In the wake of the European elections, with significant gains by far-right parties, there is reason to fear further rowing back of Green Deal policies and a deepening of austerity. A major narrative has emerged in European politics pitting the livelihoods of workers, and particularly farmers, against environmental legislation. Images of manure piled on bureaucrats’ steps and roads blockaded by tractors are juxtaposed with the faces of climate justice activists.
This narrow view is misguided and further polarises the public debate, between those who see the economy and the environment as opposing causes and those who see the economy as inherently embedded within nature.
We (the undersigned) are representatives of that latter group, who posit that the depletion of ecosystems and the exploitation of farmers, workers and communities, in Europe and globally, are both rooted in the same economic narrative. At the heart of our current range of crises is the relentless pursuit of economic growth, which has benefited the few to the cost of the many.
Essentials not luxuries
Tackling the social and ecological crises Europeans face today requires a deep transformation of our economies. That means changes in physical structures – for instance, building solar panels and wind turbines to access clean energy and reorganising the way we provide for basic needs like food, housing and transport. But it also requires major social innovation. Building welfare beyond growth is the rational alternative to continuing on the same environmentally destructive and socially unequal path.
The dominant political narrative holds that we need growth for the ‘green’ transition as well as for social welfare. In this scenario, investment in public services and in green infrastructure is a ‘luxury’ we can afford only if there is enough economic growth, rather than a means to ensure the essentials – clean water, clean air, housing etc – that none of us can do without.
The current strategy for Europe is to seek more growth through profit-driven businesses and exponential industrial production, while betting on speculative technologies to mitigate environmental impacts and hoping that the wealth created will ‘trickle down’ through wages and redistribution.
Heading for ecological breakdown
To date, this strategy has proven to be undeliverable both from an environmental and a social perspective. Instead, we are witnessing a chronic lack of the needed public investment and an increased concentration of market power and wealth, leading to mounting socioeconomic inequalities and the cost-of-living crisis sweeping across Europe. Unbridled economic growth is in fact leading us straight into ecological breakdown.
Research shows that we are not reaching absolute decoupling of growth (or gross domestic product) from energy and material use fast enough to meet climate objectives. Without growth, our current system would collapse into recession, but that is precisely why we need to change the system. For the growth-based feature of our economies lies at the root of unsustainable extractivism and exploitation worldwide.
The political challenge of our time is to overcome this growth-dependency: we have to scale down material and energy use to avert climate catastrophe while restructuring our social welfare systems towards tackling inequalities and securing human wellbeing.
European farmers’ hardships vs Green Deal
As the elections have shown, pitting social security against the green transition has strengthened the voice of and support for the far right. This year farmers’ protests have shaken Europe and we are faced with a conservative backlash across the continent. In response to this large-scale and diverse mobilisation, regulations on environmental protection such as pesticide use have been expediently downscaled, and we fear this attack on the European Green Deal will intensify in the next political term.
Yet this policy approach misses the core of the farmers’ demands and serves the interests of large European agribusinesses instead. Fair prices and incomes for farmers demand a system that blocks low-standard imports, values local food production and ensures that middlemen do not scoop up the profits at the cost of producers. And what right do we have to rely on other countries’ soils, water and labour to feed us, when the multiple threats to food security mean they need it themselves.
Instead we should be striving for dignified farming and food sovereignty, a goal that can only be reached through democratising the economy. Our efforts should be directed at dismantling the agribusiness oligopoly, and freeing our producers from the dominance of global markets which creates enormous pressure to intensify production.
A new deal beyond growth
These times of rising inequalities, social unrest and growing conservative forces call for great public investment, not austerity politics. We need to massively distribute wealth, tackle the concentration of economic power and democratise the economy. Above all, we need to mobilise for a European Green Deal beyond growth for this new electoral term, one which puts workers’ and farmers’ rights at the forefront of our agenda for environmental justice.
As we leave unbridled economic growth and its tall tales behind, we can make European policies that ensure a truly just transition, with dignified jobs for all.
Sign-ons
- Petros Kokkalis, Greek MEP, Greens/EFA
- Marie Toussaint, French MEP, Greens/EFA
- Manuela Ripa, German MEP, Greens/EFA
- Carola Rackete, German MEP, Independent (The Left)
- Christine Teunissen, Dutch MP, Partij van de Dieren
- Séverine de Laveleye, Belgian MP, Ecolo
- Natalie Bennett, Member of the UK House of Lords, Green Party
- Jasminka Dedić, Local Councillor in Ljubljana, Vesna
- Luka Florjanc, Local Councillor in Ljubljana, Vesna
- Elisabeth Götze, Austrian MP, Die Grünen
- Carlos Martin, Spanish MP, Sumar
- Helmut Scholz, former German MEP, The Left
- Florent Marcellesi, former Spanish MEP and co-chair of Verdes Equo
- Olivier de Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food (2008–2014) and on
- Extreme Poverty and Human Rights (2020– )
- Rosa Martínez, Secretary of State of the Spanish Government for Social Rights, Sumar
- Cristina Guarda, Italian MEP, Greens/EFA
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