debate. Drawing lessons from the case makes clear
that fundamental transformations cannot occur through changing a technology,
but only the wider sociopolitical system within which it is embedded.
 Mobilizing for green transformations 127

Urban sustainability
A third area where mobilization offers potential to contribute to the processes of
green transformation concerns urban sustainability. In both the global North and
South, movements have articulated approaches to addressing both specific sustain-
ability challenges associated with urban living and growth, and roles for towns and
cities in broader green transformations (Mapes and Wolch, 2011).
For example, the Transition movement aims to mobilize community action
and foster public empowerment and engagement around climate change, with the
objective of catalyzing a transition to a low-carbon economy (www.transitiontowns.
org). The idea originated in 2005 in Northern Ireland when a permaculture teacher,
Rob Hopkins, initiated a community-designed ‘Energy Descent Action Plan’ for
the town of Kinsale, with practical steps geared to reducing carbon emissions and
preparing for a future post-cheap oil (Seyfang and Haxeltine, 2012). Described
by their founder as ‘an emerging and evolving approach to community-level
sustainability’ (Hopkins, 2008, p134), local Transition initiatives have multiplied
and by 2013 there were 1,130 registered in 43 countries – largely in Europe, North
America, Australia and New Zealand (www.transitionnetwork.org/initiatives).
Some unite towns, while others are constituted in parts of larger cities.
Transition initiatives typically combine a range of practical activities, from local
energy generation, food production, farmers’ markets, community gardening,
composting and seed exchanges, through to local currencies, designing and building
eco-housing, recycling and repair schemes, car-sharing, skills-sharing and self-help
groups. Each initiative develops its own series of plans and activities through a
community-led process. Yet uniting these are a set of common framings. These
include the development of alternative lifestyles and systems of provisioning that
reject consumerism and enable a low-carbon existence. The aim is to demonstrate
practical, positive solutions in the here and now, and so encourage people to shift
their consumption patterns towards this ‘post-oil’ model.
Such initiatives emphasize collective action and capabilities at the community
level. Yet there are major contrasts in terms of identity and culture. Far from being
a movement of (and advocating inclusion of) the poor, participation in Transition
Town initiatives tends to be strongly middle class (Seyfang and Haxeltine, 2012).
Transition Town initiatives largely eschew political engagement. Rather than
campaign for political changes that might bring about transformations towards
low-carbon futures, challenge dominant regimes or engage in oppositional politics
with powerful political or business players, the emphasis remains on positive,
community-level demonstration of a ‘niche’ that can replace dominant patterns
when, as is assumed, they wither away. While some see this as a valuable way of
doing politics, fostering ‘critical emancipation’ (Scott-Cato and Hillier, 2010) and
penetrating ‘under the radar’ of existing political conflicts (Hopkins, 2008), others
critique it as naive, limited and leaving the movement vulnerable to co-option
(Chatterton and Cutler, 2008; Connors and McDonald, 2011).
128 Melissa Leach and Ian Scoones

‘Transitioners’ share ideas and reproduce their sense of common identity

through open-access wiki websites and blogs (Scott-Cato and Hillier, 2010).
However, tensions are emerging between such standardization, and the diversity
and flexibility needed for local initiatives to flourish in their particular settings. Some
local initiatives find the hierarchical relationship with network organizers overly
restrictive and controlling. Connors and McDonald (2011) suggest that a ‘cultish,
top-down culture’ may be developing that will restrict the ability to attract new
adherents and spread as a democratic, bottom-up movement. While successful in
replicating itself, the movement is struggling to increase its impact through building
wider alliances (Seyfang and Haxeltine, 2012). In this respect, it can be argued that
the Transition Network might be undermining its own avowed aims to attract as
many people as possible to share its vision and values, towards green transformation
from below. Again, then, we see potential for green transformations, but emergent
tensions between vibrant local agendas and the wider institution-building required
to scale up globally.

Where there is no green movement

The cases we have discussed so far have had their origins in very particular
social–political–cultural moments and milieux. Are green transformations generated
from below through forms of collective action possible where there are no green
movements, modelled in the style familiar in western Europe, North America and
parts of Latin America and Asia? In places that do not have these traditions emerg-
ing from struggles against colonialism or dictatorship or in democratic societies as
responses to an overbearing state or extractive corporate capitalism, what happens?
Is it necessary to create new movements that can take up the struggle, or are other
forms of quieter, more hidden, less confrontational mobilizations possible, resulting
in similar effects?
Here we can turn to eastern Europe and the countries making up the former
Soviet Union and China for examples. While hugely different, they all have notable
agroecological and sustainable food-growing and provisioning activities ongoing,
often on a large scale. Very often not visible as movements, although sometimes
supported by projects from NGOs or the state, they may involve the changing
practices of millions of people towards more sustainable production and consump-
tion. Smith and Jehlička (2013) term this, in the context of Poland and the Czechia,
‘quiet sustainability’, which they define as ‘widespread practices that result in
beneficial environmental or social outcomes and that do not relate directly or
indirectly to market transactions, but are not represented by their practitioners as
relating directly to environmental or sustainability goals’ (2013, p1). This is based
on sharing, mutual aid, reciprocity and solidarity within communities, but not
necessarily with an explicitly ‘green’ or ‘alternative’ framing. It is just what people
do, and is valued as such for its intangible, non-market and social benefits.
Reflecting on the people involved, they comment:
 Mobilizing for green transformations 129

Theirs is not a fulfilment of environmental obligations, an attempt to achieve

‘resilience’, or a response to limits, but the daily practice of a satisfying life.
In other words: it is not just that the journey to sustainability is less difficult
than is sometimes presented – large sections of humanity may already be on
it without feeling the need to proclaim the fact loudly.
(Smith and Jehlička 2013, p34)

In other instances – for example, in China – mobilizations around agroecological

farming have emerged in some areas, often supported by environmental NGOs,
but all approved and in some cases directly supported by the state. In such a political
setting, mobilization separate from the state is not feasible or would be risky, so a
strategic alliance is struck with the state, through negotiation with officials, that
accommodates, and may even later support, such efforts. As the Chinese state increas-
ingly recognizes the environmental challenges wrought by its rapid economic
transition, such small-scale, very localized forms of organization may be seen as a
useful route to influence (Geall, 2013).
A similar argument for ‘quiet sustainability’ could be made for small-scale
producers, forest dwellers, informal shack dwellers and many others in the global
South who often live outside the reaches of formal institutions and policy. Yet
through diverse forms of solidarity – again often not constructed as movements –
they carve out livelihoods that very often have positive environmental benefits.
Whether this is the management of trees for the harvesting of non-timber forest
projects, complex home gardening and multifunctional agricultural practices, the
recycling of urban waste and the building of homes, or indeed the numerous daily
practices of millions of people worldwide, many might represent a form of ‘quiet
sustainability’. Hidden from view, not appreciated as part of policy, these are
pathways towards sustainability that are less visible and more difficult to institu-
tionalize, yet are nevertheless highly significant. Some might dismiss such activities
as simply environmentalism through poverty. But just as the Polish and Czech plot
holders should not be seen as ‘urban peasants’ (Smith and Jehlička, 2013), such
everyday environmentally oriented practices, rooted in the cultures of sharing,
guardianship, repairing and responsibility, should not be dismissed lightly.
It is this practised behaviour, repeated and institutionalized in particular
sociocultural contexts, which may represent the ‘quiet’ revolution to sustainability.
It involves mobilization in that people are enlisted, relations of solidarity and
exchange are established and motivations are articulated, but its political implica-
tions are different. By not confronting the state or even not engaging with it all,
although sometimes strategically allying with it, important strides are made towards
green transformations that take a different form, and with a different politics
compared to the classic mobilizations and movements described in the cases of La
Via Campesina and the anti-GM movement. The urban Transition initiative case
perhaps lies somewhere in between; less noisy and confrontational than these others,
yet deploying particular, calculated political strategies of negotiation and the
demonstration of alternatives.
130 Melissa Leach and Ian Scoones

Tensions and contradictions

Across these cases, then, green transformations are emerging from diverse spaces,
grounded in citizen concerns and mobilization but involving diverse political
strategies. In some cases spaces have been opened up by direct protest and lobbying.
This has often been complemented by increasingly sophisticated media, and
particularly new social media, and activism. Political cycles have an important effect
in some places, as green agendas rise and fall with political parties sometimes linking
their agenda to green issues, and social movements pushing them to comply. The
law and regulatory institutions have been important sites for debate about green
transformations in certain places where opportunities for legal activism are present.
In other instances changes in behaviours and practices have become embedded in
either explicitly ‘alternative’ activities or through quieter, less explicit but often
large-scale shifts in practice. Some such changes may be facilitated and encouraged
by sites of experimentation and demonstration organized by movements (perhaps
identified as ‘niches’) explicitly to show and share alternatives, or alternatively as
part of local practices that others observe, copy and share in a much more informal
way. Whatever combinations of tactics, strategies are used which will depend,
as the cases show, on the social, political, cultural and economic context. There
is no standard script for green mobilizations and there is enormous diversity, much
of it hidden from view, as we have noted.
In effecting often radical change that challenges incumbent institutions and
confronts powerful interests, there are no easy or predictable forms of mobilization.
Each must be attuned to the circumstance and moment. Inevitably there are often
intense debates, within and between movements, about what is the best approach.
Multiple tensions and sometimes deep contradictions exist, as hinted at in some
of the cases discussed earlier. Debates around framing are often significant: What
is green? What is agroecological farming? What is appropriate technology? These
are not easy to resolve and, depending on one’s position, class, identity, location
and aspiration, the answers may be quite different. As discussed earlier, drawing
different people from diverse backgrounds into a movement may be challenging.
Networks may be quite fragile in some instances, held together by a common
opposition to a loosely defined enemy, but with real differences in outlook and
perspective among participants. This often becomes especially apparent when
identities and identifications clash: between being an environmentalist, a feminist
and indigenous person, for example. While multiple subject positions, and associated
frames and stances may be able to be held together, this may be more challenging
when tensions over strategy and tactics arise.
Within the environment movement more generally, tensions have often arisen
when once loose, fragmented activities as part of movements and networks become
institutionalized and ‘mainstreamed’. Contradictions then often arise between the
radical foundations of a movement and reformist green agendas that see success
being generated through collaboration with governments, businesses and others,
as space is opened up by environmental awareness and activism. New frames are
 Mobilizing for green transformations 131

adopted that are appealing to such allies, such as ‘green economy’ or ‘sustainable
intensification’, ‘ecological modernization’ or ‘responsible innovation’. Reformists
will argue that staying on the sidelines is not an option and that the world has
changed over the last 40 years, with new opportunities arising for alliance-building
under new configurations.
Others, of course, argue that such moves inevitably result in co-optation, or at
the minimum a lowest common denominator debate that rarely confronts power,
and indeed too often reinforces interests, allowing a type of ‘greenwash’ under the
guise of corporate or governmental ‘responsibility’ initiatives. Such ‘ecological
modernization’ may reduce the environmental footprint of industry, but it may
not change the power structures that created environmental and social justice prob-
lems in the first instance. By not naming and confronting power and entrenched
interests, true transformation does not happen, and the green agenda thus gets
captured by neoliberal, conservative interests as incumbent forces reconfigure to
accommodate and absorb, rather than fundamentally change.
Much of this, of course, comes down to a conflict over the understanding of
what is transformation. Is the challenge, for example, simply reducing carbon emis-
sions or is it a more fundamental structural change in ownership, production and
consumption that delivers a lower carbon future for the long term, but also meets
other objectives of justice, distribution and a wider conception of sustainability?
Is transformation simply reducing deforestation, planting more trees or changing
the chemical impacts of modern agriculture, or is it again a more fundamental shift
in the structure, power relations, ownership patterns and resource access of the
global agri-food system?
As neoliberal and ecological modernization agendas, allied to various complexions
of corporate social and environmental responsibilities, have gained purchase and
have indeed influenced government and business behaviour and practice, they have
proved difficult to reconcile with a more radical vision of societal economic and
social transformation. As ‘green’ reformist agendas become more mainstream, with
the rhetoric around the ‘green economy’ increasing in recent years, this has pushed
more radical visions of transformation to the fringes. The environmental ‘move-
ment’ (or more accurately diverse movements) has become increasingly fragmented,
making coordinated action more difficult, and the productive relationship between
movements, networks and institutions more challenging to uphold.
This has perhaps become especially so as environmental agendas have moved
from multiple, local actions around particular issues to a much larger global frame.
Tensions have thus intensified between particularism and what it means to effect
wider green transformations. Climate change as a global phenomenon has in
particular influenced this shift, supported by arguments that humanity is hitting
‘green limits’ around other ‘planetary boundaries’ (see Leach, this book). Of
course, since the 1970s, as discussed earlier, environmental issues have been framed
in global terms – ‘spaceship earth’, ‘only one earth’, ‘blueprint for a small planet’.
However, in recent times, the tensions between local mobilizations and global
framings have become more stark. Do the multiple micro-initiatives initiated in
132 Melissa Leach and Ian Scoones

particular places add up to a global transformation affecting planetary processes, or

do actions now have to take place at a different scale, removing control and agency
from local actors, the lifeblood of any movement? With mechanisms structured at
international levels – through various commissions, committees, assessments,
protocols or agreements – how do locally rooted but internationally networked
movements fit in, and what space do they have to make a difference? Some have
argued that the primary role of mobilizations is to protect local perspectives and
priorities in the face of proliferating global initiatives and forms of thinking and
action. As Esteva and Prakash (1997, p47) put it:

[T]he solidarity of coalitions and alliances does not call for ‘thinking globally’.
In fact, what is needed is exactly the opposite: people thinking and acting
locally, while forging solidarity with other local forces that share this
opposition to the ‘global thinking’ and ‘global forces’ threatening local
spaces.

In contrast, others suggest that the local and global can – and must – be meshed
in powerful ways. Is such translocal networking a key to fostering green
transformations that respond both to the particularity of grounded experience and
to the needs for wider, global scale change?

Conclusion
Mobilizations have vital roles to play in the politics of green transformations. These
transformations are certainly multiple, as our analysis of framings, identities, resource
mobilization and networks across the cases suggests. We see mobilizations linked
to a wide range of framings, subjectivities, values and identities. They have engaged
with political processes in different ways, across a spectrum from overt contestation
of structures of power through more subtle negotiations with the state and inter-
national agencies, through to withdrawal from dominant regimes to demonstrate
alternative ways of living. These differences depend partly on the issue and place,
but political contexts also matter. As we have seen, political histories, cultures and
styles of decision-making vary between nations, regions and localities, and around
particular ‘sectors’ – from agriculture to climate change, urban design to forestry
– shaping which political strategies and combinations are feasible and desirable. A
diversity of strategies and styles, therefore, will almost inevitably be needed, and
today these can draw on a wide variety of spaces and practices from face-to-face
protest and legal and media action through to more practical, everyday forms of
material life and community organizing.
Across these arguments and examples, we see processes of emergent social
solidarity – forms of ‘green citizenship’ – but around diverse, rather than singular,
notions of ‘green’, ‘social justice’ and ‘transformation’. Just as a conceptual
framework to understand these needs to draw together diverse strands of social
movement theory, so it also requires an integrative perspective on citizenship (Leach
 Mobilizing for green transformations 133

and Scoones, 2005). Mobilizations must galvanize creative, knowledgeable citizens,

and must operate in an increasingly interconnected knowledge society where forms
of democratic politics are being reconstituted.
Yet how might such multiple, diverse, fragmented mobilizations add up to and
contribute to the bigger challenges of green transformation? Scaling up and out
through networking and alliance-building can be key but, as we have shown, there
are dangers if this comes at the expense of the critical edge and locatedness in context
that gave life to mobilization in the first place. Indeed, we have highlighted tensions
along an axis from movement through network to institutionalization, inter-
connected with those from local particularism to wider, including global, concerns.
The cases show how these tensions can be navigated in a variety of ways, depending
not just on context but on varied analyses of power. Thus a structural political
economy analysis, as adopted, for example, by strands of the food sovereignty and
anti-GM movements, underlines a logic of alliance-building to confront capitalist
corporate and state power. Yet a more ‘capillary’ notion that locates power in diffuse
social relations, informs other efforts to reclaim democracy through micro-social
practices and negotiations in multiple spaces. Even mobilizations that appear to
withdraw from or ignore the centres of power can be viewed as transformatory
in their potential to advance alternatives, and overturn stereotypes and traditions,
and reframe ideas and practice into more participatory and negotiable models.
The potential of green movements to contribute to the politics of green
transformations, then, lies in their analyses (whether overt or implicit), as well as
their action. By embodying particular theories of power and deploying these in
diverse political strategies, they contribute to a vital opening up of the politics
of sustainability, which must increasingly be concerned not just with the allocation
of material resources, ecological space, status and authority, but with who defines
the future and what perspectives and experiences matter. This involves cultivating
a wider breadth of knowledge and experience to define goals and appropriate ways
of reaching them, enabling the diversity that is required to respect diverse ecological
and social contexts, and to keep options open in the face of the unexpected. It is
by continuously offering alternatives and maintaining a critically-aware position of
the inevitable movement-institutionalization and local-global tensions that affect
their operation, that green mobilizations offer their greatest potential to inspire the
kind of thinking and action that green transformations require.

Notes
1 Available online at: www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2013/
jun/17/la-via-campesina-food-sovereignty. Accessed 20 June 2014.
2 The Nyeleni declaration was produced in 2007 in Nyeleni, a village in Mali. Available
online at: www.nyeleni.org/spip.php?article290. Accessed 20 June 2014.
3 Available online at: www.future-agricultures.org/blog/entry/missing-politics-and-food-
sovereignty#.U4NI2E1OXIU. Accessed 20 June 2014.
9
THE GREEN ENTREPRENEURIAL
STATE
Mariana Mazzucato
DOI: 10.4324/9781315747378-9

Introduction
Never more than today is it necessary to question the way in which we discuss
the role of the State in the economy. This is because in most parts of the world
we are witnessing a massive withdrawal of the State, one that has been justified in
terms of debt reduction and – perhaps more systematically – in terms of rendering
the economy more ‘dynamic’, ‘competitive’ and ‘innovative’. Business is accepted
as the innovative force, while the State is cast as inertial – necessary for the ‘basics’,
but too large and heavy to be the dynamic engine.
This chapter is committed to dismantling this false image and in particular
looks at ‘green’ technology and innovation. Unsurprisingly, we find that across
the globe the countries that are leading in green transformations (solar and wind
energy are the paradigmatic examples explored) are those where the State is
playing an active role. And the public sector organizations involved, such as develop-
ment banks1 in Germany, Brazil and China, are not just providing countercyclical
lending (as Keynes would have asked for), but are even ‘directing’ that lending
towards the most innovative, risky and uncertain parts of the ‘green’ economy.
Questions about whether such ‘directionality’ should raise the usual worries about
the State’s inability to ‘pick winners’ are confronted head on, demystifying old
assumptions.
Green entrepreneurship – what every policy-maker today seems to want to
encourage – is not (just) about start-ups, venture capital and ‘garage tinkerers’. It
is about the willingness and ability of economic agents to take on risk and uncer-
tainty: what is genuinely unknown. Most of the radical, revolutionary innovations
that have fuelled the dynamics of capitalism – from railroads to the Internet, to
modern-day nanotechnology and pharmaceuticals – trace the most courageous, early
and capital-intensive ‘entrepreneurial’ investments back to the State. Such radical
 The green entrepreneurial state 135

innovations did not exist before the State envisaged and developed them,
consequently, markets for these new products or services had also to be created
and shaped by the ‘visible hand’ of the State.
Yet most economists talk simply of fixing ‘market failures’. Standard economic
theory justifies State intervention when markets fail to efficiently allocate resources
and reach a ‘Pareto equilibrium’,2 as when the social return on investment is higher
than the private return, making it unlikely that a private business will invest. Classic
cases include cleaning up pollution (a negative ‘externality’ not reflected in
prices) and funding basic research (a ‘public good’ difficult to appropriate privately).
However, State investment must be more than this. Visionary investments are
exemplified today by confident State investment banks that are directing lend-
ing to new uncertain areas that private banks and venture capitalists (VCs) fear.
The State can act as a force for innovation and change, not only ‘derisking’ the
economic landscape for risk-averse private actors, but also boldly leading the way,
with a clear and courageous vision – exactly the opposite image of the State that
is usually sold.
In economics, the ‘crowding-out’ hypothesis is used to analyse the possibility
that increased State spending reduces private business investment, since both
compete for the same pool of savings (through borrowing). This in turn might
result in higher interest rates which reduce the willingness of private firms to borrow,
and hence invest. While Keynesian analysis has argued against this possibility during
periods of underutilized capacity, the point is that even in the boom (when in
theory there is full capacity utilization), there are in practice many parts of the risk
landscape where private business fears treading and the State must lead the way.
Therefore, if government is ‘transforming’ – creating and shaping markets, not only
fixing them – then the crowding-out hypothesis would not apply here either.
Thus, to dismantle that false image, a proper defence of the State should argue
that it not only ‘crowds in’ private investment (by increasing gross domestic product
(GDP) through the multiplier effect) – a correct but limited point made by
Keynesians – it does something more. It is necessary to build a theory of the State’s
role in shaping and creating markets, more in line with the work of Karl Polanyi
(1980 [1944]) who emphasized how the capitalist ‘market’ has from the start been
heavily shaped by State actions. In innovation, the State not only ‘crowds in’ business
investment but also ‘dynamizes it in’, creating the vision, the mission and the plan.
This chapter explains the process by which this happens as a central feature of green
transformations.
The chapter in particular focuses on the role of the ‘entrepreneurial’ risk-taking
State in launching specific ‘green’ technologies, in this case wind turbines and solar
photovoltaic (PV) panels. It was State funding and the work of particular State
agencies that provided the initial push, early stage high-risk funding and institutional
environment that could establish these important technologies. Currently, it is
also State funding, particularly through development banks, that is promoting the
diffusion of those green energy technologies, which highlights that States have a
role to play throughout the entire innovation chain and not just in public good
136 Mariana Mazzucato

areas such as research and development (R&D). The chapter emphasizes the role
of countries like Germany, Denmark and China in directing green transformations.
The chapter thus provides a fuller understanding of the public sector’s centrality
to risk-taking activities and radical technological change, essential to promote green
transformations.

Transforming the energy sector

We cannot influence the emergence of innovative new ‘green’ companies,
technologies or transform energy markets without policies directed at both the
demand- and supply-side (Edler and Georghiou, 2007). Each influences either the
structure and function of markets or the investment of firms attempting to grow
or transition into green technology sectors. So, in the case of the energy sector,
demand-side policies include environmental regulations, public procurement, sup-
port of private demand and other systemic policies that have an impact on energy
consumption patterns. Supply-side policies are focused on how energy is generated
and distributed, and influence the development of innovation in energy technolo-
gies through the provision of finance (e.g. grants, equity support, tax incentives)
or through service support (e.g. information brokerage, networking, development
of common visions). Examples of demand-side policies include Renewable
Portfolio Standards, greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction targets, energy-
intensity targets (a measure of energy use per unit of GDP), new building standards
or even a ‘carbon tax’ that affect consumer preferences. Each targets energy
consumption patterns and establishes a demand for reduced pollution, increased
clean energy or better energy-system efficiency. State stimulus to green energy
technologies is therefore indirect, via changes in consumer demand that stimulate
the development of innovations. Supply-side policies could include tax credits,
subsidies, loans, grants or other monetary benefits for specific energy technologies,
favourable energy pricing schemes (such as ‘feed-in tariffs’), R&D contracts and
funding for discovery and development of innovations, and so on. Such policies
directly support the development of technologies, complementing and providing
a ‘solution’ to demand-side policies.
Understanding how businesses transform government support mechanisms into
lower-cost, higher-performance products through the innovation process is typically
the ‘missing link’ in discussions of energy policy, and this missing link can
undermine not just our desire to push an energy transition, but to do it with high-
road investments in innovation. State support for clean technologies must continue
until they overcome the sunk-cost advantage of incumbent technologies, and these
sunk costs are a century long in some cases (Unruh, 2000). That is why much of
this chapter focuses on supply-side support mechanisms. In the current policy
environment, many countries have been aggressively deploying public finance with
the aim of promoting green industry, and this is the most direct support possible
for business development.
 The green entrepreneurial state 137

Funding a ‘green’ industrial revolution

Advanced clean technologies, like all radical technologies, have many hurdles to
clear. Some hurdles may relate to technical development (such as improving or
inventing production techniques), others are due to market conditions or competi-
tion. In the case of renewable energy sources, like wind or solar power, broad
social acceptance or the need to provide energy at a price lower than possible by
other firms and technologies are also major hurdles (Hopkins and Lazonick, 2012).
Given these challenges, the financial risk of supporting a firm until it can mass
produce, capture market share and reach economies of scale, driving down unit
costs, is too great for most VC funds (Hopkins and Lazonick, 2012).
In the innovation game, it is therefore crucial that finance be ‘patient’ and be
able to accept the fact that innovation is highly uncertain and takes a long time
(Mazzucato, 2013a). Patient capital can come in different forms. The German feed-
in tariff (FIT) policy is a good form of public ‘patient capital’ supporting the long-
term growth of renewable energy markets (Lauber and Mez, 2006). By contrast,
the availability but also frequent uncertainty surrounding tax credits in the US and
the UK are a form of ‘impatient capital’ – which indeed has not helped industry
take-off (Porritt, 2011; Cowell, 2012). The most visible patient capital made available
to renewable technology manufacturers and developers has been delivered through
State-funded investment or ‘development banks’. According to the Global Wind
Energy Council (GWEC):

The main factor that distinguishes development banks from private sector
lending institutions is the ability of development banks to take more risk
associated with political, economic and locational aspects. Further, since they
are not required to pay dividends to private stakeholders, the development
banks take higher risks than commercial banks to meet various national or
international ‘public good’ objectives. Additionally, long-term finance from
the private sector for more than a ten year maturity period is not available.
(Fried et al., 2012, p6)

The role and scope of development banks is more diverse than simply financing
projects (Griffith-Jones and Tyson, 2013; Mazzucato and Penna, forthcoming 2014).
Development banks can set conditions for access to their capital, in an effort to
maximize economic or social value to their home country. Most development banks
deliberately seek to invest in areas that have high social value and are willing to
make risky loans that the commercial sector would shy away from. Additionally,
while these banks support consumption of renewable energy, they can also support
manufacturing. Development banks are flexible financiers and can provide
significant capital to renewable energy projects, which can represent as great an
investment risk as the development of new technologies. Given the amount of
financial resources in their possession, their investment decisions play an important
role in economic development trajectories. In this sense, it came as good news
138 Mariana Mazzucato

$ 1 20.0
$108.9 bi
Billion

■ Transmission and distribution

■ Energy efficiency
$7.8
$ 1 0 0 .0 - ■ Renewable energy
$91.2 bi

$7.6
$76.8 bi
$80.0 $42.4
$5.1
$66.2 b
$33.5
$3.4
$60.0
$31.3
$44.9 bi
$30.4
$36.8 b $3.0
$40.0
$1.7
$16.0
$58.7
$17.1 $50.1
$ 2 0 .0 $40.4
$32.4
$25.8
$18.0

$ 0 .0 -
2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

FIGURE 9.1 Development bank broad clean energy investment by sector (US$,
billions)
Source: Based on data from Louw (2013).

that in 2013 some development banks (such the World Bank and the European
Investment Bank) decided to curtail funding for coal power (FS-UNEP/BNEF,
2014). And in recent years, development banks have been a key source of
funding for ‘clean energy’ projects, committing more than US$100 billion in 2012
(Figure 9.1).3
In 2012, China announced its plan to produce 1,000 GWs of wind power
by 2050, which would be approximately equal to replacing the entire existing US
electric infrastructure with wind turbines (Liu, 2012). Are the US and Europe still
able to dream so big? It appears not. In many countries, the State is asked to take
a back seat and simply ‘subsidize’ or incentivize investments for the private sector.
We thus fail to build visions for the future similar to those that two decades ago
resulted in the mass diffusion of the Internet.
What, then, is the role of ‘patient’ finance – for example, that supplied by State
development banks – in creating the ‘catalytic’ early, and risky, investments
necessary to make it happen? Clean energy is a paradigmatic example of technology
that needs to be widely deployed in order for the green industrial revolution to
succeed. In recent years, governments around the world have once again taken
the lead in pumping up R&D of many clean technologies like wind and solar power,
and efforts are being made to establish modernized energy grids. They also subsidize
and support the growth of leading manufacturers that compete for domestic and
global market leadership. And governments deploy both policy and finance to
encourage stable development of competitive markets for renewable energy.
As has been the case in the development of other industries such as biotech and
IT, private businesses have entered the game only after successful government
 The green entrepreneurial state 139

initiatives absorb most of the uncertainty and not a little risk of developing new
energy technologies in the first place.
The ‘green’ energy industry is still in its early stages: even though development
of wind and solar power technologies received a big push in the 1970s (due to the
energy crisis), they are both still characterized by market and technological
uncertainty.4 It will not develop ‘naturally’ through market forces, in part because
of embedded energy infrastructure, but also because of a failure of markets to value
sustainability or to punish waste and pollution. In the face of such uncertainty, the
business sector will not enter until the riskiest and most capital-intensive investments
have been made, or until there are coherent and systematic policy signals in place.
In a recent interview, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, one of the principals of the
American Energy Innovation Council (AEIC) recognized that ‘a key element to
get an energy breakthrough is more basic research. And that requires the govern-
ment to take the lead. Only when that research is pointing towards a product then
we can expect the private sector to kick in.’5
As in the early stage of IT, biotech and nanotech industries, there is little
indication that the business sector alone would enter the new ‘green’ sector and
drive it forward in the absence of strong and active government policy. Indeed,
the Climate Policy Initiative (2013) reports that institutional investors contributed
with only US$0.4 billion to climate change mitigation and adaptation projects
(a minimal figure considering the US$70 trillion in assets that they manage); venture
capital, private equity and infrastructure funds invested another US$1 billion only.
Thus, while ‘nudging’ might incentivize a few entrepreneurs to act, most business
actors will need stronger signals to justify their engagement in clean technology
innovation. Only long-term policy decisions can reduce the uncertainty of
transforming core business from legacy into clean technologies. In fact, no other
high-tech industry has been created or transformed with a ‘nudge’ (Mazzucato,
2013b). Most likely, a strong ‘push’ is needed.

National approaches to green economic development

There are differences in how countries are reacting to the challenge of developing
a green economy. Some countries have used the post-crisis stimulus spending as
a way to direct government investments into global clean technology industries,
with two goals: to provide economic growth, while mitigating climate change.
While some countries lead, others are lagging behind. As investments in innovation
are cumulative and the results are ‘path dependent’ (innovation today is dependent
on innovation yesterday), it is likely that the leaders emerging from this race will
remain leaders for years to come. In other words, those acting first or as a fast-
follower will enjoy a early-mover advantage, as in the success case of Toyota, who
pioneered hybrid vehicle technology and benefited from an early ‘halo effect’, which
later resulted in it being the biggest winner of the US ‘cash for clunkers’ scheme6
(Sperling and Gordon, 2009; USDOT, 2009).
140 Mariana Mazzucato

Yet, failure of some governments to provide the vision and to ‘push’ clean
technology is having an impact on the amount of investment occurring. Countries
that pursue a patchy policy towards clean technology will not stimulate enough
investment to alter their ‘carbon footprints’, nor should they expect to host the
clean technology leaders of the future. An example of a country going for a ‘big
push’ is China; Germany is also a first mover among European countries. The US
has shown contradictory trends, with the State making early and substantive invest-
ments in green technologies. By proceeding without a clear vision and goal in
mind, however, and without a long-term commitment to several key technologies,
the US has failed to alter significantly its energy mix, despite the bigger push at
the state level (notably in California, North Carolina and, surprisingly, Texas)
(Carley, 2011; Prasad and Munch, 2012). The UK is also lagging behind.
In the US, the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act stimulus
packages devoted 11.5 per cent of their budget to clean technology investments,
lower than China (34.3 per cent), France (21 per cent) or South Korea (80.5 per
cent), but higher than the UK (6.9 per cent). In July 2010, the South Korean
government announced that it would double its spending on green research to
the equivalent of US$2.9 billion by 2013 (almost 2 per cent of its annual GDP),
which means that between 2009 and 2013 it will have spent US$59 billion on this
type of research in total. Figure 9.2 shows that Europe, the US and China have
dominated global new investment in renewable energy between 2004 and 2012,
with other economies from Asia (such as South Korea and Japan) and Oceania
catching up in 2013. In Europe, investments are led by Germany (FS-UNEP/
BNEF, 2014).
Other than R&D expenditures, State investment banks are taking a leading
role in clean technology development and diffusion in some emerging countries.

$140
Billions

$120

$100

$80

$60

$40

$20

$-
2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

-♦-USA -■-Brazil -^-Americas (excl. USA & Brazil)

-*~Europe -^-M iddle East & Africa -•-China

-I—India ASOC (excl. China & India)

FIGURE 9.2 Global trend in renewable energy investment by region (US$, billions)
Source: Based on data from FS-UNEP/BNEF (2014).
 The green entrepreneurial state 141

In 2011, Germany’s KfW bank announced that it would make available €100 billion
(US$120–130 billion) over the following five years to promote renewable energies
and contribute to Germany’s Energiewende plan (‘Energy Turnaround’), which will
promote the complete decommissioning of the country’s nuclear power plants by
2022 (OGFJ, 2011; Reuters, 2012). Indeed, in 2012 KfW was the top development
bank in terms of clean energy investments, with its total commitments amounting
to US$34 billion (Louw, 2013, p6). In China, investments by the China Develop-
ment Bank (CDB) are a key source of its success in solar power. CDB funding to
green energy projects in general is indeed generous: between 2007 and 2012, CDB
committed US$78 billion to clean energy, US$26 billion in 2012 alone (Louw,
2013, p6). The CDB extended US$47 billion after 2010 to approximately 15 leading
Chinese solar PV manufacturers to finance their current and future expansion needs,
though firms had drawn on approximately US$866 million in 2011 (Bakewell,
2011). The rapid scaling of solar PV manufacturing firms made possible by public
finance has quickly established Chinese solar technology manufacturers as major
international players. As such, they are able to slash the cost of solar PV panels so
quickly that much of the financial media argues that this access to credit is the
reason behind bankruptcies of solar companies based in the United States and Europe
(e.g. Forbes, 2011). The Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) approved over
US$4.23 billion in clean technology financing in 2011 (Fried et al., 2012, p5). Today,
state investment banks are spending over US$100 billion annually on energy
efficiency and renewable projects (Louw, 2013), while clean energy project bond
issuance reached just US$3.2 billion in 2013 (FS-UNEP/BNEF, 2014, p44).
While precise figures comparing all public and private sources of finance for
renewable energy projects are not available, the picture is likely to be similar to
the ‘Global Landscape of Climate Finance’ (Climate Policy Initiative, 2013), which
includes all types of climate change mitigation and adaptation projects (Figure 9.3).

$140
B illio n s

$123.0 bn
$120
$102.0 bn
$100

$80
$66.0 bn
$60

$40 $33.0 bn
$21.0 bn
$20 $12.0 bn
$1.0 bn $0.4 bn
$0
Development Project Corporate Households Commercial Government Private Institutional
Finance developers actors Financial (budgets) Equity, Investors
Institutions (including Institutions Venture
public Capital and
utilities) Infrastructure
funds

FIGURE 9.3 Sources of finance for climate change adaptation or mitigation projects in
2012 (US$, billions)
Source: Based on data from Climate Policy Initiative (2013).
142 Mariana Mazzucato

China’s ‘green’ five-year plan

Facing backlash in European and US markets (through trade war and tariffs backed
by government and initiated by competing firms) against the success of its nascent
solar industry in lowering prices, China opted to revise its domestic solar power
development goal to 20 GWs by 2015, at a time when just three GWs existed in
the country (Patton, 2012). Complementing these targets are regional feed-in tariffs
that fix the price of energy produced by wind and solar projects on more favourable
terms (Landberg, 2012). Other incentives for Chinese energy developers ensure
that today’s technologies can recover their costs in seven years, and generate returns
for decades, while manufacturers continue to improve technologies (Liu, 2011).
China’s goal of 100 GWs of wind power by 2015 and 1000 GWs by 2050 is a
second aggressive goal-promoting economic development and reduced carbon
emissions (Liu, 2012). So far, China’s targets have only been revised upwards,
suggesting that ample opportunity for domestic industry will persist into China’s
foreseeable future.
What is more, China’s green strategy is guided by an overarching vision
encapsulated in its ongoing twelfth five-year plan (2011–2015). China’s visionary
and ambitious plan aims to invest US$1.5 trillion (or 5 per cent of GDP) across
multiple industries: energy-saving and environmentally friendly technologies,
biotechnology, new generation ITs, advanced manufacturing, new materials,
alternative fuels and electric cars (Mathews et al., 2011; Yuan and Zuo, 2011b).
Overarching these investments are intentions to adopt a ‘circular’ approach to
economic development that places sustainability first, a directive which defines
pollution- and waste-control as forms of competitive advantage (Mathews et al.,
2011). Accompanying investment in industrial development are energy-intensity
reduction targets, emission controls and renewable development goals – a
combination of supply-side and demand-side policies.
Recognizing that the competitive advantage of the future depends on effective
resource management as well as reduced waste and pollution, China’s ‘green
development’ strategy is reframing the notion of how ‘optimal’ economic develop-
ment unfolds with aggressive demand- and supply-side measures. China’s ‘win–win’
plans make ‘profit’ and ‘environment’ complementary pursuits rather than trade-
offs, as they are often treated in many Western economies. As a result, China is
poised not only to continue as a major manufacturer of solar PV panels, but also
to become a major market for them.
In sum, China now prioritizes clean technologies as part of a strategic vision
and long-term commitment to economic growth. While already providing billions
of dollars for new renewable energy project finance, China is in fact just begin-
ning its serious investment in solar and wind technology (Lim and Rabinovitch,
2010; Zhang et al., 2014). Given the huge size of its economy, however, China’s
GHG emissions are still poised to grow in absolute terms, and it is still to be seen
whether the country will be able to decouple economic growth from GHG emis-
sions, which would represent an original development path, never before seen in
the history of industrialization.
 The green entrepreneurial state 143

United States: an ambiguous approach to green technologies

A clue to what is required to accelerate green transformations is found in the US,
where government-funded initiatives are busy building on their understanding of
what has worked in previous technological revolutions. While the US has been
good at connecting academia with industry, in its own push into clean technologies,
its performance has been uneven. As one of the first countries to push into wind
and solar power in the 1980s, the US failed to sustain support and watched as
Europe, Japan and now China take the lead. Worse, the US failed to alter its energy
mix significantly, setting up its position for decades as a world-leading CO2
emitter. With world-class innovative capability, the world’s largest economy and
a massive energy grid, the US is ideally positioned to kick off a clean technology
revolution, yet it has not.
A key reason for uneven US performance has been its heavy reliance on venture
capital to ‘nudge’ the development of green technologies. The United States is the
VC capital of the clean technology world, with US$7 billion invested in 2011 versus
US$9 billion globally (Hopkins and Lazonick, 2012). However, VCs have shown
themselves to be ‘impatient capitalists’: they are not interested in sustaining the
risks and costs of technological development over a long-term period. Indeed,
together, private equity, venture capital and infrastructure funds provided just US$1
billion for climate change mitigation/adaptation projects in 2012, much less than
State development banks (US$123 billion) and even other governmental agencies
(US$12 billion) that obtain their own funding from limited budgets (Climate Policy
Initiative, 2013). VCs also have limits to the financial resources they can allocate
to finance fully the growth of clean technology companies. Since some clean
technologies are still in the very early stages when uncertainty is highest, VC funding
is focused on some of the safer bets, rather than on the radical innovation that is
required to allow the sector to transform society so as to meet the double objective
of promoting economic growth and mitigating climate change. Ghosh and Nanda
(2010) argue that it is virtually only public sector money that is currently funding
the riskiest and the most capital-intensive projects in clean technology. Federal and
state incentives provide billions to support the establishment and growth of a
domestic solar PV market, ensuring that companies have an opportunity to capture
market share and reap economies of scale.
Impatient capital can destroy firms promising to deliver government-financed
technology to the masses, but critics often focus on the government as the source
of failure, rather than examining the behaviour of the smart, profit-hungry business
community in producing that failure by jumping ship, restricting their total
commitments or demanding financial returns over all other considerations. If VCs
are not interested in capital-intensive industries or in building factories, what exactly
are they offering in terms of economic development? Their role should be seen
for what it is: limited. More importantly, the difficulties faced by the growing clean
technology industry should highlight the need for better policy support, not less,
given that existing financing models favour investors and not the public interest.
144 Mariana Mazzucato

‘Nudging’ economies is not conducive to igniting a real green transformation.

Those nations that cling to the bogus idea that government investment has some
sort of a natural balancing point with the business sector will miss their opportunity
to seize on an historic energy transition or be forced to import it from elsewhere.
In reality, government and business activities frequently overlap. Clean technology
businesses, like most businesses, are apt to call for subsidy and government-led R&D.
Venture capitalists and technology entrepreneurs respond to government support
in choosing technologies to invest in, but are rarely focused on the long term.
Getting to much-needed green transformations presents a serious problem: given
the risk aversion of businesses, states need to sustain funding for the search for radical
ideas that push a green industrial revolution along. Governments thus have a leading
role to play in supporting the development of clean technologies past their
prototype stages through to their commercial viability.
Real courage exists in those countries that use State resources to give a serious
‘push’ to clean technologies, by committing to goals and funding levels that
attempt seemingly impossible tasks. Courage is China’s attempt to build a US and
European electric grid-sized market for wind turbines by 2050 and to increase its
solar PV market by 700 per cent in just three years. Courage is also development
banks stepping in where commercial banks doubt, promoting development, growth
of the firm and a return on investment to taxpayers that is easier to trace. It is
important that tax money is traceable in its promotion of technologies and genera-
tion of returns. Success makes support for another round of risky investments more
likely and creates better visibility for the positive role that government can play in
fostering innovation (Lazonick and Mazzucato, 2013).
If some European countries have demonstrated the value of long-term policy
support for R&D and market deployment, the United States has in contrast
demonstrated how maintenance of a state of uncertainty can lead to missed
opportunities. The US failed to adopt a long-term national energy plan that places
renewables at the forefront, while also refusing to reduce or abandon support for
other, more mature energy technologies, leaving the task of direction setting with
its states.

Nurturing green technologies

Historically, different types of government policies have played important roles in
the origins of many green technologies. This section looks at the history of two
renewable energy technologies: wind turbines and solar PV modules.
As characteristically ‘intermittent’ and ‘diffuse’ sources of energy, wind and solar
power have benefited from what Madrigal (2011, p263) describes as ‘throwing
software at the problem’: increasing the productivity and reliability of wind and
solar projects with advanced computer modelling, management of power production
and remote monitoring. Investments in a ‘smart grid’ are meant to digitize modern
energy systems to optimize the flexibility, performance and efficiency of clean
 The green entrepreneurial state 145

technologies while providing advanced management options to grid operators and

end users. Such flexibility and control are not unlike the sort that emerged with
digitized communication networks. Given time and broad deployment, the smart
grid could change the way we think about energy, create new commercial oppor-
tunities and improve the economics of renewable energy by establishing new tools
for optimal energy supply management and demand response.
Were it not for the commitments of governments around the world to R&D
and the diffusion of technologies like wind turbines and solar PV panels, the energy
transformation taking off in the last decade would not have occurred. The ‘push’
has required major regulatory shifts, financial commitments and long-term support
for emerging companies. It is not always clear how to connect the dots between
dominant firms and their technologies and the efforts of governments around the
world, but it is clear that no leading clean technology firm emerged from a pure
‘market genesis’ – that is, as if the State played no role at all.
The apparent willingness of the State to accept the risk of clean technology
development has had a positive impact. In the last few decades, wind turbines and
solar PV panels have been two of the most rapidly deployed renewable energy
technologies on the planet, spawning growing industries that are emerging in many
regions of the world. In 2008, US$194 billion was directed at emerging clean
technologies in an effort to provide badly needed economic stimulus to counteract
the global economic crisis (NSB, 2012, p62). An unofficial global ‘agreement’ was
thus reached out of the economic crisis, and that agreement was that the time for
clean technologies had come (again). A green energy revolution seemed to be within
the realm of possibility – but such ‘green transformation’ is yet to be seen.
Widescale deployment of solar PV panels and wind turbines are two techno-
logical solutions for meeting future energy needs and mitigating climate change.
The ‘ecosystem’ of innovation in clean technology is one in which the public sector
has taken the leading role. Wind and solar power technologies have been the fruit
of major government investments that catalyzed their historical development
around the world.
While the US and China possesses the largest quantity of wind capacity deployed
worldwide, Denmark produced the leading manufacturer of wind turbines decades
ago: Vestas (Morales, 2014). In the US, leading manufacturers also emerged during
the 1980s, but each was lost through acquisition or bankruptcy. Germany’s solar
resources are inferior to those of the United States, yet it remains the world leader
of deployed solar PV power. China has emerged as the world’s major solar PV
manufacturing region, successfully out-competing US, Japanese and European rivals
that led in prior decades (Zhang et al., 2014, p904).
What must be explained is how a country like the US can become a leading
market, but fail to produce a leading manufacturer, and conversely, how a country
like China can produce a leading manufacturer in the absence (until recently) of
a domestic market. What distinguishes these nations has nothing to do with their
‘comparative advantages’ as producers of wind turbines or solar PV panels, and
146 Mariana Mazzucato

it has nothing to do with a natural abundance of wind or sun. Historically, the

development of wind and solar power has reflected differences in government
policies meant to foster these power sources. For some countries, this is a process
that has unfolded over many decades. For others, it is a process of ‘catching up’ –
but no matter the case, it is the tools deployed by the State that have supported
and attempted to drive outcomes. The international histories of wind-power
technology development and of leading wind and solar companies provide examples
of the extent to which those industries have benefited directly (and indirectly) from
different kinds of public funding and support.

Wind
The importance of government support is seen most starkly through the conse-
quences of its withdrawal: when the United States government abandoned subsidies
for wind-power development in the mid-1980s and slashed the Department of
Energy’s (DOE) R&D budget in a backlash against attempts to promote energy
innovation, the domestic market stagnated and momentum for the industry shifted
to Europe or, more accurately, to Germany. Germany’s federal Ministry for
Research and Technology launched a programme to develop 100 MWs of wind
power in 1989. Combined with a FIT programme, which provided above-market
prices for wind power and a 70 per cent tax credit to small producers, Germany
began its reign as the hottest market for wind-power development in the world
(Lauber and Mez, 2006, p106).
Combined with GHG reduction targets and the intention of meeting renewable
energy development goals with domestic manufacturing, in 2009 Germany also
set aside national and state funding of approximately US$2.2 billion to support
continued wind energy R&D. Germany’s long-term approach to wind- energy
development gained momentum in the 1990s and continues today, enabling the
emergence of leading manufacturers while providing stable annual growth in
deployed wind capacity. Since the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, Germany
decided to phase out its nuclear installations and develop its Energy Transition
(Energiewende) strategy, whereby renewable energies such as wind will receive further
push from the State (Smith Stegen and Seel, 2013). The 20-year investment horizons
provided by government incentives are twice as long as those in the US, reducing
market uncertainty and boosting investor confidence. Furthermore, KfW has been
enlisted as the key source of finance for the Energiewende initiative.
China was a relative latecomer to wind-power technology, despite having
pushed investment in renewable energy in the 1980s as a technical solution for
rural electric infrastructure development (Ma et al., 2010). China’s partially State-
owned Goldwind, a major wind-turbine manufacturer, was established in 1998,
and initially licensed German technology from Jacobs (a company later purchased
by REpower) and Vensys Energiesysteme GmbH (Lewis, 2007). Goldwind turbines
benefited from aggressive Chinese domestic content rules, which were enacted
in 2003 to require 70 per cent local content in all wind turbines sold in China
 The green entrepreneurial state 147

(Martinot, 2010). This effectively shut the door on foreign capital in the country,
while China’s dominant wind manufacturers strengthened their domestic supply
chain and presence.
Chinese wind power developers also received 25-year fixed price contracts that
were set through a ‘concession’ programme (competitive bidding). Wind projects
had access to low-cost financing and after 2005, China began to publicly fund
R&D and projects with grants or favourable loan terms. China has also prioritized
reducing its overall energy intensity (the relationship between energy consumption
and GDP) and established goals for renewable energy development (Martinot, 2010).

Solar
Many examples of innovative emerging firms focusing on solar PV can be found
in the US, where First Solar, Solyndra, Sunpower and Evergreen, for example,
each developed state-of-the-art C-Si or thin-film solar technologies (Perlin, 1999).
First Solar emerged out of the search for commercialized cadmium telluride
(CdTe) thin-film solar PV panels and became a major US-based CdTe thin-film
producer. First Solar dominates the US market for thin-film solar PV panels and
has produced record-setting technology and low-cost manufacturing, which have
enabled the company to generate over US$2 billion in revenue each year since
2009. First Solar’s patents have extensive links to prior DOE research (Ruegg and
Thomas, 2011). The success of companies like First Solar was built over several
decades, during which VCs entered at a relatively late stage and exited soon after
the IPO was completed. Much of the risk of investing in First Solar was taken on
by the US government, which actively promoted their solar technology through
to commercialization. Subsidies supporting a domestic market and a market in
Europe, coupled to First Solar’s position as a dominant thin-film producer make
it hard to imagine how such a company could fail. Yet the value extraction provided,
and even promoted, by equity-driven investment and compensation methods ensures
that VCs, executives and top managers of firms can reap massive gains from stock
performance, whether short lived or not. This perverse incentive not only
redistributes the investment in innovation away from its other core stakeholders
(governments, schools, workers), but it risks undermining firm performance.
Rather than make the risky investment in future innovation, those in positions of
strategic control squander resources in a search for financial returns (Hopkins and
Lazonick, 2012).
The story of another solar power technology company – Solyndra – provides
an important example of what happens if venture capital suddenly withdraws their
financial support. In 2009, Solyndra received a US$527 million loan guarantee from
the US DOE, as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, in order
to develop copper indium gallium (di)selenide (CIGS) solar panels. With the price
of raw silicon soaring (silicon is the primary ingredient of standard solar panels),
investing in high-tech CIGS made economic sense. Yet, a couple of years later,
the price of silicon collapsed, before Solyndra could capitalize on its investments.
148 Mariana Mazzucato

Solyndra VC backers, who had invested US$1.1 billion in the company, were the
first to jump ship. Even though all of Solyndra’s (public and private) stakeholders
were betting on the company’s success – not failure – for the critics, the company
has become the most recent symbol of government’s inability to invest competently
in risky technology and to ‘pick winners’.
Yet nearly the same amount of money that was lent to Solyndra was lent to
another company: Tesla Motors. Tesla received a US$465 million guaranteed loan
for its S car. Unlike the Solyndra investment, this one fared very well and Elon
Musk, its founder, is today treated as the new hero of Silicon Valley. As is the case
with all innovations, for every success there are many more failures. The problem
is that by not admitting that the State provided the high-risk investment and that
it is subject to the same high failure rates as private venture capital, innovation
policy ends up socializing only the risks and not the rewards (Mazzucato, 2013b;
Lazonick and Mazzucato, 2013). Instead of worrying about picking winners or
losers the real question should be why the ‘entrepreneurial state’ does not insist
that a small per cent of Tesla’s profit comes back to the state coffers that provided
the high-risk finance so that the Solyndra loss could be shouldered not only by
the taxpayers but the entire innovation ‘ecosystem’ that benefits from such public
risk taking.

The role of an active private sector

There is nothing ‘accidental’ about clean technology development or the formation
of markets for renewable energy. Rather, clean technology firms are leveraging
technologies and cashing in on the prior investments of an active public sector,
and responding to clear market signals proclaimed by progressive government
policies about the desired change and to the availability of support for clean
technology industrial growth. The hope is that innovation will produce economic
wealth, employment opportunities, as well as a solution for climate change.
While the performance of countries has varied tremendously over the decades,
it is obvious that Germany has provided a glimpse of the value of long-term support,
China has demonstrated that a rapid scale-up of manufacturing and deployment is
possible and the United States has shown the value of R&D, but also the folly of
permitting uncertainty, shifting political priorities and speculative finance to set
the clean technology development agenda. Governments leading the charge into
clean technology do not have to allow themselves to be cheated when investments
go sour. Nor should they expect that taxpayers will happily bear the full risks of
investing in these technologies and establishing markets without a clear future reward
to be gained.
The challenge is to create, maintain and fund a long-term policy framework
which sustains momentum in the clean energy sector that has built up over the
last decade. Without such long-term commitments, it is likely that clean technology
will become a missed opportunity for many nations. Such a framework would
include demand-side policies to promote increased consumption of solar and wind
 The green entrepreneurial state 149

energy, as well as supply-side policies that promote manufacture of the technologies

with ‘patient’ capital.
R&D contributing to clean technologies like wind and solar power has occurred
on a global scale for decades, as a result of significant public investments and learning,
and the leveraging of a broad community that has been inclusive of educational
and business knowledge networks. The technology works as a result, and improve-
ments in cost and efficiency have proceeded despite the unequal commitments of
governments and businesses over time. The cost of energy they produce has also
fallen over the long term, while fossil fuel prices continue to be volatile and rise
over time.
Some firms may conduct important R&D for decades and remain money losers
without a clear commercial prospect in the pipeline. As shown by the history of
First Solar, the government’s role in pushing innovations out of the lab and into
markets does not end with R&D, but can include a role in overcoming com-
mercialization barriers, such as a lack of production capabilities. Likewise, First Solar’s
VCs needed to endure challenges and an investment horizon that stretched their
commitment.
How can firms of different scales interact in generating green transformations?
We should not underestimate the role of small firms nor assume that only big firms
have the right resources at their disposal. Small firms that grow into big firms are
active promoters of their own business models, often to the frustration of ‘legacy’
industries that one could argue would never have taken the same technologies so
far, so fast. The willingness to disrupt existing market models is needed in order
to manifest a real green industrial revolution, and it is possible that start-ups, lacking
the disadvantage of sunk costs, are the right actors for the job. Many large firms
involved in clean technologies look to smaller start-ups and have themselves in the
past relied on the State.
For example, General Electric (GE) ‘inherited’ the prior investments of the State
and innovative firms in its rise as a major wind-turbine manufacturer. GE’s own
resources are vastly superior to those of small start-ups, which include billion dollar
R&D budgets, billions in annual profit available to reinvest in core technologies,
complementary assets such as a vast global network, and, as with the wind industry,
significant rapport and reputation that reduce its ‘risk’ to investors. For renewable
energy, scale matters and larger firms can more easily supply enormous energy grids
spanning the continents. Perhaps most importantly, large firms like GE more easily
win the confidence of investors and utilities, given their extensive operating
history, financial resources, debt rating, experience with electricity infrastructure
and vast social networks. It is not so coincidental that wind projects picked up to
a feverish pace following GE’s entry into the wind-energy business.

The political challenges of green transformations

The challenges faced by clean technologies are therefore seldom just technical; they
are political (and social) and include a need for greater commitments of patient
150 Mariana Mazzucato

capital by governments and businesses around the world. R&D works, but it is
not enough. Nurturing risky new industries requires support, subsidy and long-
term commitments to manufacturing and markets as well. Governments must also
confront the reality that for most developed nations, the deployment of clean
technologies is occurring within a well-developed infrastructure. The clean slate
approach is not possible, meaning that investment is intended to manage a transition
to clean technology, a transition that threatens fossil and other energy industries
that have the benefit of a longer development period and significant sunk costs.
Not all in the business community are shy about calling for an active government
role in clean technology. The time is overdue to begin discussing what the real
role of business is in technological development beyond funding R&D. The clean
technology revolution is at a crossroads. Contrary to conventional wisdom, R&D
is not enough, VC is not so risk loving and small is not necessarily always beautiful.
In order for the crossroads to be decided and green transformations to be generated,
government policies must overcome these naive perspectives.
Innovation cannot be pushed without the efforts of many, and it cannot proceed
without a long-term vision that sets the direction and clarifies objectives. When
government policies fail, public dollars can be wasted and promising technologies
may fail to meet their potential, because politicians or taxpayers refuse to commit
more resources. When businesses fail, thousands of jobs can disappear, investors
lose confidence and the reputations of the technologies are scarred. Uncertainty
and stagnation can prevail, while the potential for promising new solutions vanishes.
With government and business activities so intimately linked, it is often impossible
to point blame accurately. At the root of it, there is only collective failure.
What should be clear is that the green energy revolution that has been experi-
enced so far is a result of a complex, long-term, multi-decade-long technological
development and diffusion process that unfolded on a global scale. The process
has benefited from major government investments that encouraged the establish-
ment of new firms and supported their growth by creating market opportunities.
The variety of policies was meant to produce technological development, market
efficiency, scale and efficient regulation. Overarching this process is a broad call
to accelerate economic growth through innovation in clean technologies that
mitigate climate change and promote energy diversity. The long-term vision is to
transform our current productive system into a sustainable green industrial system.
That is a mission set on producing long-lasting benefits to the public while
delivering on a promise of superior economic performance. Key to future green
transformations taking off will be the building of innovation ecosystems that result
in symbiotic public–private partnerships rather than parasitic ones. That is, increased
investments by the State in the ecosystem should not cause the private sector to
invest less and focus its retained earnings on areas like boosting its stock prices,
rather than on human capital formation and R&D.
The challenges of developing clean technologies go far beyond establishing
risky public sector energy ‘innovation hubs’. Governments must reduce the risk
of commercializing energy innovations while establishing and managing the
 The green entrepreneurial state 151

risks of competing in diversified and global energy markets. When difficulty has
arisen in the past, such as when wind or solar markets faltered following retraction
of US support for renewables in the late 1980s, the tendency has been to focus on
how government investment is flawed, while the role of business in contributing
to that failure is ignored or written off as part of the ‘natural’ behaviour of
competitive markets. Worse, some interpret difficulties as proof that a technology
‘can’t compete’ or will never compete with incumbent technology and should
be shelved rather than exploited. This would go against the historical record,
which suggests that all energy technologies have needed and benefited from
lengthy development periods and long-term government support. What matters
more is that the effort continues as if the future of the planet depended on it –
because it does.

Conclusion
In seeking to promote innovation-led green transformations, it is fundamental to
understand the important roles that both the public and private sector can play and
the political dynamics involved. This requires not only understanding the
importance of the innovation ‘ecosystem’ but especially what it is that each actor
brings. The assumption that the public sector can at best incentivize private sector-
led innovation (through subsidies, tax reductions, carbon pricing, technical
standards, and so on) fails to account for the many examples in which the leading
entrepreneurial force came from the State rather than from the private sector.
Ignoring this role has had an impact on the types of public–private partnerships
that are created and has wasted money on ineffective incentives that could have
been spent more effectively.
To understand the fundamental role of the State in taking on the risks present
in modern capitalism, it is important to recognize the ‘collective’ character of
innovation. Different types of firms (large and small), different types of finance and
different types of State policies, institutions and departments interact sometimes in
unpredictable ways, but surely in ways we can help shape to meet the desired ends.
For years we have known that innovation is not just a result of R&D spending,
but about the set of institutions that allow new knowledge to diffuse throughout
the economy.
What distinguishes the State is, of course, not only its mission but also the different
tools and means that it has to deploy the mission. Polanyi argued that the State
created – pushing, not only nudging – the most ‘capitalist’ of all markets, the ‘national
market’, while local and international ones have predated capitalism. The capitalist
economy will always be embedded in social, cultural and political institutions and
therefore subordinate to the State and subject to its changes (Evans, 1995). Such
embeddedness in fact renders meaningless the usual static state vs. market juxta-
position, because, as Polanyi (2001 [1944], p144) has demonstrated, the State shapes
and creates: ‘[t]he road to the free market was opened and kept open by an enor-
mous increase in continuous, centrally organized and controlled interventionism’.
152 Mariana Mazzucato

Thus, rather than relying on the false dream that ‘markets’ will run the world
optimally for us ‘if only we just leave them alone’, policy-makers must better learn
how to use efficiently the tools and means to shape and create markets, making
things happen that otherwise would not, and making sure those things are things
we need. Increasingly, this requires growth to be not only ‘smart’ but also ‘inclusive’
and ‘sustainable’.
It is, of course, important not to romanticize the State’s capacity. The State can
leverage a massive national social network of knowledge and business acumen, but
we must make sure its power is controlled and directed through a variety of account-
ability measures and diverse democratic processes. However, when organized
effectively, the State’s visible hand is firm but not heavy, providing the vision and
the dynamic push (as well as some ‘nudges’) to make things happen that otherwise
would not have. Such actions are meant to increase the courage of private business.
This requires understanding the State as neither a ‘meddler’ nor a simple ‘facilitator’
of economic growth. It is a key partner of the private sector – and often a more
daring one, willing to take the risks that business won’t. The State cannot and
should not bow down easily to interest groups who approach it to seek handouts,
rents and unnecessary privileges like tax cuts. It should seek instead for those interest
groups to work dynamically with it in its search for green growth and technological
change.

Notes
1 ‘Development banks’ and ‘State investment banks’ are used as synonyms throughout this
chapter.
2 In a Pareto equilibrium, no person can be become better off without another person
being made worse off.
3 Data on development bank investment in clean energy for 2013 was not available as of
the time of writing this chapter (May 2014), but they ‘are likely to have increased their
investment in clean energy in 2013’ (FS-UNEP/BNEF, 2014), despite a 14 per cent
decrease in the overall clean energy investments (i.e. including all sources of funding)
between 2012 and 2013.
4 Some green energy subsectors, such as on-shore wind power, are more technologically
mature than others, such as offshore wind power.
5 Online interview, available at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=x54bVuduggU. Accessed
24 June 2014.
6 The 2009 ‘Cash for Clunkers’ scheme – officially the Car Allowance Rebate System
(CARS) – was a US$3 billion car-scrappage programme that offered consumers a credit
of US$3500–US$4500 towards the purchase of a new, more fuel-efficient vehicles.
Throughout the programme, 700,000 cars had been traded in, with Toyota being the
biggest ‘winner’, as it accounted for 19.4 per cent of all trade-in sales (USDOT, 2009).
10
FINANCING GREEN
TRANSFORMATIONS
Stephen Spratt
DOI: 10.4324/9781315747378-10

Introduction
Finance is not neutral: different forms influence the activities that they fund. Most
obviously, the return required on investment determines the minimum return that
must be generated, precluding many activities and encouraging others. Maturity
operates in a similar way; if money needs to be repaid over a short period, activities
that would come to fruition over longer time scales will not be financed.
Many forms of ‘green transformation’ are conceivable. Some focus on economic
structures, particularly energy, while the broadest envisage a full transformation
of economic, social and political systems. They may be local, national or global in
scope. For some, transformation is desirable to achieve a particular end-state. Others
argue that transformation is characterized by complexity and ultimate consequences
cannot be known.
Different green transformations are more compatible with some types of finance
than others, but not all forms of finance are equally abundant. Building on these
two facts, this chapter examines the relationship between the financial systems and
the types of transformation that might emerge.
While recognizing the emergence of different financing models, particularly in
large emerging economies such as China, the main focus is on the major financial
centres that have evolved in developed countries. There are three main reasons.
First, despite the ravages of the global financial crisis, these remain the most likely
sources of finance for achieving a global ‘green transformation’, as well as the main
risks to international financial stability. Second, financial sector policy advice for
developing countries has largely been drawn from practices in these centres. The
impact of reforms would therefore be expected to have implications far beyond
their national jurisdictions. Finally, we have a rich body of literature on the political
economy of these financial systems: understanding how they have been shaped is
a starting point for how they might be reformed.
154 Stephen Spratt

The chapter is structured as follows. The first section examines the different
types of ‘green transformation’ that have been proposed. The following section
develops a complementary ‘typology of finance’. Then follows an examination of
the financing needs of different types of ‘green transformation’ and a comparison
with the forms of finance that exist. To better understand why we have the
configuration of finance we do, there is a review of some of the literature on the
economics of regulation and political economy of finance. In the light of this analysis
and research the chapter concludes with some thoughts on how financial systems
might be reformed to facilitate a plurality of ‘green transformations’.

A typology of transformations
Conceptions of transformation that are purely environmental still vary in scope.
Climate change-focused perspectives, for example, focus on the need to decarbonize
economies. The assumption is that, once placed on a carbon-neutral footing,
economic systems can carry on much as before.1 Widening the lens somewhat,
the reduction of other air- and water-borne pollutants to sustainable levels is a
component of most environmental models of transformation.
Expanding the focus again brings in the sustainable use of natural resources.
The science of maintaining renewable resources such as fish stocks at sustainable
levels is well established, though the practicalities of achieving this are certainly
not (Hilborn, 2008). For forests, the issue is complicated by their role as carbon
sinks, but we have a reasonable understanding of what is needed (Nabuurs et al.,
2007). The supply of non-renewable resources is finite. Beyond a certain point,
therefore, limits to use can only be avoided by recycling materials within a ‘circular
economy’ (Andersen, 2007). Again, the assumption is that economic ‘life’ can
continue broadly as now.
For many, restructuring to decarbonize economies, protect ecosystems and ensure
the sustainable use of natural resources is what a full ‘green transformation’ would
look like. Indeed, this might be thought of as the mainstream view (e.g. UNEP’s
‘Green Economy’).2 If this is the ‘destination’, the consensus on how to get there
is through prices and market mechanisms. For climate change, this means a carbon
price high enough to incentivize a switch to renewable energy (Bowen, 2011).
For other emissions, the ‘polluter pays’ principle would see green taxes applied to
reduce emissions to desirable levels.3 Fiscal instruments are also central to
incentivising zero-waste resource use in a circular economy (Stahel, 2010).
For others, the phrase ‘green growth’ is an oxymoron. The idea of there being
‘limits to growth’ has a long history (Leach, this book). From Malthus (1798) to
Meadows et al. (1972), and more recently Tim Jackson (2009), there are two parts
to the argument. First, the capacities of the natural environment are finite. Popula-
tion growth combined with rising living standards will inevitably run up against
these limits; the only question is when. Second, assuming that growth can be made
compatible with these limits is unrealistic. From a climate change perspective, for
example, economic output would need to be completely ‘decoupled’ from carbon
 Financing green transformations 155

emissions, which is seen as impossible.4 The answer is not to make growth ‘green’,
therefore, but to restrict it, or even to reduce economic activity.5
While calls for limits to growth can be made on purely environmental grounds,
they are more commonly linked to social justice. In a world of limits to global
growth, a more equitable distribution of income and wealth requires redistribution
– it cannot be achieved by ‘trickle-down’, even in principle. Tim Jackson (2009)
shows how much harder it would be to reduce carbon emission to sustainable levels
while also addressing global inequality. To reach sustainable emissions levels by
2050, while raising global income levels to the EU 2007 average level, requires a
55-fold reduction in carbon intensity, compared with a 21-fold reduction if
patterns of inequality remain unchanged.
Arguments in favour of redistribution are not restricted to the more radical views
of green transformation. To address climate change at the global level, many argue
for the creation of a global carbon market, where countries trade their carbon
emission rights, potentially creating a mechanism to transfer finance from rich to
poor countries. The level of transfers, however, would be determined by the way
national emission rights are allocated. At one extreme, some propose ‘grand-
fathering’, with rights allocated in line with the current pattern of emissions
(Bovens, 2011). At the other end of the spectrum, others suggest that emissions
are allocated on an equal per capita basis, or progressively moved towards this.6
Under this framework, low-income countries would generally receive more
permits than they needed, allowing them to sell these to richer countries, creating
large annual cash transfers, or a mechanism for global redistribution.
Broadly, green transformations can vary across two broad dimensions: how
‘green’ they are, and the extent to which they take account of ‘social justice’. For
this dimension I take inequalities of income and wealth as a proxy for social justice,
recognizing that there are many other important elements that this does not cover.
Table 10.1 organizes these distinctions into four forms of green transformation.
In quadrant 1 we would find those that take a relatively ‘light-green’7 view on the
environment, focus on restructuring economic systems, particularly the energy
sector, and do not question existing patterns of inequality. The World Bank would
broadly fit into this camp.8 Quadrant 2 combines a relative lack of interest in social
issues, with a ‘precautionary’ approach to the environment, emphasizing the fragile

TABLE 10.1 Forms of greenhouse transformation

‘Green’

1 2
‘Social’

4 3
156 Stephen Spratt

interdependence of complex ecosystems and opposing anthropocentric views that

privilege human interests over those of other forms of life. We might call these
‘dark-green’ transformations.
Denizens of quadrant 3 would also be sceptical about the possibility of ‘demate-
rializing growth’, but combine this with concerns over the distribution of income
and wealth. We might call this a ‘dark-green and red’ transformation, where we
would find academics such as Tim Jackson, think-tanks like the New Economics
Foundation,9 and networks such as Research & Degrowth.10
Quadrant 4 is where much of the international development community would
be found, where traditional emphasis on poverty and inequality are combined with
environmental concern. Within this framework, the dominant approach to
‘sustainable development’ has generally been more ‘light’ than ‘dark’ green. As a
result, we might call this type of transformation ‘light green and red’.
These different types of transformation are not equally compatible with different
modes of finance. Before examining these interactions the next section sketches
out a ‘typology of finance’.

A typology of finance
Modern financial systems contain a dizzying range of instruments, employed by a
diverse set of institutions. Despite large ostensible differences, however, the core
characteristics of these instruments fall into a relatively small number of groups:
equity, debt or derivatives, or some combination of these.11 Equity is an ownership
stake, which may be publicly traded or privately held, and debt is the loaning of
a specified amount of money for a given time period at a rate of interest.
Originally used for hedging risk, but increasingly traded for speculative gain,
derivatives are financial instruments whose value is ‘derived’ from that of an
underlying financial asset. The main forms are forwards, futures, options and swaps.
While some are traded on formal exchanges (and the proportion is increasing due
to post-crisis regulatory pressure), the bulk of contracts are still agreed between
counterparties directly or ‘over-the-counter’ (OTC).
The main private financial institutions, the instruments they use and the
approximate size of their assets are described in Table 10.2. These institutions aim
to maximize their returns for a given level of risk – broadly, the higher the level
of risk, the greater the return required. Different institutions are prepared to accept
different levels of risk and so target different levels of returns. In Table 10.2, for
example, pension funds are quite risk averse, reflecting their need to be able to
meet liabilities for many decades. In contrast, private equity funds, most hedge
funds and investment banks, have a relatively high-risk tolerance. Public equity
and bond funds have varying degrees of risk appetite, as do commercial banks.
Similar differences exist between institutions with respect to maturities. Pension
funds have a relatively long-term approach to investment, while equity and bond
fund managers have a range of outlooks. Some ‘buy and hold’ based on long-term
value; other funds trade frequently in response to changes in macro indicators, politics
 Financing green transformations 157

TABLE 10.2 Commercial financial institutions and financial instruments

Institution/ Instruments traded Estimated loans

Instruments originated (or purchased assets*
directly or in primary market)
Commercial banks
Personal (including mortgages), Hedging products for US$35 trillion†
corporate loans and credit exposures.
securitization instruments
Investment banks
Corporate and sovereign All financial instruments. ~US$500
bonds; private equity stakes billion‡
Portfolio equity investors ⎫
Public equities Secondary market equities ⎪ US$23.5 trillion
⎪
Portfolio bond investors ⎬
Corporate and sovereign Secondary market bonds ⎪
⎪
bonds ⎭
Pension funds
Public equities and bonds Public equities and bonds £33.9 trillion
(plus ‘non-traditional
instruments’: commodities,
private equity and hedge
funds, securitized products)
Insurance funds
As pension funds As pension funds US$25.8 trillion
Private equity investors
(including venture capital)
Private equity stakes Private equity stakes US$2.3 trillion
Hedge funds
Any financial instrument Any financial instrument US$2.1 trillion
TOTAL ~US$123 trillion
Sources: * The CityUK (2013) (minus estimated SRI and impact investment). † Outstanding international
(i.e. cross-border) bank loans 2012 (BIS). ‡ Annual revenues of ten largest investment banks (Financial
Times).

or movements in ‘market sentiment’. The rate at which portfolios have been turned
over has been rising, as investors have held stocks for shorter periods.12 At the
extreme, high-frequency investors use automated strategies to buy and sell in
fractions of seconds and now account for three-quarters of trading on the New
York Stock Exchange.13
Increasing short-termism can be seen in banking, where the incentives facing
senior managers of banks encourage the maximization of short-term profits (Dallas,
2012). In the 1970s, the overwhelming majority of banks’ revenues came from
lending. By the 1990s, 35 per cent of US banks revenues came from trading activities
and by 2007 this had risen to 50 per cent (Boot and Ratnovski, 2012).
158 Stephen Spratt

TABLE 10.3 Non-commercial financial institutions and financial instruments

Institution Instruments originated Total assets

(or purchased directly or in
primary market)
Microfinance institutions Personal and small business loans US$38 billion*
(MFIs)
Community and co-operative Personal and small business loans US$1.69 trillion†
banks
National public development Corporate and sovereign loans US$2 trillion‡
banks and bonds; private and public
equity stakes
Multilateral development Corporate and sovereign loans ~US$500 billion§
banks and development and bonds; private and public
finance institutions (DFIs) equity stakes
Sovereign Wealth Funds Any financial instrument US$5.2 trillion¶
(SWFs)
Socially Responsible Public and private equity ~US$3 trillion¶
Investors (SRIs) and
Impact Investors
TOTAL US$12.8 trillion
* †
Sources: Outstanding loans: MIX (2009). Credit unions: World Council of Credit Unions (2013).
‡
Various sources; de Luna-Martínez and Vicente (2012). § The CityUK (2013).¶ Various sources.

Table 10.3 lists financial institutions that are not purely commercial. While it is
not possible to get accurate figures for all these sectors, it is clear that their combined
assets are only a fraction – around 10 per cent – of those controlled by commercial
institutions. Although these institutions are not purely commercially oriented, many
do seek a market-level return: Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) funds and
Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) seek good returns, for example, but may also have
ethical or strategic objectives, respectively. For the other institutions, the main aim
is to maximize development impacts, with financial sustainability being necessary
to ensure that they can continue to do this. To varying degrees, all the institutions
in Table 10.3 are likely to take a relatively long-term view.
Table 10.4 differentiates forms of finance by maturity and expected returns. Cell
1 contains institutions that aim for high returns, take high levels of risk and have
very short time horizons. Here we would find high frequency traders (HFTs), many
hedge funds and the trading arms of investment banks. In cell 2 similarly high returns
are targeted, but over a slightly longer time-frame – up to a year. Equity and bond
investors with high-risk strategies would be found here. Cell 3 combines high-
return expectations with time horizons beyond a year, and would include aggressive
private equity and venture capital funds, and some high-risk/high-return commer-
cial lending.
 Financing green transformations 159

TABLE 10.4 Forms of finance

Maturities

1 2 3
Financial
returns

4 5 6

7 8 9

Institutions located in cell 4 have lower return expectations but with very short
time horizons. Here we would find similar institutions, but employing less risky
investment strategies than those in cell 1. Similarly, cell 5 would again contain
equity and bond funds, but now with less risky portfolios, perhaps based on diver-
sified exposure to mainstream indices. SRI funds would also be located here.
Institutions in cell 6 would take a longer term view. As well as pension, insurance
and SWFs, much commercial bank lending would be found here, as would most
microfinance funds and DFIs aiming to create a ‘demonstration effect’.14
Due to the low financial return expectations, the bottom row of Table 10.4
contains only non-commercial institutions. As described above, these investors also
tend to take a relatively long-term view, so little would be found in Cell 7. Cell 8
would contain lending by community banks, as well as some development bank
loans and impact investors. The bulk of activities would be of maturities beyond a
year, however, and so be found in cell 9, as would most equity investment by DFIs.
To summarize, most commercial finance would be found in cells 1, 3, 5 and 6,
while non-commercial finance is mainly in cell 9. In the next section we consider
how this pattern of finance might affect the types of green transformation that might
emerge.

Why different transformations need different types of

finance
Earlier I sketched out a typology of different transformations, which varied
according to how ‘green’ and ‘socially inclusive’ they aimed to be. This is illustrated
in Table 10.5.
Finance for ‘light-green’ transformations would have three functions. The first
is investments in non-fossil fuel-based energy. The International Energy Agency
(IEA) estimates that 85 per cent of the required US$500bn per year will need to
come from private sources. This type of finance should be long term (15–25 years)
and would yield relatively low returns. Typically, debt/equity ratios in renewable
energy projects are 70/30.15 Returns are generally dependent on support through
mechanisms such as feed-in tariffs, so public finance must be sufficient to fund
these over the longer term.
160 Stephen Spratt

TABLE 10.5 Forms of green transformation

‘Green’

Light-green (LG) Dark-green (DG)

‘Social’

Light-green and red (LGR) Dark-green and red (DGR)

The second function is to fund energy efficiency. Again, the sums are very large.
Farrell and Remes (2009) estimate that US$90 billion of energy efficiency invest-
ment is needed per year in developing countries alone. Energy efficiency projects
range from ‘low-hanging fruit’ yielding good returns in short periods of time, to
longer term measures generating lower returns. Investors with different maturity
(i.e. 2–10 years) and return expectations would thus be needed. Longer term, ‘patient
capital’ fits well with the requirements of ‘deeper’ forms of energy efficiency, while
providers of debt finance with shorter time horizons could provide the capital to
finance ‘quick wins’ (Spratt et al., 2013).
The third function is to finance the transition to a circular economy. These are
higher risk (and potentially higher return) investments suited, in principle, to venture
capital and private equity. Given the record of such institutions, however, there
are good reasons to doubt this will happen (Mazzucato, this book). There are two
alternative sources of finance. First, products could be developed by current
producers of related products. Second, the public sector could invest directly in
innovation through public development banks, and/or incentivize the private sector
to do so (Mazzucato, 2013b).
Returning to our typology, we see plenty of finance that matches these
requirements. Pension and insurance funds control huge assets, have a naturally
long-term perspective, and a cautious approach to risk and return. They are thus
well suited to renewable energy investments in principle. For energy efficiency,
there are numerous debt financiers with time horizons and returns expectations
compatible with those described above. For new product development for a
circular economy, venture capital and private equity funds should have the right
characteristics, and public development banks are well suited to invest and intervene
in this area. If there is already a reasonable match with existing forms of finance,
however, why are we not seeing the emergence of well-funded ‘light-green
transformations’ already?
There are four main reasons. First, financial institutions do not always act as
they might be expected: despite their long-term liabilities, pension funds have not
been immune to the increasing short-termism in finance. Second, vehicles that
make it easy for large, financial institutions to invest are often missing. Energy
 Financing green transformations 161

efficiency is a good example: most projects are too small to be investable on an

individual basis, but mechanisms to reduce information asymmetries and enable
diversified access to such investments do not exist in the form needed. Third, as
described above, financial institutions aim to maximize risk-adjusted returns.
Renewable energy investments that generate modest returns will therefore only
be attractive if risks are also low. For many investors, the fact that returns are
dependent on continuing public subsidy creates significant risk. This brings us to
the fourth reason: the long-term commitment to a ‘green transformation’ of many
governments is not sufficiently trusted, making the risks of investing high.16
How would the financing needs of the other transformation in Table 10.5 differ?
Proponents of ‘light-green and red’ (LGR) transformations have similar environ-
mental goals, but also seek a more equitable distribution of income and wealth,
both between and within countries. One way of improving intercountry inequality
would be through a global carbon market based on equal per capita emission
rights. There is nothing incompatible with this and the financial system we have.
Indeed, some of the strongest advocates for a global carbon market have been large
financial institutions. This is unsurprising, as the creation of such a market would
represent a new financial asset class that financial institutions could manage and
trade.
Reducing intracountry inequality would require deep changes. As well as
mechanisms such as a wealth taxes,17 reducing inequalities of income and wealth
would require a relative reduction of ‘returns to capital’18 and a more equal distri-
bution of wages. From a financing perspective, lower returns to capital would be
likely to reduce financial returns as private sector profitability fell. More equality
in terms of wages, perhaps achieved through higher marginal tax rates on top
incomes, would impact directly on financial market actors, of course.
Although ‘light-green’ transformations with a social element would most likely
be opposed by financial actors, this is still evolution rather than revolution: a financial
system compatible with this form of transformation would still be recognizable to
what we have today. What happens when our transformations turn a darker shade
of green?
The most fundamental difference between light- and dark-green visions of
transformation is their attitude to growth. From a light-green perspective, ‘green
growth’ is the solution. Proponents of dark-green transformations consider
consumerism to be the issue, whatever its colour, and argue for limits to growth
or ‘degrowth’. While ‘light-green’ transformations are broadly compatible with the
financial system we have, this is not so for ‘dark-green’ versions, which see finance,
particularly debt-finance, as at the heart of the problem.
In mainstream finance, capital should be invested where the greatest increases
in output and productivity can be achieved. Proponents of ‘dark-green’ trans-
formation would fundamentally disagree. The need for investments to produce a
return greater than the cost of finance (i.e. the rate of interest) leads to an expansion
in economic output and productivity. This is the problem, and the principal reason
why economic systems based on interest-bearing debt must continue to grow, and
162 Stephen Spratt

therefore cannot be made compatible with environmental sustainability. Historic-

ally, this impulse was limited as the supply of money was fixed to gold (i.e. the
gold standard). The supply of credit would rise and fall in line with government’s
gold stocks. The last constraint was broken in 1971 when the link between the
dollar and gold was broken and there ceased to be an external constraint on
the money supply. Countries moved to a ‘fiat system’, with money created by
commercial banks in the form of credit.19 Combined with the expansionary
impulse of interest-bearing debt, the removal of limits on credit creation is a primary
driver of (unsustainable) growth.
What about ‘dark-green and red’ transformations? If the global economy cannot
grow, then the unequal distribution of wealth within it either becomes fixed or
needs to be changed through radical redistributive mechanisms. The same is true
for inequality within countries, for which various mechanisms have been proposed.
Proposals on wealth include but go beyond the standard wealth tax arguments.
Many of these are grassroots, or community-led in nature.20 ‘Dark-green and red’
transformations thus have similar financial implications to their dark-green cousins,
though with additional features.
Generally speaking, the more change required, the harder it will be to achieve.
If this is the case, then transformations that are compatible with the financial system
we currently have will be more attainable than those which are not. This suggests
that a ‘light-green’ transformation will be easier to achieve than one that is ‘light-
green and red’, and that both will be easier than either of the dark-green varieties.
This is not so say that these are impossible, just more difficult. In order to change
a system, however, it is first necessary to understand the forces that created it. The
next section reviews the literature on this subject, with a focus on political
economy.

How did we end up here?

In developed countries at least, the financial systems we have do not appear to be
‘fit for purpose’ with respect to green transformations, particularly of the more
radical variety. More generally, finance does not appear to flow to those parts of
economies that would yield the greatest benefits. The shortfall in finance for
infrastructure in developing countries, for example, has been estimated at more
than US$1 trillion per year (Bhattacharya et al., 2012), with Africa alone requiring
US$93 billion (Foster and Briceño-Garmendia, 2010). A third of small and medium
enterprises (SMEs) in developing countries cite lack of access to finance as a major
constraint on growth (Beck, 2007). This is not simply the result of immature financial
systems. Many SMEs in developed countries are also unable to access sufficient,
affordable finance,21 and infrastructure funding gaps remain large.
If the financial system does not serve the interests of society as well as it might,
whose interests does it serve? On this question, the most plausible answer is the
interests of financiers themselves. As described above, lending to the ‘real economy’
 Financing green transformations 163

has been a declining part of banks’ activities for decades. Between 1996 and 2008,
for example, lending to businesses in the productive parts of the UK economy fell
from 30 per cent to 10 per cent of the total, while lending to property and other
financial institutions rose sharply (CRESC, 2009). Lending has become increasingly
short term.
This is not just a matter of banks preferring to lend short term. The ‘financial
instability hypothesis’ describes how the maturity structure of finance in the
economy becomes increasingly short term during periods of stability. Short-term
loans are cheap. Assuming the ‘good times’ will continue, borrowers have an
incentive to increasingly rely on (cheap) short-term borrowing, which they can ‘roll-
over’ to mimic a longer term loan. This works fine until loans can no longer be
rolled over, defaults multiply and crises engulf unstable financial systems (Minsky,
1992).22 Banks are borrowers too, of course. A striking feature of the 2007–2008
crisis was the extent to which banks came to fund their activities through short-
term borrowing in the wholesale market. When a ‘Minsky moment’ caused credit
to freeze in the interbank market, the whole edifice came crashing down.23
Banks’ have also become more leveraged: between 2003 and 2007, average
leverage ratios of the major US investment banks doubled from 15 to 30. UK banks
were no different. By 2006, the Royal Bank of Scotland had assets of £848 billion,
equivalent to 64 per cent of UK gross domestic product (GDP). Its capital (equity)
was only £38 billion, or 4.5 per cent of these assets. The attraction is straight-
forward: a 10 per cent return on these assets yields a profit of £85 billion, more
than 200 per cent of total equity. The higher the leverage ratio, the greater the
return on equity, but the more vulnerable the bank (MacKensie, 2013).
As banks became larger, more short term and leveraged, trading in financial
markets exploded, fuelled by the creation of ever-more complex derivative
products. The notional value of outstanding over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives
rose from around US$50 trillion in 1998 to more than US$600 trillion by 2013
(BIS, 2013), or from roughly equal to almost six times global GDP.
Similar to increased leverage in the banking system, the purpose of much financial
innovation is to increase the profits of financial institutions. As we saw all too clearly
in 2007–2008, however, and is true even in the absence of financial crises, ‘what’s
good for Wall Street’ is not necessarily ‘good for Main Street’. This begs the question
as to how financiers have been able to influence events such that the financial system
serves their interests rather than those of wider society.
One explanation comes from the economics of regulation. The theory of
regulatory capture describes how regulators come to serve the interests of those
they regulate. To a greater or lesser extent, the history of financial regulation since
the 1970s has been one of steady liberalization, as restrictions on financial actors
– or ‘financial repression’ (Stigler, 1971) – were removed. Some of these restrictions
– such as the Glass–Steagall Act24 that separated investment from commercial banking
in the US – had been in place since the 1930s. Others were implemented soon
after the Second World War.
164 Stephen Spratt

It is easy to see why financial market actors would want restrictions on their
activities removed, but why did regulators come to share this view? Pagliari (2012)
describes four reasons why financial regulators are particularly prone to capture.
First, financiers devote a huge amount of time and resources in the attempt to
influence policy: financial lobbyists in the US spent US$2.7 billion on lobbying
between 1999 and 2008 (ibid.). The complexity of financial regulation also gives
sector insiders an advantage compared to other actors when regulators are con-
sidering policy change: less than 10 per cent of the stakeholders who participate
in official consultations on regulation are from trade unions, consumer groups,
NGOs or independent research institutions (Pagliari and Young, 2012).
Second, outside official consultations, the financial industry retains preferential
access to regulators, mostly behind closed doors (Pagliari, 2012). In some cases,
the explanation is that regulatory agencies are not independent in the first place.
Part of the UK’s Financial Services Authority mandate, for example, was to
support the interests of the City of London. The powerful Office of the
Comptroller of the Currency is required to promote the interests of US banks
(Pagliari, 2012).
Third, and perhaps most importantly, even where regulators are formally
independent, the last 30 years saw an increasing convergence of mindset with those
they are charged with regulating. This ‘intellectual’ or ‘cultural capture’ went way
beyond regulation of finance to incorporate a distrust of the state and blind faith
in markets (Kwak, 2013).
A final element supporting capture is the ‘revolving door’ between policy-makers
and financial institutions. This has long been a feature of US regulation and politics.
A surprising number of Treasury Secretaries in recent years have worked for
Goldman Sachs, for example, but this is not confined to the US: the current Governor
of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, and President of the European Central Bank,
Mario Draghi, for example, also held senior positions at Goldman Sachs.
As well as ‘captured’ regulators, another source of influence is the politicians
who appoint them. Pagliari (2012, p12) summarizes the factors identified in the
literature:

[T]he financial industry [in the US] remains one of the major contributors
to politicians’ electoral campaigns across the political spectrum; consequently
it is able to exercise a significant influence over the voting behaviour of
Congress on certain regulatory issues. Second . . . politicians may interfere
in the actions of regulators in order to achieve key political objectives such
as economic growth, employment, social and economic stability . . . [or]
pressure regulators in order to achieve short-term political objectives by
pleasing powerful electoral constituencies or special interest groups . . .
during boom times regulatory agencies are likely to face pressures to be
accommodating in the implementation of financial rules, thus hindering their
capacity to ‘remove the punchbowl from the party’.
 Financing green transformations 165

Further insights can be gained from other branches of the literature. The ‘fiscal
sociology’ of the 1970s and 1980s remains relevant. Maxfield (1991, p422) argues
that:

the ability of financiers to influence public policy results from the strategic
interaction between revenue-raising states and private holders of relatively
liquid assets . . . To the extent that capital is mobile, and government
depends on financial contributions from holders of mobile assets, we will
always find financiers shaping government policy.25

Given the huge growth of financial sectors and the removal of restrictions on
international capital mobility, it seems highly likely that the ‘structural power’ of
finance (Winters, 1994) has increased.
As well as explaining how national regulations became increasingly liberalized,
particularly in jurisdictions with major financial centres, it is important to understand
how these norms are transmitted to other countries, particularly poorer countries
with immature financial sectors.
On this question, a rich and varied literature on the international diffusion of
ideas has developed. Simmons et al. (2008) identify four strands of this literature
that may have encouraged liberalization: coercion, competition, learning and
emulation. On the first of these, Simmons et al. (2008, p11) suggests:

The diffusion of economic liberalization is thought by many to be the

outcome largely of coercive pressures . . . The logic is straightforward.
Developing countries need financial assistance from the strong either to ward
off crises or to make infrastructural investments that are hard to fund through
private markets. Lenders, however, then condition their financial support on
domestic economic reforms they deem desirable – macroeconomic
stabilization, free trade and cross-border capital movements, privatization and
deregulation.

‘Coercion’ need not be overt, but may result from the spread of ‘hegemonic ideas’.
Here, the idea of liberalization is increasingly accepted, not least because of the
powerful actors promoting these views.26 As well as more formal channels, an
important transmission mechanism may be the ‘epistemic community’ (Haas,
1980) of economists. Chwieroth (2007), for example, shows how US-trained
economists played a prominent role in capital account liberalization in developing
countries.
Other strands of the diffusion literature stress the role of choice, albeit heavily
constrained ‘choice’. The mobility of international capital, for example, encourages
competition between countries to implement ‘market-friendly’ policies, particularly
financial liberalization, and the reduction of tax rates (Jenson, 2003, cited in Simmons
et al., 2008). A third mechanism is where governments learn from the experience
of other countries which policies are likely to work (Simmons et al., 2008).
166 Stephen Spratt

While the relative economic success of the United States appears to have been
important in this respect, the global financial crisis may have changed perceptions
about finance in particular. Similarly, the rapid and sustained growth of China,
achieved in a far from laissez-faire way, may also be provoking a reassessment of
the merits of different development trajectories.
The final mechanism in the literature is emulation. This constructivist strand
explores why some policies become accepted while others do not, based on the
subjective understanding of policy-makers. The question is why they come to think
the way they do:

Policymakers are constrained by bounded rationality, meaning that they are

unable to envision the full range of policy alternatives and unable to assess
the costs and benefits of each. In consequence it is often the rhetorical power
of a new policy approach, rather than hard evidence . . . that matters.
(Simmons et al., 2008, p33)

As with the coercion, powerful countries and institutions are often those with the
greatest ‘rhetorical power’. A key difference in the emulation literature, however,
is that policy-makers ‘choose’ to adopt the policies they genuinely believe will be
most effective.
While it is undeniable that private financiers have a disproportionate influence,
they are not the only influence. Borrowers may prefer short-term finance in some
cases, and politicians have strong incentives to foster economic booms. The power
of industrial interests is also important. In developing countries, we would expect
different patterns of influential groups. The ‘new political economy’ school has
undertaken empirical work on how the balance of power between different
interest groups affects the regulation of the financial system, and its resultant
structure.27
While there may have been too much financial sector development (FSD) in
some developed countries,28 this is not true in most of the developing world. In
many countries, financial systems are dominated by a few large banks, which provide
too little (expensive) credit to the private sector. Financial exclusion is also the
norm in many countries: only 24 per cent of adults in sub-Saharan Africa have a
bank account.29 For Rajan and Zingales (2003) low FSD in developing countries
results from collusion between government and incumbent financial institutions,
both of whom are incentivized to restrict competition: incumbent institutions
because this allows them to maintain market share and monopolistic profits;
governments because they can use the financial sector for their own ends.
A related school attributes the growth of financial systems to the emergence of
political institutions to check the power of government. Without such institutions,
governments face strong incentives to use the financial system to support their own
survival, rather than develop into an effective mechanism for financing broad-based
economic activity (Haber et al., 2008).
 Financing green transformations 167

We thus have a rich and varied set of literatures that can help us understand
why we have the financial systems we do. There are two main elements: first,
there are the forces which shape finance at the national level; second, there is the
spread of policy between countries, generally from developed countries (with major
financial centres) to developing countries. Thus, while domestic finance is often
quite weak in developing countries, governments may still adopt liberalizing
policies because of the international diffusion of these ideas.

Some concluding thoughts on achieving transformations

Reforming finance to support light-green transformations seems possible. If the
right incentives were put in place – most importantly that environmental costs
were priced into investment decisions – the financial sector might even become
a force driving transformation globally (Newell, this book). As mentioned
previously, the financial lobby is broadly supportive of environmental change – as
long as new financial asset classes are integral to this process. With ‘light-green
transformations’, therefore, the obstacle is not finance, but the incumbents who
benefit from the status quo, as well as collective action problems operating at the
international level. It is possible to envisage alliances of public, private and civic
groups becoming strong enough to overcome these incumbents (Schmitz, this book).
Were the financial lobby, with all its power and influence, to be part of such
alliances, the chances of success would be greatly increased.
The situation is more complex with the other forms of transformation identified.
Each would require reforms that would be opposed by financial actors, vehemently
in some cases. It is reasonable to assume that financial actors will try to protect
their own interests. History suggests these are equated with profit maximization
through financial ‘innovation’ and leverage, and that this requires minimal
restrictions on financial institutions. Achieving reductions in inter- and intracountry
inequalities would require measures likely to reduce the freedoms and profitability
of the financial sector, and so be strongly opposed.
As a result, alliances working to achieve transformations of this kind would need
to be different, not least as the financial lobby would be found in the opposing
camp. This does not mean they could not succeed, however. The attention
captured by Thomas Piketty’s (2014) work on capitalism and inequality suggests
a strong appetite for change. Moreover, the interests of the ‘real economy’ are
often ill-served by finance. Reforms that reoriented finance towards the real
economy, and which encourage transformations to more equitable societies, could
potentially garner support from a range of actors.
While the international mobility of capital suggests that these alliances would
need to be transnational, the international spread of finance-friendly policies from
particular countries points towards an initial focus on reform in the major financial
centres. This is difficult. The authorities with power to reform these centres – i.e.
the governments of the jurisdictions in which they operate – are those which are
168 Stephen Spratt

most likely to be ‘captured’ by the financial lobby. Understanding what forms of

alliance would have the most influence, and analysing how they could be mobilized
and maintained, seems a precondition for achieving substantive reform, and an
important area of future research.
Reforming finance to achieve ‘dark-green’ transformations implies the need for
a different form of alliance. As such transformations tend to be antithetical to
economic growth, they are incompatible with the financial systems we have,
particularly with respect to debt. They would also require a broader transformation
of capitalism, however, and so be likely to be opposed by much of the ‘real
economy’ as well as the financial sector and mainstream politicians. Alliances would
thus need to be built from the grassroots up. Given the global nature of the
‘opposition’, such alliances would also need to be international in scope. This is
an inherently long game, which does not mean that it is not worth playing, of
course.
Understanding how financial systems can influence environmental and social
change in different countries may be a necessary precondition for achieving ‘green
transformation’. This is not sufficient, however. Actually achieving change requires
a nuanced understanding of the political economy of finance. While this chapter
has sketched some of the issues, addressing these two questions – particularly the
intersection between them – remains a crucial area for future research.

Notes
1 The Stern Review (2006) is perhaps the most representative of this perspective.
2 Available online at: www.unep.org/greeneconomy/. Accessed 24 June 2014.
3 See Spratt (2012) for a discussion of environmental taxes.
4 There is some evidence of relative decoupling (i.e. where the carbon intensity of output
falls) at the global level, but none at all of absolute decoupling. To put this into perspective,
the global carbon intensity of growth in 2007 was 760 grams of CO2 per US$. To be
compatible with a 2-degree threshold, this would have to fall to 36 grams by 2050, a
21-fold reduction, which equates to a 7 per cent reduction every year. Between 1990
and 2007, the average annual reduction was 0.7 per cent (Jackson, 2009).
5 Available online at: www.degrowth.org/. Accessed 24 June 2014.
6 For details on the ‘contraction and convergence’ framework, see: www.gci.org.uk/
index.html. Accessed 24 June 2014.
7 These could be thought of as a ‘weak sustainability’ position that takes a relatively sanguine
view of the substitutability of natural capital (Neumeyer, 2010).
8 When the bank mentions ‘inclusive green growth’, for example, this is conceived of as
something that poor people benefit from in an absolute rather than relative sense. As a
result, there is no need for inequalities to fall for green growth to be ‘inclusive’. For a
discussion, see Spratt et al. (2013).
9 Available online at: www.neweconomics.org/. Accessed 24 June 2014.
10 Available online at: www.degrowth.org/. Accessed 24 June 2014.
11 I have not included foreign exchange in this set, as it is not a financial asset per se, but
a denomination or unit of account.
12 In the 1990s, 97 per cent of the average portfolio of large growth funds in the US turned
over each year. By the 2000s, this had risen to 162 per cent. See: www.morningstar.com/.
Accessed 24 June 2014.
 Financing green transformations 169

13 See Lewis (2014) for a fascinating account of the rise of high-frequency trading in the
US.
14 Many DFIs aim to attract private investment into countries and sectors with high potential
impact by demonstrating that profitable investments can be made, with acceptable levels
of risk.
15 Projects in developing countries are generally assumed to be riskier, such that debt investors
demand a higher proportion of equity, which is essentially a form of collateral from their
perspective. Debt/equity ratios are thus more like 60/40 (IRENA, 2012).
16 For a flavour of investors’ perceptions on these issues, see Parhelion and Standard & Poor’s
(2010).
17 See Piketty (2014) for a rationale and detailed suggestions for wealth taxes.
18 In most countries, as well as globally, the ‘factor’ shares going to labour have steadily
declined since the 1960s at least (Glyn, 2009). Recent debates on stagnating or falling
real wages are thus only the most recent manifestations of this longer term trend.
19 It is estimated that 97 per cent of money in circulation in the UK today has been created
in this way (Greenham et al., 2012).
20 See NEF (2010) for a comprehensive ‘manifesto’ along these lines.
21 In a 2013 survey in the European Union access to finance was cited as the most pressing
problem by 40 per cent of SMEs in Cyprus, 32 per cent in Greece, 23 per cent in Spain
and Croatia, and 20 per cent in Italy, Ireland and the Netherlands. It was mentioned
least in Germany (8 per cent), Austria (7 per cent) and Luxembourg (6 per cent) (European
Commission, 2013).
22 As well as the global financial crisis of 2007–2008, the financial instability hypothesis
describes very well the Asian financial crisis of 1997, where international bank lending
became increasingly short term.
23 This process led to the demise of Northern Rock, the first UK bank failure in 150 years.
24 The Glass–Steagall Act was passed in 1933 and finally repealed in 1999 after decades of
lobbying by the financial sector. See Crawford (2011) for a history and account of the
impact of the repeal of Glass–Steagall on the global financial crisis of 2007–2008.
25 Maxfield (1991) argues that the interests of finance are more likely to be reflected in
policy where an effective ‘bankers alliance’ of private financiers and central bankers has
developed. Where this is the case, monetary policy will remain tight – with negative
impacts on the real economy – and government intervention in the financial system will
be minimized.
26 See Femia (1983) or Hirschman (1989), for example. See Pagano and Volpin (2001) for
a review.
27 Other perspectives on financial structure stress the role of legal origins (La Porta et al.,
1998). From this perspective, countries with an English common law, rather than a French
civil code tradition are more likely to have stronger protection for creditors and minority
shareholder rights. As a result, financial sector development, particularly with respect to
capital markets, will tend to be more advanced. Another school of thought sees
differences in financial structures in developed countries – particularly ‘arm’s-length’
Anglo-Saxon models with large capital markets, versus systems based on ‘relationship
banking’ in Germany and Japan – as more a matter of cultural and deep-rooted political
differences between countries (Roe, 2003).
28 Arcand et al. (2012) show that the impact of the financial sector on growth becomes
negative when private sector credit exceeds 110 per cent of GDP. In 2012, the figure
was 176 per cent for the UK and 184 per cent in the US (WDI).
29 World Bank’s World Development Indicators.
11
GREEN TRANSFORMATION
Is there a fast track?

Hubert Schmitz
DOI: 10.4324/9781315747378-11

Introduction
The green transformation is different from previous transformations in one critical
respect: urgency. This is the first transformation in history to be achieved against
a deadline. Hence the question in the title: is there a fast track? This chapter seeks
answers by addressing five subquestions: what, why, how, who and when?1
The following section asks what the problem is. Then follows the question why
this problem needs urgent attention and a reflection on how robust the call for
urgent action is. How transformations occur, who can be expected to drive the
transformation forward and when the green transformation is most likely to occur
are the questions asked in the sections that follow. The concluding section returns
to the overall question posed in the title of this chapter. Since this is the final chapter
of the book, it also draws together elements of preceding chapters.

What?
The green agenda encompasses many issues. If asked what the most fundamental
problem is, most scientists studying our planet would probably say ‘climate change’.
‘Each of the last three decades has been successively warmer at the Earth’s surface
than any preceding decade since 1850’ (IPCC, 2013, p3). A continuation of this
trend would make human life very difficult in many parts of our planet. This is
the first part of the climate and earth scientists’ message. The second part is that
humans have brought about the problem, by increasing carbon emissions. ‘It is
extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed
warming since the mid-20th century’ (IPCC, 2013, p12). ‘Extremely likely’ means
that these scientists are ‘95–100 per cent’ certain (ibid., p2).
However, both parts of the message remain contested. One of the leading climate
scientists, Mike Hulme, has provided an in-depth analysis of the reasons ‘Why we
 Green transformation: is there a fast track? 171

disagree about climate change’ (Hulme, 2009). There are hard and soft disagree-
ments. Hard disagreements come from the powerful vested interests who question
the existence and human causes of climate change (Newell and Paterson, 2010;
Blasberg and Kohlenberg, 2012). Trying to defend its assets, the fossil fuel lobby
has fought hard to discredit the scientific case for connecting climate change with
carbon emissions. Soft disagreements arise over concerns that the discourse on green
economy and growth depoliticizes the transformational change required (Wanner,
2014). These hard and soft disagreements are discussed in Chapter 2 by Melissa
Leach and in Chapter 5 by Peter Newell.
This chapter raises a different concern over the climate change debate: the
narrative of the earth and climate scientists does not connect with the experience
of ordinary citizens. The climate change paradigm is a result of research carried
out by many groups of scientists in different parts of world, using different
approaches, different data sets and often focused on different parts of the planet.
The collective confidence of these scientists in their analyses and predictions
comes from the convergence of their findings with regard to some key variables,
notably changes in land and ocean surface temperatures. Scientists have focused in
particular on the globally averaged temperatures and shown that small rises in these
global averages have huge consequences. The discourse of global warming has centred
on the need to limit the temperature rise to two degrees (over the 1990 level) and
to do this by bringing carbon emissions down. While scientifically robust, it has
been politically ineffective.
I would argue that language and discourse have a lot to do with it. Small rises
in average temperature are of little concern to ordinary citizens; in countries such
as the UK small temperature rises seem even desirable to most people. Shifting the
discourse from climate change to climate chaos (Sachs, 2007) would help to connect
the findings of scientists with the observations of citizens. Climate chaos is precisely
what they experience – extreme weather events have become more frequent in
most parts of the world.
My main argument in this chapter is that clarity is needed with regard to what
the problem is. While scientific clarity is necessary, it is not sufficient. Shifting the
focus from climate change to climate chaos would be more effective politically.
This is not to suggest that this in itself would accelerate action. An action-oriented
approach needs to concentrate on the transformation that is needed to tackle the
problem. This is precisely what we do this in this book. We call it the green
transformation. ‘Transformation’ signals structural change, ‘green’ gives the direction
of travel and the two together invite questions about the drivers of change. In this
chapter, I suggest a parsimonious definition: the green transformation is the process
of restructuring that brings the economy within the planetary boundaries.
Previous chapters of this book prefer the plural ‘green transformations’. I agree
that problem constellations and actor constellations can differ over time, between
sectors and between places, and ways forward may therefore differ. So as to
acknowledge this diversity, this chapter will henceforth also use the plural. Where
the singular appears it is not meant to deny diversity. There is a parallel in the term
172 Hubert Schmitz

‘industrial revolution’ which consisted of interdependent transformations in different

sectors and places.

Why?
Earth and climate scientists tell us that the transformations required for sustainability
need to be achieved quickly. A key feature of their message is urgency. Continuing
on the current path would mean soon reaching tipping points beyond which life
on earth would suffer irreversible damage. Such ideas on the depth and speed of the
required transformations are increasingly influenced by the concept of ‘planetary
boundaries’ (Rockström et al., 2009). These boundaries define ‘a safe operating
space for humanity’. A breach of these ‘planetary guard rails’ (WBGU, 2011) would
give rise to intolerable consequences so significant that even major advances in
other fields could not compensate for the damage.
Rockström et al. (2009) identify nine planetary boundaries that human-induced
changes threaten to breed: climate change, ocean acidification, stratospheric ozone
depletion, global phosphorus and nitrogen cycles, biodiversity loss, global freshwater
scarcity, land-system change, atmospheric aerosol loading and chemical pollution.
Seven of the nine boundaries are quantified, but these seven cannot therefore be
considered firm thresholds. The indicators of change and their exact values chosen
by Rockström et al. are for the most part arbitrary. Moreover, boundaries do not
always apply globally. Local circumstances can ultimately determine how soon water
shortages or biodiversity loss reach a critical threshold (Editorial of Nature, 2009).
In short, the claimed urgency does not apply equally to all planetary boundaries and
locations.
Melissa Leach in this book goes a step further and expresses concern that the
planetary boundaries discourse invites top-down approaches and technocratic
fixes. I agree that there is a danger that the search for solutions is depoliticized,
but there is also the danger of undermining a collective scientific undertaking
and playing into the hands of those who deny the underlying problem. While
uncertainties remain, the concept of planetary boundaries seems a constructive
attempt to define the limits to economic growth. And for some boundaries the
evidence is fairly robust – notably, the one concerning climate change due to
increasing carbon emissions. The scientific and policy debate on mitigating climate
change has exploded partly because there is a deadline for achieving the trans-
formation from a high to low-carbon economy. Climate scientists have produced
a timetable for reducing these carbon emissions (IPCC, 2007, 2013): the most
common reference point is that global emissions must fall by an average of 50 per
cent below 1990 levels by 2050, in order to avoid more than two degrees of
global warming. Intermediate carbon reduction targets have been set for 2020 and
2030. While the precise dates and figures can be questioned, there is increas-
ing scientific consensus that with each passing year of continued high emissions,
the prospect of avoiding climate chaos sinks and the cost of dealing with the
consequences rises (Stern, 2007).
 Green transformation: is there a fast track? 173

The problem is that this has not led to international joint action and that global
carbon emissions keep rising (Latin, 2012; Helm, 2012). A participant at the Oslo
conference ‘Transformations in a changing climate’ (June 2012) put it very
succinctly: ‘Hell does not sell’.2 This prompts the questions for the next two sections:
what do we know about how the green transformation can be brought about and
who can accelerate the process?

How?
There is no established transformation theory, but there are various lines of work
that can provide useful insights on how transformations occur. The most funda-
mental point is that there is no single line of causation: transformation results from
a concurrence of multiple changes. This is the conclusion of Osterhammel’s (2014)
history of the nineteenth century, Leggewie and Messner’s (2012b) review of theory
and history of transformations, and of Geels and Schot’s (2007) analysis of big
‘Technological Transitions’. This emphasis on the concurrence and interaction of
multiple changes immediately raises the question of how to deal with complexity.
This is where the Multi-Level Perspective (Geels, 2002, 2011) is relevant as a
way of categorizing these changes. It distinguishes three analytical levels: niches
which are the locus of radical innovations, sociotechnical regimes and landscapes
which are exogenous. Transformations are regime shifts brought about through
interactions between these levels. Radical innovations taking place in niches can
destabilize existing regimes and break through more widely if changes in the external
landscape – for example, the global financial crisis or the Fukushima disaster – create
pressures on the regime that lead to cracks and windows of opportunity. As a result,
the existing regime might be replaced, or it might be strengthened if it can adapt.
This is very useful but it is not (yet) clear what it tells us on our central question:
whether and how transformations can be managed and accelerated in a purposeful
way.
Therefore, it seems worth asking what we can learn from the work on Transition
Management (Rotmans et al., 2001). Central to Transition Management is involving
stakeholders in developing shared visions, conducting experiments to explore
concrete ways forward as well as putting the existing regime under pressure. As
stressed by Kern (2013, p21), ‘its long term sustainability orientation, its focus on
learning and innovation, its elaborate process architecture, its theoretical under-
pinnings in a sophisticated understanding of processes of sociotechnical change all
contributed to the appeal of the Transition Management model’. However, the
implementation experience in the Netherlands and Belgium revealed that it was
too technocratic, focused too much on the early stage of the policy cycle (design
and formulation), shied away from conflict and therefore failed to change structures
(Kern and Smith, 2008; Paredis, 2013). It lacked what this book is centrally
concerned with: an understanding of the politics of transformation.
Recognizing the enormity of the ambition of managing the transition,
innovation scholars have put energies into a more focused agenda: finding ways
174 Hubert Schmitz

of piercing through the prevailing sociotechnical regime by promoting specific

niches (Schot and Geels, 2008; Smith and Raven, 2012). The niche concept
presumes that green technologies are often disadvantaged and require strategic
support to protect them against premature rejection by investors and users. In evolu-
tionary terms, novel environmentally friendly varieties struggle to develop under
unfavourable selection pressures (Nill and Kemp, 2009).
Smith and Raven (2012) suggest a framework conceptualizing the construction
of protective space as consisting of three processes: shielding, nurturing and
empowering. Screening the literature, they find that innovation scholars have a
lot to say on shielding and nurturing but little on empowering. Of particular
relevance for this book is their notion of ‘stretch-and-transform empowerment’,
which seeks to reframe the rules of the game and reform institutions that influence
prevailing performance criteria. In their most recent work (Raven et al., 2014, p26),
they highlight ‘the importance of narratives as key devices in undertaking this socio-
political work’. They argue that ‘to successfully secure resources for niche
development, advocates need to link socio-technical narratives to socio-political
agendas, and enrol powerful actors into their networks’ (Raven et al., 2014, p8).
Significantly, their conclusion stresses the need for ‘analysis of the wider political
economy beyond those directly involved in and targeted by sustainable technology
advocacy, i.e. to fully include analysis of the political economy of fossil fuel energy
systems as well’ (Raven et al., 2014, p27). This is also the conclusion of Geels (2014)
who suggests that the destabilization of existing regimes requires equal attention.
Referring to Schumpeter’s notion of ‘creative destruction’ he stresses the need to
better understand the ‘destruction’ part. To conclude, innovation scholars are making
big contributions to the ‘How?’ debate. What is missing are insights on accelerating
the pace of the transformation – given the central question of this chapter: is there
a fast track?
Perhaps a more promising way of throwing new light on to the speed question
is to ask what can be learnt from experiences where rapid transformations occurred.
Both China and Vietnam have undergone transformations which were managed
and very rapid, involving major economic reforms, big sectoral shifts, build-up of
new production capabilities and massive job creation. The speed and depth of
changes were unprecedented in economic history. Assessments and explanations
of this experience are contested, not least because the environmental consequences
are horrendous. However, for our concern – is there a fast track? – there are useful
insights. Both China and Vietnam progressed by using transitional institutions and
transitional arrangements (Qian, 2003). Note that ‘transitional’ here means temporary,
appropriate for the next stage in a longer process. Experimentation was also a key
feature, sometimes organized purposefully from above, sometimes pushed on the
agenda from below – called ‘fence breaking’ in Vietnam (Malesky, 2008; Heilmann,
2008).
Such insights seem highly relevant for this book and are therefore worth
elaborating. The key feature of China’s development strategy and that of other
East Asian countries is that they did not follow models from elsewhere. Mike
 Green transformation: is there a fast track? 175

Hobday (2003), in a review of the rapid Asian industrial development, concludes

that it is diversity rather than uniformity in the institutional arrangements and
development policy that characterizes the innovation experience of the Asian Tigers.
In ‘Institutions and Economic Growth’, Stephan Haggard (2004) emphasized how
East Asia succeeded through a process that was highly experimental in nature.
The importance of step-by-step experimentation comes out most strongly in
the Chinese experience. Qian shows this convincingly in his article ‘How reform
worked in China’ (2003). ‘Transitional institutions’ rather than ‘best practice
institutions’ were the key. He stresses that the adopted institutions need to take
account of the conditions at each stage of the reform process. For example, a market
was created through a dual-track approach to liberalization, enterprises were
created through the non-conventional ownership of township–village enterprises
and government was reformed through a particular type of fiscal federalism. These
institutional innovations worked for a while and then had to be replaced. Not all
of them succeeded but there was a common thread to those that did: ‘pragmatic
innovation’ and aligning the interests of the newly enabled decentralized actors
with those of the reformers in central government.
The Communist Party failed to give this transformation a green direction but
it was a transformation that was deep and fast. Attributing this depth and speed to
a big push from the Centre along a predetermined path would be misleading.
Distributed entrepreneurship, trial and error, diversity and transitional arrangements
are key features of the Chinese, and indeed East Asian, fast track. The picture that
emerges is one of making progress by swinging from one branch to another (in
spite of the occasional fall) rather than sticking to one strategy. Each stage brings
new obstacles – and new opportunities. If this is a useful way of thinking about
the dynamics, we still need to figure out who moves the process forward – or holds
it back.

Who?
In order to discuss who can drive green transformations forward, it helps to start
with a distinction between transformation from above and from below and then unpack
the different actors and approaches (see Table 11.1). Over the last decade, most
attention has been given to the left side of the table. The ambition was to bring
economic development within the planetary boundaries by pursuing an approach
which was top-down, had a global scale, was (supposed to be) led by the North, and
driven forward by public actors that recognized the need to mitigate climate change.
This global governance approach has failed, as shown by successive climate
conferences of parties (COPs) and the sustainability conferences in Rio de Janeiro
(Latin, 2012). In the meantime, however, progress was made on the right side of
the table: using bottom-up approaches and relying on local initiatives in which civic
actors play a major role. Chapter 7 by Smith and Ely and Chapter 8 by Leach and
Scoones discuss the significance of civil society organizations and movements in
176 Hubert Schmitz

these bottom-up approaches. Local government also plays an important role in many
cases, as shown by case material from both West and East (OECD, 2010; Harrison
and Kostka, 2012).
Similarly, at the national level, substantial progress was made in some countries,
with governments implementing green industrial policies and the private sector
making big investments in renewable energy and other low-carbon technologies.
Such progress made at the national level, however, risks running out of steam in
the countries expected to lead the green transformation: most of Western Europe
and North America is politically paralysed and financially constrained. The rising
powers have become the default movers and shakers in the green transformation,
in both the negative and positive sense. While responsible for the continuing growth
of carbon emissions, they are also the biggest investors in mitigation. Seen globally,
China is No. 1 investor in renewable energy and India has recorded high recent
growth rates in 2011 (BNEF, 2012).
To elaborate on the national level, the two Western countries with the biggest
progress are Denmark (wind energy) and Germany (solar and wind energy). In the
German case, renewable energy accounts for 24 per cent of electricity (2013 level)
and 206,000 jobs were created in wind and solar power (2012 level), but investment
is slowing down (Luetkenhorst and Pegels, 2014). While most of the investment
comes from the private sector, public subsidies are essential in this early stage of
the low-carbon transformation. This public support has come under attack with
arguments that, in times of austerity, the public sector cannot prioritize investments
in energy infrastructure and consumers cannot afford increases in energy bills needed
to pay for these subsidies. Arguments that fostering new green industries helps to
promote growth, jobs and public revenue are drowned out by opposing forces in
much of Europe and the US.
In contrast, China continues to storm ahead with big investments in renewable
energy (BNEF, 2013).3 Its government is not encumbered by national or foreign
debt; it has the ability to act fast. A good example of its ‘entrepreneurial state’ (see
Mazzucato, this book) is the support for the solar energy industry. When European
demand for Chinese photovoltaic panels declined in 2009, the Chinese government
launched a programme to speed up the deployment of such panels within the
country (Fischer, 2012) in order to ensure that the build-up of this new industry
could continue.

TABLE 11.1 Accelerating green transformation

Approach Top-down Bottom-up

Level Global National Local
Location North Rising powers South
Actor Public Private Civic
Motive Climate Energy Competitive Green jobs
change security green sectors
 Green transformation: is there a fast track? 177

Table 11.1 helps to categorize existing approaches and actors. On their own,
none of them will achieve the green transformation. Most observers would agree
that the bottom-up and top-down approaches need to be combined and that
multilevel governance is needed (Bulkeley and Newell, 2010, p3). But which force
can bring this about? Recall that this is the first transformation in history that has
to be achieved purposefully and against a deadline. In other words, the task of
accelerating the process takes centre stage.
Where can this acceleration come from? Here we turn again to Table 11.1, in
particular the last two lines, which focus on the range of relevant actors and
the motives of these actors. Analysis of these actors and motives then needs to take
four critical steps: first, recognize that no single actor has the resources to bring
about the green transformation; second, recognize that within government, civil
society and business there are actors seeking to block or slow down the green trans-
formation. Third, attention needs to focus on supportive alliances across these
categories. Fourth, including actors with different motives helps to understand and
accelerate the green transformation. The transformative alliance becomes the
central concept. Let us elaborate.
Bringing about green transformations requires resources of different types:
expertise, money, organizational capacity, legitimacy and leadership. These resources
tend to be distributed over a range of public, private and civic actors. It is therefore
useful to concentrate on alliances between actors in government, business and civil
society.
Who, then, can be considered a member of such an alliance? Is the deciding
criterion motivation or action? While it is tempting to let motivation count and
opt for an alliance of the like-minded, this is a limiting step to take. There is a range
of actors that can support the green transformation through their action (such as
investing, providing expertise, lobbying) but their motive need not be to mitigate
climate change; the main motive might be to secure energy, to build competitive
green industries or to foster green jobs, with climate change mitigation at best a
‘co-benefit’. In other words, there is a potential for alliances that include actors whose
priority is not environmental sustainability. This can be a ‘game changer’ in the
dynamics of the transformation. It is supported by historical research which shows
actor groups with differing intentions advancing the change in a specific direction
(WBGU, 2011, p85, drawing on research by Osterhammel, 2014).
Such alliances seem to have been important in both China and Europe. In
Denmark, for example, the experimentation with wind energy received substantial
support from politicians and business leaders concerned with energy security, in
the wake of various oil crises. Actors with environmental motivations played a role
at the start and increased in importance over time, but they were never sufficient.
Actors motivated by the chance to build a globally competitive hub (for providing
wind-energy solutions and creating highly paid jobs) have played a big role. In
China, such alliances were equally if not more relevant. China’s massive investment
in renewable energy was not driven primarily by concerns with global climate
change but by concerns to secure energy and ambitions to build new competitive
178 Hubert Schmitz

sectors. These were major concerns in both Chinese government and industry.
Add to this the more recent concern in urban society to reduce pollution, now
openly acknowledged in the Chinese media.
Recent research in China (Dai, 2014) shows that such alignments of interest
matter in both policy formulation and implementation. In China, policy
formulation tends to take place at central level and implementation at local level.
Dai (2014) stresses that the local take-up of centrally designed policies varies
enormously within China. ‘Dynamic’ localities which implement central policies
for solar and wind energy are driven forward by local government and business
joining forces, motivated not by concerns with the climate but by ambitions to
promote local economic development, create jobs, increase tax revenue (local
government) and generate profit (business).
The relevance of alliances is confirmed by the research of Harrison and Kostka
(2012) on the local politics of climate change in China and India:

In both countries the ability to build and sustain coalitions is central to the
effectiveness and sustainability of climate change policy. For various reasons,
state strategies in China and India have focused on the need to bring different
parties with otherwise divergent interests on board to build a coalition in
favour of climate mitigation measures.
(Harrison and Kostka, 2012, p5)

Recent research in India (Chaudhary et al., 2014) shows that such coalitions
have played a critical role also at the national level, but that the combinations of
interests varied between sectors. The solar industry was supported for reasons
of both securing energy and building competitive low- carbon industries. The
‘National Solar Mission’ is the most visible symbol of an industrial policy for this
sector. The most vigorous implementation of this policy occurred in the state of
Gujarat where Chief Minister Narendra Modi (now Prime Minister of India)
spearheaded an alliance of government and business interests determined to accel-
erate economic development. There is no equivalent ‘national wind mission’ in
India, indicating that concerns with building a competitive wind-turbine industry
played less of a role in policies supporting this sector (Chaudhary et al., 2014). Energy
security was the main driver – on the part of government. Climate change
mitigation was only a ‘co-benefit’ (Dubash et al., 2013).
To summarize, the composition of transformational alliances varies, depending
on the specific policy or project or sector in question. Actors in these alliances
might see climate change mitigation as a co-benefit but tend to have other prior-
ities, such as securing energy, building new competitive industries, creating new
jobs in their region, raising public revenue or generating private profit. While not
surprising in itself, it questions the discourse which pitches economic growth against
environmental sustainability, so popular in many parts of the world. Policies which
foster structural transformation promote rather than hinder economic growth.
 Green transformation: is there a fast track? 179

This is not to suggest that there are only winners. Far from it. Some stand to
lose from the transformation. In the early stages of green transformations, the losers
might even outnumber the winners. Whatever the numbers, they are agents of
resistance and they need to be analysed in the same way as the agents of change.
The opponents also seek alliances. The opposing forces are not necessarily against
decarbonization as such but they are fighting for their jobs and/or protecting their
assets which are tied to fossil fuel and related sectors.
To return to our overall argument, focusing on alliances is essential for under-
standing and fostering green transformations. Such alliances are best seen as vehicles
for bundling diverse interests for a particular purpose, such as influencing legislation,
policies or projects. In order to be effective, analytical and political work needs
to deal with both agents of change (prospective winners) and agents of resistance
(prospective losers).
Putting such alliances centre stage is a critical step for addressing the central
question of this chapter: is there a fast track? It is not sufficient, however. Two
further steps are needed: first, we need to be able to distinguish between alliances
of different types. At one end there is the strategic alliance based on joint action. At
the other end there is the mere alignment of interest without coordination between
the parties. Both can be transitional (short term) or enduring (long term). All types
can be instrumental in bringing about collective action or blocking it.
Second, we need to ask where these alliances come from. They are not given
but are in themselves a product of history. Here we go back to the previous section
which suggested that we conceive of transformations as a process in which countries
swing or scramble forward – and sometimes drop back – but in which each
stage provides a political and economic platform for the next stage. As shown in
Chapter 6, the policies adopted in one stage have knock-on effects for subsequent
stages and influence the momentum of green transformations. Depending on how
these policies are designed and implemented, they give rise to new stakeholders
such as business and workers who invested their money or careers in the
deployment of green technologies, or create a backlash from those who pay for
the subsidized investments.

When?
The understanding of these political processes (drivers, policies, knock-on effects)
remains limited. While the researchers draw boundaries around their analyses so
as to not drown in complexity, actors in the real world do not have this privilege;
they need to keep an eye on the whole picture. In most countries of Europe and
North America, this picture was darkened by the financial crisis. This issue needs
to be raised here because it seems to have major repercussions for our central
question: is there a fast track? The answer is more likely to be negative when a
financial crisis affects public and private investment decisions – at least this is what
the contrast between renewable energy investment before and after the financial
crisis suggests (BNEF, 2012 and Stephen Spratt, this book).
180 Hubert Schmitz

However, this is not necessarily so, as stressed by Carlota Perez (2013). She sees
the current crisis as a recurrent historical event midway along a technological
revolution. Historical research (Perez, 2002) leads her to suggest that the capitalist
economy has lived through four previous situations equivalent to the current
crisis and that these have occurred midway along each of four technological
transformations (the early Industrial Revolution; the age of steam and railways;
the age of electricity and heavy engineering; the age of oil, automobile and mass
production). The installation period of these technological transformations has led
each time to a major bubble, followed by a financial crash and then a ‘golden age’
of prosperity. Currently, we are midway through the information and communi-
cation technology transformation and, in line with previous experience, we have
experienced a major bubble and a financial crash. What is not yet clear is whether
this time it is followed by a new golden age. Perez (2013) argues that there is no
automaticity but suggests that the stage is set for a new age of prosperity that could
be channelled in a green direction. Grasping this opportunity requires an active
state that shifts the balance of power from finance to production and changes the
incentives from resource wasting to resource saving. On this point, the views of
Perez converge with those of Mazzucato who stresses the key role of the
entrepreneurial state in fostering innovation and restructuring – see Chapter 9 of this
book. Further reinforcement comes from various strands of ‘Green Keynesianism’;
they have in common the idea that tackling the economic crisis is helped by tackling
the environmental crisis. It requires that the state makes big public investments in
green infrastructure and provides strong incentives for private green investment
(Zenghelis, 2012; Jacobs, 2013).
The arguments that the financial crisis can be turned into an opportunity for
green investment have been examined in a recent article by Geels (2013). In ‘The
impact of the financial-economic crisis on sustainability transitions’, he concludes
that the early crisis years (2008–2010) created a window of opportunity for positive
solutions. However, since 2011 this window has shrunk and political support for
green policies has weakened. In the UK, Germany and other countries, public
debate began to concentrate on the cost of shifting to renewable energy. The effect
has been to slow down rather than fast-track the green transformations. Such slow-
down has not, however, occurred in the rising powers of Asia. As a result of the
financial crisis, the global power shift from West to East accelerated (Jacques, 2012,
pp585–636). The transformative capacity of China in particular increased, whereas
that of Western Europe and North America declined. This is beginning to affect
the cost of green transformations in the sense that green technologies from China
are cheaper. Whether this makes their diffusion faster is not yet clear because price
is just one of several determinants (Schmitz, forthcoming 2014).
What are we to do with these observations? They do not provide clear answers
to the ‘When?’ question which drives this section. They do, however, highlight
the importance of keeping an eye on the political windows needed to accelerate
green transformations.
 Green transformation: is there a fast track? 181

Conclusion: riding the green tiger

Is there a fast track? This is the question driving this chapter. Posing it is somewhat
cheeky without asking the prior question: is the green transformation possible?
The German Advisory Council for Global Change (WBGU) and its research staff
have addressed this very question in some depth and gives a categorical answer:

the technological potential for comprehensive decarbonisation is available .

. . and the policy instruments needed for a climate-friendly transformation
are widely known. Now it is foremost a political task to overcome the barriers of
such a transformation, and to accelerate the change.
(WBGU, 2011, p1; emphasis added)

This is precisely the starting point for this concluding chapter and indeed the entire
book.
In this chapter I have tried to decompose the fast-track question and distil some
of the insights that can be derived from the literature and experiences on the ground.
What I have not done is ask what it means to investigate the politics of accelera-
tion and at what level of abstraction? One approach would be to test the reality
of those insights for those countries that have made the biggest progress. Take the
case of Germany. There is a transformative alliance, but who has the convening
power? Is Angela Merkel riding the green tiger? This is very relevant for the fast-
track issue and a cartoonist’s dream, but how real is it?
The answer is that Angela Merkel is far too clever to pose as the queen of low-
carbon prosperity. As a former research scientist (physics and chemistry) she
understands and accepts the arguments of climate and earth scientists. As a politician,
however, she knows that accelerating the pace may require working – at particular
moments – with those who do not accept that case (recall transitional arrangements).
And it requires taking advantage of opportunities when they arise. Within days of
the Fukushima disaster she put her foot on the accelerator (recall Geels’s windows
of opportunity due to change in the landscape). And acceleration happened because
the legislation was in place and because thousands of small investors and hundreds
of municipalities responded to a policy designed for them (recall Lockwood’s
argument on the knock-on effects of policies – see Chapter 6). More recently,
Merkel found that she had to put the brake on because too much renewable energy
is being generated and the cost to consumer and taxpayer is very transparent –
while the cost of fossil-fuel energy is not (Luetkenhorst and Pegels, 2014).4 Her
new economics and energy minister (leader of the Social Democratic party) is now
in charge of administering the slow-down. The green tiger is in a cage – for now.
The battle is on for when it will be let out again and in what shape. Leaner and
meaner? The key point is that this battle is now taking place on an economic and
political platform which is more advanced and very different from five or even
three years ago (recall the earlier point which emphasizes trial and error, and uses
the metaphor of climbing a tree by swinging upwards from branch to branch –
with the occasional fall).
182 Hubert Schmitz

Is this what is needed to understand the politics of green transformations? In a

way, yes. Of course, the above is at best a condensed sketch and a more detailed
account is needed. My key point is that testing our insights more systematically
for those countries which have made the greatest strides forward (Denmark,
Germany and China) is essential for answering the fast-track question. If this question
has a clear answer, one would expect to find it here.
In the meantime, we need to continue at a more abstract level. And this is what
the German Council for Global Change does when it stresses that the
transformation is above all a political task. Central to this political task, according
to the Council, is the forging of World in Transition: A Social Contract for Sustainability
(WBGU, 2011). What is meant here is a contract between the state and citizens.
‘The contract has to bring two important new protagonists into the equation: the
self-organized civil society and the community of scientific experts’ (WBGU, 2011,
p8). I agree with this political turn of the Council but suggest that the state–civic
nexus is not sufficient. Business needs to be included explicitly, thus turning attention
to the role of state–business–civic alliances. The earlier ‘Who?’ section of this chapter
stressed the role of such alliances. Since it is central to the fast-track issue, it deserves
further elaboration.
Focusing on alliances and including business in such alliances is critical accord-
ing to recent political science analysis which shows that alliances (or coalitions)
can be effective in overcoming complex collective action problems (Leftwich, 2009;
Peiffer, 2012). Including business in the analysis and formation of alliances makes
a significant difference. Maxfield (1991, p421) stressed long ago the critical role of
policy coalitions which cut across state and society and include business. More
recently, Abdel-Latif and Schmitz (2010) have shown why and how state-business
alliances matter for overcoming bottlenecks in industrial development. When it
comes to green transformations, the inclusion of business seems particularly
important. As stressed by Newell and Paterson, ‘many capitalists and state elites,
for a range of different reasons, now have a political and financial stake in the project
of decarbonisation’ (2011, p41) . . . ‘short or medium term transitions to a low
carbon economy will have to be supported (financially and politically) by powerful
fractions of capital with a stake in the success of such a project’ (p23).
This is a key point. There are parts of the business community which are keen
to support green transformations but are, in fact, driven by ambitions in other fields
– notably, securing energy or building a competitive new industry. Understanding
the political dynamics needs to include also those interests which are not green in
themselves but support the green cause. Effective cooperation between public and
private actors does not require that the players support renewables for the same
reasons. On the contrary, the chance of effective cooperation increases dramatically
if players with different motivations are brought into the picture.
Accepting this is not easy for those who have argued that capitalism is destroying
our planet. It feels like a call to sleep with the enemy. The point made here is not
that their analysis is entirely wrong but that it is incomplete. Preventing the
 Green transformation: is there a fast track? 183

destruction of human life on earth requires working with those parts of industry
and finance that are willing and keen to make green investments. The division
between high- and low-carbon investors runs right through industry and finance,
as stressed in Chapter 5 by Peter Newell. In some cases it runs right through
individual corporations in which some departments continue to be tied to the fossil
fuel sectors, while others are pioneering new low-carbon technologies. Investments
in the latter can be counted in billions of dollars, euros or pounds. The problem
is that investments in fossil fuel and related industries amount to trillions. Changing
this balance and achieving it rapidly is – in economic terms – the hard core of the
green transformation.5
Such emphasis on working with business is also worrisome to those concerned
with the distributional consequences of the green transformation. History tells us
that big transformations can entail big increases in inequality. However, history
also tells us that some big transformations happened when the interests of business
and large sections of society coincided (Perez, 2002, 2013). So which is it? As always,
the answer is: it depends. The determinants are politically constructed.
A comparison of China and Vietnam is illuminating. As mentioned earlier, no
two economies have averaged more rapid growth in the nineties and noughties –
and have transformed faster – than China and Vietnam. The point to be added
here is that the Vietnamese system has generated lower inequality than the Chinese
system. Abrami et al. (2008) suggest that this is because of the difference in party
organization. Compared with China, Vietnam’s institutions empower a larger group
of insiders and place more constraints on party leadership, both through vertical
checks and semi-competitive elections. As a result, Vietnam spends a larger propor-
tion of its revenue on transfers and has been able to achieve more equalization
between provinces and individuals.
A comparison of Germany and the UK is also illuminating and directly relevant
for green transformations. In Chapter 6 of this book, Lockwood shows that
different designs of green industrial policy have different consequences. The key
insights are first, that some policy designs have more inclusive outcomes than others
and second, that the more inclusive design in Germany contributed in a decisive
way to the greater momentum of the transformation in that country. The
proposition emerging from this comparison is that transformation and inclusion
reinforce each other. To what extent and how needs further examination.
To conclude, there is no motorway into the green future. Embarking on the
fast track is not about the big push from the centre along a predetermined path.
It is about joining forces to dismantle the old and joining forces to achieve the
new. But joining forces with whom? Stephen Spratt in Chapter 10 of this book
distinguishes between the deep and light green. I would add those who are not
green at all in conviction but can nevertheless support the green cause through
their investments and expertise. Including them in our alliances provides much
needed hope that green transformations can be accelerated, and it provides an
analytical grip on where, when and why accelerations occur – or not.
184 Hubert Schmitz

Notes
1 Helpful comments on a previous draft were provided by Melissa Leach, Wilfried
Lütkenhorst, Anna Pegels and Carlota Perez.
2 Or is it that the hell scenario does not look so hellish? As suggested earlier, shifting the
narrative from climate change to climate chaos would make the scientific discourse more
real for most citizens.
3 For an overview of China’s high carbon legacies and low-carbon initiatives, see Slusarska
(2013).
4 The green burden to consumers is higher than expected partly because the amount of
renewable energy produced is higher than expected and partly because there are more
exceptions for industry than expected. The burden sharing is lop-sided.
5 Sovereign wealth funds are likely to play a role in changing this balance, for instance,
the Norwegian oil fund, which collects taxes from oil profits and invests the money in
stocks, is reassessing its investment portfolio.
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7KLVSDJHLQWHQWLRQDOO\OHIWEODQN
INDEX

AARP see American Association of banks 137–138, 140–141, 156–159

Retired Persons benefits, science and technology 47
accelerated depreciation (AD) 94–95 ‘big push’ approaches 140, 144
acceptable daily intakes (ADIs) 42 ‘big tent’ approaches 123
accumulation regimes 70 black carbon 29
activism, grassroots innovation 114 BNDES see Brazilian Development
activist organizations and networks 120 Bank
AD see accelerated depreciation bond and equity investors 156, 157
ADIs see acceptable daily intakes bottom-up transformations see grassroots
AEIC see American Energy Innovation innovation
Council boundary concepts, science 41
aerosols 29 BP see British Petroleum
Africa: finance 166; GM 49–50; planetary Brazil 105, 106–107, 141
boundaries 32, 33; two-degree limits 30 Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES)
agit prop, technological 110, 113–114 141
agricultural futures 65 British Petroleum (BP) 81
agricultural projects 115 Brundtland Commission 61, 63
America: capitalism 78–79; entrepreneurial buen vivir (living well) 15
state 143–144; fast-tracking 180; ‘business-as-usual’ patterns of growth
mobilization 122–123; science 45, 47, 12–13
50–51; see also United States
American Association of Retired Persons cadmium telluride (CdTe) 147
(AARP) 90 Cancun, COP-16, 28–29
American Energy Innovation Council capital 13, 143, 147, 150, 156–157
(AEIC) 139 capitalism 68–85; diversity 97;
animals, laboratory 45 financialization 77–80; Fordism 74–76,
‘Anonymous’ movement 120–121 78; globalization 76–77; history 71–80;
Anthropocene 57–59 Industrial Revolution 72–73, 78;
anti-consumerism groups 75 theories of change 80–84
anti-GM movements 125–126, 129 carbon 29, 64, 79; see also coal
Asia: fast-tracking 174–175; two-degree Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) 79
limits 30; see also China cars 74–76, 78
atmospheric pollution 60–61 Carson, R. 39–40, 121
auto-mobility 74–76, 78 ‘cash for clunkers’ schemes 139
216 Index

CDM see Clean Development Mechanism Denmark 176

CDP see Carbon Disclosure Project Department of Energy (DOE) 146
CdTe see cadmium telluride Department for the Environment, Food
CFS see Committee on Food Security and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) 49
China: energy politics 89, 94–96; development banks 137–138
entrepreneurial state 138, 140–141, 142, development finance institutions (DFIs)
145–147; fast-tracking 174, 176, 158, 159
177–178, 180; institutional context dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT)
98–99; mobilization 128–129 39–40
China Development Bank (CBD) 141 digital fabrication, grassroots 111–112, 114
CIGS see copper indium gallium diversity 96–97
(di)selenide
circular economies 160 Earth systems governance 58
Cisterna programme 106–107 East Asia 174–175
citizen-led transformations 5, 15–17 eastern Europe, mobilization 128–129
Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) ecological modernization 131
13, 36 Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity
climate change: economic output 154–155; (TEEB) 13, 36
emancipating transformations 60–61, 65; eco-toxicity 39–40
two-degree limits 27–28, 34 EEA see European Environment Agency
climate engineering 44–45 emancipating transformations 54–67;
climate geoengineering 64 democracy 59–61; Nexus, necessity and
Climate Investment Funds 77 nudge 55–57; transition to
Climate justice movement 120–121 transformation 61–66
Club of Rome 40–41 Energiewende plan (‘Energy Turnaround’)
coal 71, 73, 81 141, 146
commercial financial institutions 156, 157, energy, politics 87–89
159 Energy Descent Action Plan 127
Committee on Food Security (CFS) energy descent action plans 114–115
123–124 energy efficiency 160
community agricultural projects 115 energy pathways 65
Companies Act 2006; Regulations 79 energy providers 87–89
Conference on Environment and energy sector, entrepreneurial state
Development 121; see UN Conference 136–139
on Environment and Development Enough anti-consumerism groups 75
conferences of parties (COP) 28–29 ENSSER see European Network of
consumer chemicals 60–61 Scientists for Social and Environmental
contaminants 60–61 Responsibility
Conway, E. M. 51–52 entrepreneurial state 134–152; energy
COP see conferences of parties sector 136–139; fast-tracking 180;
Copenhagen, Cop-15, 28–29 national approaches 139–144; nurturing
copper indium gallium (di)selenide (CIGS) 144–148; political challenges 149–150;
147–148 private sector 148–149
corporate influence, science 51–52 Environment and Development
crops, GM 48–50, 125–126 Conference 121
‘crowding-out’ hypothesis 135 equity investors 156, 157
Europe: fast-tracking 180; mobilization
DDT see dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane 122–123, 128–129
DEFRA see Department for the European Environment Agency (EEA) 47
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs European Network of Scientists for Social
demand-side policies 136 and Environmental Responsibility
democracy, emancipating transformations (ENSSER) 49
59–61
democratic transformations, grassroots FabLabs 107, 111, 114
innovation 115–117 ‘fallacy of control’ 64–65
 Index 217

FAO see Food and Agriculture grassroots innovation 102–118; democratic

Organization transformations 115–117; empowerment
farmers 122–124, 129 105–106; ingenuity 104–105, 111;
feedback effects 86–101; renewable energy mainstream 110–112; mobilization
policies 89–96 104–107, 112–115; policy fixes
feed-in tariffs 94 104–107; power 115–117; practical
finance 153–169; industrial revolution reasoning 112–115; STI 107–110, 111
137–139; present predicament 162–167; Green Climate Fund 18, 77
transformation typology 154–156; types greenhouse gases (GHG) 29, 78–79
159–162; typology 156–159 Greenpeace 81, 120–121
finance roles 70 gross domestic product (GDP) 163
financialization 77–80 Gupta, Anil 105–106, 121–122
First Solar 147 GWEC see Global Wind Energy Council
food, GM 48–50, 125–126
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Hackerspaces 107, 111, 114
41 Haggard, S. 175
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Hamilton, K. 79–80
50 hedge funds 156, 157, 158
food futures 32–33 high frequency traders (HFTs) 158
foods, GM 48–50 High Level Dialogues 36
food sovereignty 122–124 High Level Panel on Global Sustainability
Fordism 74–76, 78 31
forests 33 Hobday, M. 174–175
fossil fuel 81–82; see also coal Holocene 57
fracking 44–45, 81–82 Honey Bee Network 104–106, 121–122
fractions of capital 69–70 Hopkins, R. 127
framing of green transformations 9–17 Huber, M. 73, 82
Freedom of Information 46–47 Hulme, M. 170–171
Freeman, C. 40–41
Friends of the Earth 120–121 IAASTD see International Assessment for
FSD see financial sector development Agricultural Science and Technology
for Development
gas 81–82 IEA see International Energy Agency
Gates, B. 139 IGBP see International Geosphere-
GDP see gross domestic product Biosphere Programme
General Electric (GE) 149 IHDP see International Human
generation-based incentives 94 Dimensions Programme
genetically modified (GM) crops 48–50, imprecision, science 50–52
125–126 incentives realignment 22
geoengineering, climate 64 India: energy politics 89, 94–96; fast-
Geographic Information Systems tracking 178; grassroots innovation
(GIS) 35 104–106, 107; Honey Bee Network
Germany: energy politics 89, 91–94; 104–106, 121–122; institutional context
entrepreneurial state 140–141, 146; 98–99; People’s Science Movement 107
fast-tracking 176; institutional context Industrial Revolution 72–73, 78, 137–139
97–98 innovation hubs 150–151
GHG see greenhouse gases insurance funds 156, 157, 159
GIS see Geographic Information Systems Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Global Green New Deal 14 Change (IPCC) 28; emancipating
globalization 76–77 transformations 64; fast-tracking 170,
Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) 172; science 48, 52
137 International Assessment for Agricultural
GM see genetically modified crops Science and Technology for
Goldwind 146–147 Development (IAASTD) 123
governance 58 International Energy Agency (IEA) 159
218 Index

International Geosphere-Biosphere movements 120–122

Programme (IGBP) 31 MTDs see maximum tolerated doses
International Human Dimensions
Programme (IHDP) 31 nanotechnology 44–45
International Union for Conservation of National Academy of Sciences (NAS) 45,
Nature (IUCN) 36 50–51
investment banks 140–141, 156, 157, 158 National Solar Mission 178
ionizing radiation 60–61 natural capital 13
IPCC see Intergovernmental Panel on Natural Resources Defence Council
Climate Change (NRDC) 40
IUCN see International Union for Nature paper (Rockström et al.) 31
Conservation of Nature negative political feedback effects 90,
93–95
Jacobs, M. 146 neo-liberalism 77, 131
Joint Meeting on Pesticide Residues 42 networking 22–23
‘just transition’ 75–76 Nexus, necessity and nudge 55–57
non-fossil fuel-based energy 159
KfW bank, Germany 141
North America: fast-tracking 180;
knowledge politics 21–22, 25–38
mobilization 122
laboratory studies 45 NRDC see Natural Resources Defence
labour roles 70 Council
landscape approaches 35 nuclear power 63
Late Lessons from Early Warnings project 47 nudges 55–57, 143, 144
Latin America: mobilization 122–124; Nyeleni declaration 123
two-degree limits 30
La Via Campesina 122–124, 129 occupational hazards 60–61
legislation, Freedom of Information 46–47 Occupational Health and Safety
liberal–productivist models 80–81 Administration (OHSA) 50
lifestyle-centred movements 120 Occupy movement 120–121
limit concepts 27–36; finance 154–155; OECD see Organisation for Economic
science 41 Cooperation and Development
The Limits to Growth 40–41 oil 81–82
Lucas Aerospace 113 ‘One Million Cisterns’ programme
106–107
makerspaces 111, 114 open-access wiki websites and blogs 128
marketized transformations 5, 12–14, 16, 18 Ordoliberalism 98
Marx, K. 72–73 Oreskes, N. 51–52
‘mass public’ 90 Organisation for Economic Cooperation
Maxfield, S. 165 and Development (OECD) 11, 12;
Maximum Residue Limits 42 energy politics 89; grassroots innovation
maximum tolerated doses (MTDs) 42 110
microfinance institutions (MFIs) 158, 159 organizations and influence, science
Microsoft 139 51–52
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Our Common Future 121
61
Ministry for Research and Technology, Paarlberg, R. 49–50
Germany 146 Pagliari, S. 164
mobilization 22–23, 119–133; cases patient finance 138–139
122–128, 129; contradictions 130–132; Pax Britannica 73
GM crops 125–126, 129; grassroots payments for ecosystem services (PES)
innovation 104–107, 112–115; history schemes 13, 36
120–122; La Via Campesina 122–124, peasant’s way 122–124, 129
129; movements 120–129; tensions pension funds 156, 157, 159
130–132; typology 120–122; urban People’s Science Movement 107
sustainability 127–128, 129 Perez, C. 77–78, 180
 Index 219

PES see payments for ecosystem services science 39–53, 107–110, 111; agendas and
schemes decisions 43–44; contestation 40–41;
photovoltaic (PV) cells 77, 91–93, 95, imprecision 50–52; policy responses
145–147 41–43; regulatory 44–50; uncertainty
Pierson, P. 89–90 43, 50–52
planetary boundaries 27–28, 30–35, 59 science, technology and innovation (STI)
Point of No Return report (2013) 81 107–110, 111
Polanyi, K. 70 SDGs see Sustainable Development Goals
policy: design 91; policy feedback 87–101; Securities and Exchange Commission
policy fixes, grassroots innovation 78–79
104–107 policy-making 87–89, 93–94, shaping of structures 21
97–98; policy paradigms 96–97; Shell 81
policy responses to science 41–43 Siemens 88–89
political dynamics 86–101; energy 87–89; Sierra Club 120–121
entrepreneurial state 149–150; grassroots Silent Spring (Carson) 39–40
104–107, 112–115; institutional context silicon-based solar panels 147–148
96–99; uncertainty 43 Simmons, B. 165–166
pollution 60–61 small and medium enterprises (SMEs) 162
polycentric co-ordination 58 small-scale farming 122–124, 129
portfolio bond and equity investors 156, social contracts 75
157 social institutional systems 96–97
positive political feedback effects 90, Socially Responsible Investment (SRI)
93–94 funds 158–159
power generation companies 95–96 Social Technologies Network (STN) 105
power and grassroots innovation 115–117 solar energy 147–149, 176; see also
practical reasoning, grassroots politics photovoltaic cells
112–115 Solyndra 147–148
private equity investors 156, 157 Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) 158–159
private sectors 148–149 Soviet Union, mobilization 128–129
PV see photovoltaic cells SRI see Socially Responsible Investment
funds
radiation 60–61 state investment banks 140–141
railways 73, 78 state-led transformations 5, 14–15, 16,
regime of accumulation 70 18–19, 90
regulation modes 70 state-owned power generation companies
regulatory science 44–50 95–96
renewable energy policies 89–96 state, the 70, 134–152
Renewables Obligation (RO) 92–93, STI see science, technology and innovation
97–98 STN see Social Technologies Network
renewables policy 93–94 Stockholm conference 121
Research and Development (R&D) 146, Sunpower 147
148–150 ‘Sustainable Development in a Dynamic
resource degradation 60–61 Economy’ 12
Rio conference 31, 33–34, 121 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
Rising Tide anti-consumerism groups 9–10
75 Suzlon (turbine manufacturer) 95
risk 47, 161 SWFs see Sovereign Wealth Funds
RO see Renewables Obligation
Royal Society of London (RSL) 50–51 tax incentives 94–95
rural communities 106–107 technological agit prop 110, 113–114
technology, grassroots innovation 107–110
safe operating space see planetary technology-led transformations 5, 10–12,
boundaries 16, 18
Schumpetarian waves of creative TED (Technology, Entertainment and
destruction 77–78 Design) 31
220 Index

Tesla Motors 148 UN-REDD see United Nations

The Economics of Ecosystems and collaborative initiative on Reducing
Biodiversity (TEEB) 13, 36 Emissions from Deforestation and forest
The Limits to Growth 40–41 Degradation
theories of change 80–84 urban sustainability, mobilization 127–128,
The Social Technologies Network (STN) 129
105
thin-film solar technologies 147 Vensys Energiesysteme GmbH 146
tourism 33 venture capital (VC) 143, 147, 150, 156,
Transition Town initiatives 114–115, 157
127–128 vertically integrated models 94
turbines see wind energy Vietnam 174
two-degree limits for global climate change
27–28, 34 Ward, B. 121
wastelands 35
UK Companies Act 2006 Regulations water contamination 60–61
79 ‘waves of creative destruction’ 77–78
uncertainty, science 43, 50–52 WBCSD see World Business Council for
UN Conference on Environment and Sustainable Development
Development 121 West Africa, planetary boundaries 32
UNEP see United Nations Environment Western Europe: fast-tracking 180;
Programme mobilization 122
UN Framework Convention on Climate WHO see World Health Organization
Change (UNFCCC) 28–29 wiki websites and blogs 128
UN Food and Agricultural Organization’s wind energy 94–96, 145–147, 148–149,
Committee on Food Security (CFS) 176
123–124 World Bank: globalization 76–77; Green
United Kingdom (UK): energy politics 89, Climate Fund 18; High Level Dialogues
91–94; institutional context 97–98 36; landscape approach 35; Sustainable
United Nations collaborative initiative on Development in a Dynamic Economy
Reducing Emissions from Deforestation 12
and forest Degradation (UN-REDD) World Business Council for Sustainable
13, 36 Development (WBCSD) 36
United Nations Environment Programme World Health Organization (WHO) 41, 45
(UNEP) 11–14, 36 World Social Forum 120–121
United States (US): AARP 90; AEIC World Trade Organization (WTO) 48
139; capitalism 78–79; entrepreneurial
state 143–144; science 45, 47, zero carbon energy 64
50–51 ‘zeronauts’ 10–11