The Green Economy: the Wolf in Sheep’s clothing

Edgardo Lander

01/12/2011

Opinión

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I. The 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro 1992: sustainable development

In 1983, when the Earth’s ecological crisis was becoming ever more apparent, the United Nations General Assembly decided to create an international commission (the World Commission on Environment and Development) to analyse the planet’s environmental situation and how it related to development goals. Based on this they presented a set of recommendations for action. The report, Our Common Future, was submitted in 1987 and is known as the Brundtland Report, named after the project’s overall coordinator. This report provided the basis of negotiations at the Earth Summit that took place in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.

It is a document plagued by contradictions. The report provides broad documentation of the severe environmental problems facing the planet. Nevertheless, it proved incapable of identifying the fundamental causes of those problems. It would not consider options that fall outside the dominant framework and the capitalist logic of unlimited economic growth. The report claims that the best way of responding to the challenges posed by the environmental destruction and poverty, which it so thoroughly diagnoses, is through more growth. It stresses the need to “revive growth” to annual rates of between 5 and 6% for the countries of the Global South.

* Document in PDF

- Edgardo Lander is Professor of Social Sciences at the Universidad Central de Venezuela in Caracas and Fellow of the Transnational Institute.

https://www.alainet.org/en/articulo/154389