Ep 11 - Gendered Footprints in the Green Economy - Associate Professor Ariel Salleh - a podcast by Common Alternatives

In a time of ecological breakdown on a planetary scale, governments, business and United Nations agencies advance the Green Economy idea and Sustainable Development Goals as panacea. These programs look to entrepreneurial partnerships and research on innovative product design to 'join the dots' of society, economy, and ecology. But a sex-gendered reading of the Green Economy exposes the full depth of contradictions existing beneath and between these 'three pillars'. For example, environmental policy makers, academic theorists, even activists tend to overlook the multiple effects of learned sex-gender attitudes. Yet a structural analysis of energy consumption patterns shows women across cultures have a relatively small 'ecological footprint'. Moreover, women as reproductive labour skilled in multi-tasking tend to problem solve integratively. These sex-gender differences are not inborn but historically assigned, then reinforced sociologically by material necessity and lessons learned in everyday care-giving labour. This ecofeminist observation holds major implications for environmental politics. The paper outlines how the Green Economy idea came to dominate the discourse of global environmental politics, and what class, race, and sex-gender interests it serves. A critical analysis of 'ecological modernist' assumptions behind the Green Economy and United Nations Sustainable Development Goals reveals serious flaws on both justice and sustainability grounds. Conversely, it is argued that a global 'meta-industrial' labour majority, a sociologically 'unnamed class' at the domestic and geographic peripheries of capitalism, already demonstrates 'real green jobs', reproducing social relations while keeping the humanity-nature metabolism whole. The short-term international competitiveness of the Green Economy is contrasted with the locally oriented provisioning approaches of ecofeminism, buen vivir, and degrowth - as alternative social models for people engaging creatively in the re-vitalisation of post-industrial regions.      Hon Associate Professor Ariel Salleh, Political Economy, University of Sydney and Senior Fellow in Post-Growth Societies, Friedrich Schiller University Jena: www.arielsalleh.info ------------------------------------------------------------ Alternative Futures and Regional Prospects Symposium Working across Differences, beyond Carbon, Capital and Commodity  Thursday 22nd & Friday 23rd of November 2018 Organizers: The University of Newcastle Alternative Futures Network, Common Alternatives Network (http://thecommonalts.com/); hosted by The University of Technology Sydney

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