6 - Green Global Governance

Summary

Global governance is a particularly challenging area of global politics in which to assess and develop Green contributions because the nature of global governance reform that Greens would like to see is far less clear than for Green visions regarding related areas such as the economy, the state or security. I argue, nevertheless, that there is a clear need for a Green account of global governance, one which uniquely assesses the project and practice of global governance as a whole from the point of view of its ability to create a sustainable society rather than its ability to preserve order as an end in itself. This chapter firstl outlines Green critiques of prevailing global governance arrangements, focused on their democratic deficits and poor levels of accountability, the concentration of power in global neoliberal institutions such as the World Trade Organization,the World Bank and the IMF and their failure to advance a more sustainable model of development. Second, it proposes a vision for Green global governance in which there is a rebalancing and repurposing of global governance institutions around the need to move towards a sustainable society. Third, it evaluates strategies for achieving Green global governance.