Abstract

Keywords

۱٫ Introduction

۲٫ Ecological modernization as genuine green growth

۳٫ Exploring claims of green growth

۳٫۱٫ The role of carbon accounting

۳٫۲٫ Implications of the 1.5 °C target: Sensitivity to budget specification

۴٫ Discussion – What does it take to be genuine?

۵٫ Conclusion

Declaration of Competing Interest

References

Abstract

Ecological modernisation in the form of support to the notion of green growth remains the dominant discourse in environmental policy globally. Still, questions of limits to economic expansion and growth on a planet with finite natural resources have been at the core of environmental discourses at least since the 1970’s. A recent effort by Stoknes and Rockström (2018) seeks to unite notions of ecological limits with the concept of green growth by proposing genuine green growth as denoting a situation when growth respects planetary boundaries. Focusing on recent trajectories in emissions intensity, they highlight Nordic countries including Denmark as examples of such genuine green growth. In this article, we demonstrate that the specific conceptualization of genuine green growth and resulting claims about the Nordic countries rest on particular assumptions, specifically concerning national-level carbon accounting frameworks and the size of the remaining global carbon budget. By opening up these assumptions for analysis we illustrate the partiality and potentially misleading nature of the conceptualization of GGG.

۱٫ Introduction

Recent years have seen a resurgence of the canonical debate on the role of ecological limits accentuated by the unfolding global climate and environmental crises. Even more recently, debates on the need for post-COVID recovery packages to strike a balance between ecology and economy have surfaced (Hepburn et al., 2020). Some see green growth as ‘the sustainable way out of the corona crisis’ (State of Green, 2020). Yet, while intuitively appealing, the notion of green growth is notoriously vague and elusive1 (Stoknes and Rockström, 2018).

If green growth is indeed supposed to be a ‘way out’, what does such a way entail? How can green growth be specified, operationalized and translated into policy goals? These questions matter not least because the rhetoric of green growth appears to exist unproblematically alongside ever more dire scientific evidence and warnings about the multi-faceted global ecological crisis (IPBES, 2019; IPCC, 2018). As such, it is perhaps not surprising that activists and scholars call for approaches that clearly put ecological concerns and welfare before growth to guide post-COVID trajectories (Taherzadeh, 2021, Barlow et al., 2020).