A Pan-American Green New Deal? Green Investment, Extraction Battles, and Reforestation
Tue, May 11
|Online Event
Democratizing Global Green Investment Panel Series
Time & Location
May 11, 2021, 12:00 PM EDT
Online Event
About the Event
The politics of the climate emergency are inextricably entwined with public and private investment at a planetary scale. Could it be possible to forge a "Pan-American Green New Deal" that centers workers and communities, while deconstructing centuries of American imperialism in the region? Certainly, any move toward continental climate justice will require policymakers, social movement, researchers, and others in the United States to face a Big Question: How should US-based Green New Dealers—and other advocates of ambitious climate justice action—understand, respond to, and engage with climate politics in other parts of the world? One idea is the "Big Push" for sustainability framework that is being studied by the UN's Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC, or CEPAL in Spanish and Portuguese); this investment-first approach to a green transition has been developed by panelist Camila Gramkow. We know that Brazil, green industrial policy has had some important successes, especially in the wind industry, as our panelist Kathryn Hochstetler has shown. But the question of green transition must also consider the question of extraction, a massively contested process—and discourse—across the continent, on which our panelist Thea Riofrancos has written. And of course, it is impossible for Latin America to slash its greenhouse gas emissions without reversing deforestation in a socially equitable way with Indigenous leadership, especially in the Amazon, which is the life's work of Beto Veríssimo, co-founder of the great Amazonian organization Imazon. • Camila Gramkow (UN-ECLAC) • Thea Riofrancos (Providence College, Radcliffe) • Kathryn Hochstetler (LSE) • Beto Veríssimo (Imazon) • Moderator: Michael Weisberg (Penn) • Host: Daniel Aldana Cohen (Penn)