Green Growth 2.0: Ecocultures and the new sustainable economy

Organisation Studies

Further details

Abstract

Green growth’ has been at the forefront of how global elites have imagined the reengineered global economy following a triple bottom line, or three Ps, approach, valuing not just Profits but also People and the Planet. While good on paper and perhaps even in intention, the actual policies and economic practices of ‘green growth’ are often not fundamentally different to existing, unsustainable ways to manage contemporary societies and economies. This paper is divided into two halves. The first will provide a critique of ‘green growth’, analysing the mechanisms of unsustainability that underpin it and the legitimizing function it is supposed to play. In a quest to go beyond critique, the second half will explore the possibilities of a redefined ‘green growth’ approach, which focuses on an engagement with, what can be called, Ecocultural communities. Ecocultures are blueprints for sustainable communities and economies that enable people to reconnect to themselves as well as to nature. It is argued that ecocultures are our best hope for a communities-based economy, which can tackle the planetary sustainability challenges of our times.  

Bio

Steffen Böhm is Director of the Essex Sustainability Institute and Professor in Management and Sustainability at the University of Essex. He is also an Honorary Professor at the University of St Andrews. He holds a PhD from the University of Warwick. His research focuses on political economies and ecologies of organization, management and the environment. He was a co-founder of the open-access journal ephemera: theory & politics in organization, and is co-founder and co-editor of the open-access publishing press MayFlyBooks. He has published five books: Repositioning Organization Theory (Palgrave), Against Automobility (Blackwell), Upsetting the Offset: The Political Economy of Carbon Markets (Mayfly), The Atmosphere Business (Mayfly), and Ecocultures: Blueprints for Sustainable Communities (Routledge).