A Radically Conservative Vision? The Challenge of UNEP's Towards a Green Economy

The world has become a rather depressing place. The global economy appears to be slowing down again, numerous governments are insolvent and herds of callous market traders are zealously trying to bring about their ruin for the sake of personal profit. The ozone hole is bigger than ever; greenhouse gas-driven climate change shows every prospect of accelerating; there is another famine in the Horn of Africa and the list of threatened, endangered and extinct species grows ever longer. Super-rich over-armed countries are conducting resource wars that kill thousands of innocent people and seem destined to foster extremism. Trade laws are unjust, the arms trade rife, and global agreement about what to do collectively to tackle these global problems appears as elusive as ever. The Millennium Development Goals’ targets for tackling poverty and international targets for reducing carbon emissions are not likely to be realized. Collectively we are not in a good situation, and we do not seem to know what to do about it. Our political leaders lack the political will to direct the changes that we need. As Adams and Jeanrenaud (2008: 19) put it, when considering the prospects of a sustainable economy: ‘There are no road maps for the future that faces humankind in the twentyfirst century. People have not been here before . . . We face a future to which the past is at best a poor guide’. It is in this context that the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has released its vision of what a green economy might look like and how we might get there. Towards a Green