Presentation delivered by Professor Joan Martinez-Alier (ICTA, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona) at the Rio+20 side event on the role of civil society and knowledge institutions in sustainable development: http://www.ipc-undp.org/PageNewSiteb.do?id=274&active=2

1. Rio de Janeiro, 19/6/12
Joan Martinez-Alier
ICTA, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona

2. Ecological Economics and
Valuation
• Ecological economics has always emphasized
incommensurability of values.
• Who has the power to simplify complexity and
impose monetary valuation, thereby depriving
people of their own valuation languages
(livelihood, sacredness, environmental
values)?
• TEEB and its silences (the Niyamgiri Hill and
the Dongria Kondh / the Yasuni ITT initiative)

3. WE MOVING AWAY FROM A GREEN ECONOMY
Twenty years after Rio 1992, the victories of
Sustainable Development and, now, the Green
Economy, are more noticeable in the field of
rhetoric than in reality.
The indicators as regards climate change and
the loss of biodiversity have steadily worsened
at world level since 1992.

4. NEW AWARENESS
The dependence of the economy not only on
current products and services from "funds" but
also on exhaustible stocks of fossil fuels is more
widely recognised.
E.g. FAO will soon realize that the EROI of
modern agriculture and food system has
declined compared to traditional agriculture,
and that Via Campesina is right when claiming
that "peasant agriculture cools down the
Earth".

5. EXHAUSTIBLE STOCKS
Oil extraction and gas flaring near Lago Agrio, Ecuador
(photo Mariana Walter, ICTA UAB, 2007)

6. MATERIAL FLOWS AND RESOURCE
EXTRACTION CONFLICTS
The methodology for doing accounts of
Material Flows in the economy has been
established. Such research is done to give
empirical proof to claims of relative or even
absolute dematerialization of the economy.
This research is useful to see the links between
increased social metabolism and the growing
number of conflicts. (www.ejolt.org)

7. Growing
Metabolismo
Metabolism
creciente
and
appropriation of
Flujo de
biomass
materiales
-photo BRL, 2009

9. INCREASED HANPP : PRESSURE ON BIODIVERSITY
There is an international failure to agree on
objectives for reduction of carbon dioxide
emissions.
There is also a failure to agree on objectives for
decreasing the HANPP. On the contrary there is
a wave of land grabbing, and environmentally
and socially damaging uses of the land for tree
plantations , animal feedstuffs and agrofuels.

10. PROSPERITY WITHOUT GROWTH ?
In the European Union it is rhetorically agreed
that political objectives should move "beyond
GDP" forty years after Sicco Mansholt, as
president of the Commission, agreed to "below
zero growth"in 1972.
The idea of "prosperity without growth" appeals
to public opinion. Physical objectives such as the
EU 20-20-20 energy policy are accepted by
policy makers.

11. THE THREE LEVELS OF THE ECONOMY
The financial level that can grow exponentially for
a while as it did before 2008, and is still growing in
some countries as public debts accumulate;
The so-called real, productive economy of car
production, building houses, medical services,
which is stalled in OECD countries although some
sectors (informatics, renewable energies) are
growing; and
The "real-real" economy, namely the entry of
energy and materials and exit of waste including
carbon dioxide in excessive amounts.

12. Environmental Liabilities
• Growth of the so-called productive, real
economy produces large environmental
liabilities or ecological debts.
• by private or public firms (Chevron-Texaco,
Shell, Rio Tinto, Repsol, Petrobras etc)
• and by countries (climate debt, biodiversity
loss)
• Accounts of environmental liabilities are done
at the “real-real” level.

13. KEYNESIANISM AND GREEN KEYNESIANISM
Economists only worry about the first two levels.
There are two main schools at present.
•Keynesians argue that the real, productive
economy should grow in order to absorb
unemployment and to be able to pay for the
immense mountain of financial debt.
•Inside this school, there are Green Keynesians who
preach that investments should be environmental
investments preferably, including payments for
environmental services. Emphasizing “funds” more
than “stocks”. (Achim Steiner, Pavan Sukhdev).

14. DEBTOCRACY
The second school (let us call it the
“Debtocracy") argues for fiscal austerity.
First you pay the financial debt, then you can grow
(perhaps financed again by debts, as before 2008). It
may be that the real economy is asfixiated in the
meantime, as in Greece, but debtors should make
sacrifices to safeguard the principles of the credit
system for the future.

15. THE REAL-REAL ECONOMY
The "real-real" question is the following one.
If the economy of OECD countries would grow
again (now it is in a de facto steady-state or
slowly declining since 2008),
what will happen to the supplies and price of oil,
to world biodiversity, to carbon dioxide
emissions?

16. SOCIO-ECOLOGICAL TRANSITIONS
AND ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE
Even an economy without growth, if based on stocks
of fossil fuels, needs to go to the frontiers of
extraction because energy is not recycled.
We take today 86 million barrels of oil, we burn
them, tomorrow another 86 mb.
Materials are recycled in practice only in part.
A non-growing industrial
economy does not guarantee
sustainability.

17. Kalinganagar, Odisha, 2 Jan. 2007 (first anniversary of
displacement and killings on behalf of TATA industries)
(photo Leah Temper, ICTA UAB)

18. INDIA’S SOCIAL METABOLISM
To achieve a less unsustainable economy we cannot rely
(only) on technological improvements and the economic
incentives and environmental investments of the so-
called Green Economy.
It is enjoyable to see the economy of India grow. India's
material flows by person/year are now only at 5 tons,
a lot of strife is caused already by the extraction of
such materials. Many people lose their livelihoods
because of displacement or pollution. We know that the
European average is 15 tons. Moreover the EU imports
four times the tonnage that it exports. And we wonder
about the future.

19. SOCIO-ECOLOGICAL TRANSITIONS AND
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE
The so-called Green Economy risks being discredited
because of rhetorical triumphalism.
The Green Economy is certainly not the "real-real"
ecological economics of Kenneth Boulding, Nicholas
Georgescu-Roegen (who sponsored Décroissance in
1979) or Herman Daly.
We should not be pessimistic but not rely too much if at
all on the reasons and policies provided by the Green
Economy (technological optimism, economic incentives
and PES, environmental investments).

20. ONE GOOD SIGN: PEAK POPULATION
There are three good signs.
One good sign is that "peak population" is approaching
towards 2045 or 2050, probably at less than 9 billion.
The UN medium projection is too favourable to
population growth by assuming that fertility will
increase soon in countries where it is below 2.
Local issues of depopulation will become a large field of
study and policy making.
There is top-down Neo-Malthusianism but also
bottom-up, feminist Neo-Malthusianism.

22. DEGROWTH MOVEMENT IN THE NORTH
A second good sign is that movements for Degrowth
(décroissance), or the steady-state, or Prosperity
without Growth, are becoming better known and more
respectable and influential in rich countries.
They focus both on the physical, “real-real” economy
(accounts of energy and material flows, accounts of
virtual water, risks of rebound effects due to increased
eco-efficiencies) and on the social aspects of the
economy (dematerialized relational goods and services).
They would be glad to recommend now and then a debt
moratorium and even a default, against the Debtocracy .

23. GROWTH OF ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE MOVEMENT
A third and very important good sign, that should
appear much more in the UN deliberations, is the
growth of an international movement for Environmental
Justice, composed of the myriad local movements and
many international networks that have grown out of
resource extraction conflicts at the "commodity
frontiers" and also of waste disposal conflicts
(including the Climate Justice networks).
UNEP should set up a unit to do the statistics of the
thousands of environmental conflicts worldwide (as
ILO counts labour strikes). (www.ejolt.org)

24. Resource Extraction conflicts: complaining at the
Chinese embassy in Quito, 5/3/2012, against the
Mirador copper mining project

25. Waste disposal conflicts: shipbreaking at Alang, Gujarat
(photo Federico Demaria, ICTA UAB, 2009)

26. SOCIO-ECOLOGICAL TRANSITIONS AND
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE
We should be realistic, and not despair. We should learn
from catastrophes such as Fukushima, or those that will
perhaps come soon from climate change.
But I prefer to place my hopes not (only) on the
teachings of catastrophes and not on the recipes of
Green Keynesianism but rather on the collective
decisions to stop population growth, to move in rich
countries to "prosperity without growth",
and to strengthen the environmental justice
movements, the environmentalism of the poor and the
indigenous.

27. UN rhetoric
• In Rio 1992, “sustainable development”
• In Rio + 20, in 2012, “green economy”
improved human well-being and social equity, while
reducing environmental risks and scarcities
• In Rio + 40 in 2032, “sustainable economy”?
• In Rio + 60 in 2052, “green development”?
• Meanwhile …

28. Many environmentalists are killed
or “criminalized”
• In many countries, people who represent the
“environmentalism of the poor and the
indigenous” are killed. Or they are jailed.
• Recent case in Peru. Instead of bringing
Xstrata to justice for damage to human
health in the Tintaya mine, demonstrators
were killed , and Oscar Mollohuanca (the
elected major of Espinar) jailed in June 2012.
• Nevertheless. the Environmental Justice
movement is growing in the South.

29. FROM THE SOUTH
we hear that local economic growth is needed but
there are also new trends, new ideas
Proposals such as “Leave the oil in the soil, leave the coal in the
hole, leave the tar sands in the land, leave the shale gas
under the grass…” (Yasuni ITT) + Resource Caps
Sumak Kawsay + Rights of Nature (Bolivia/Ecuador)
Claims for an Ecological Debt, climate justice
Claims for environmental liabilities from extractive industries
(Shell, Chevron/Texaco) + International Tribunal for
Environmental Crimes
Critique of ecologically unequal trade, Latin American debates
on post-extractivism (Alberto Acosta, Eduardo Gudynas)
Via Campesina: food sovereignty

30. Many environmentalists are killed
or “criminalized”
• In many countries, people who represent the
“environmentalism of the poor and the
indigenous” are killed. Or they are jailed.
• One recent conspicuous case in Peru. Instead
of bringing Xstrata to justice because damage
to human health in the Tintaya mine,
demonstrators killed and Oscar Mollohuanca
(the elected major of Espinar) jailed.
• Nevertheless. the Environmental Justice
movement is growing.

31. From the North
• The debates from the 1970s on Limits for
Growth.
• Herman Daly’s Steady State Economy, 1973.
• Décroissance (A. Gorz in 1972, Georgescu-
Roegen in 1979, Latouche etc. 2002…)
• Ecological Macroeconomics without Growth :
Peter Victor, Managing without Growth, 2008,
Tim Jackson, Prosperity without Growth, 2009.

32. 1st International Conference on Degrowth, Paris,
April 2008
(http://www.degrowth.net/)

33. The potential alliance of southern EJOs
with the Décroissance (or Steady State)
currents in the North
Common perspective against the hegemony of
economic accounting in favour of pluralism of
values, emphasis on physical and social indicators,
recognition of environmental liabilities and the
climate debt, the awareness of ecologically
unequal exchange causing environmental damage,
defence of human rights, indigenous territorial
rights, and the Rights of Nature, feminist Neo-
Malthusianism.