Green Economy in the South – Negotiating Environmental Governance, Prosperity and Development

The momentum gathering behind the idea and practice of the Green Economy is coinciding with financial instability and continued economic woe in the North, but generally happier economic circumstances in the South. Economies are growing and ‘green economic initiatives’ are part of these changes. Carbon payments, ecotourism, community-based wildlife management, Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives and offsets by mining companies exploiting new resources are all a part of a landscape offering new commodities, opportunities for commercialization and integration into wealth-generating markets. And so too are growing incidents of land (and water) grabbing, displacement and alienation of resources required for wealthy tourists, bitter local conflicts over the locally-defined rules of access to carbon (e.g. firewood) purchased by wealthy northerners, green washing and other harmful activities that either cause poverty, or else distribute the fortune and misfortune of the green economy inequitably. Equally demands for alternatives to market-driven environmental degradation, and for market-dominated solutions are also gaining strength and coherence.

The conference will be held in Tanzania and builds on a series of sister conferences held in Europe and North America (most recently Grabbing Green and Nature Inc). We are convening it in Tanzania because we want the focus of this conference to be about the growth of the Green Economy in the South, and therefore this conference must be more accessible to Southern speakers, researchers and activists.

In addition to the conference itself we will also be organizing field trips to sites after the conference is formally finished to locations where interventions of the green economy are unfolding, in carbon forestry, wildlife management and eco-tourism.

The conference is hosted by the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Dodoma, Tanzania, and co-hosted by the Institute for Poverty Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), University of the Western Cape; the Institute for Development Policy and Management (IDPM), University of Manchester; The Institute for Social Studies (ISS), Erasmus University; and, the Sustainability Platform, Copenhagen Business School (CBS).

Speakers include Martin Kijazi and others from the STEPS Centre’s Political Ecologies of Carbon in Africa project.