The world needs a decolonial Global Green New Deal

June 10, 2021

DSA IC supports a comprehensive rewriting of the rules of the global economy toward decarbonization, the dismantling of neocolonialism, and the realization of global climate justice. 

Climate crisis is upon us. To confront it, we must struggle to radically restructure the global economy.

In the Global North, efforts to address the unprecedented threat of climate change and biospheric destabilization have largely centered around domestic social democratic programs like the Green New Deal. But while such domestic action is an absolute necessity—especially by the dominant nations who bear responsibility for the crisis—it alone is not enough.

The climate crisis is the product of a global economic system—one founded on the exploitation of the working class by capital, of the Global South by the Global North. Capitalist social production—ceaseless accumulation of capital—at a now global scale threatens the very conditions of our shared planetary life. Attempts to address the crisis without challenging the world system that bore it will only deepen existing inequities and reinforce relations of neocolonial extraction.

Global problems demand global solutions. Whether articulated as a “Global Green New Deal,” a “Green New International Economic Order,” or otherwise, radically transforming the rules and structures of the global economy is both a matter of justice and a practical necessity to confronting the climate crisis. 

As we struggle toward and through a Global Green New Deal framework, some of the key objectives of our fight include:

  • Unprecedented, unconditional, and reparatory North-to-South public finance;
  • Comprehensive Global South sovereign debt cancellation;
  • The radical rewriting of the international rules of trade and investment;
  • The socialization of investment;
  • An end to all rules and loan conditions that dictate austerity, privatization and deregulation or that restrict the ability of Global South nations to utilize capital controls or industrial policy;
  • The complete transformation or abolition and replacement of the multilateral development banks;  
  • The dismantling of U.S. dollar supremacy and global monetary hierarchy itself;
  • The enactment of global standards to counteract the regulatory race to the bottom;
  • The restructuring of the global tax architecture;
  • The rewriting of intellectual property rules to facilitate the sharing of green technology and know-how;
  • The inauguration of democracy in multilateral fora;
  • The assurance of the right and ability of all nations to develop their sovereign food systems;
  • The empowering of workers to organize across borders;
  • The dismantling of the global and U.S.-led military-industrial complex that violently upholds imperial resource extraction and consumes more resources than most nation states;
  • The guarantee of the strongest possible protections for refugees, migrants, displaced persons, asylum-seekers, and stateless persons;
  • Justice for Indigenous groups, peasants, fisherfolk, informal workers, and other communities that are uniquely oppressed by the existing structures of the global economy;
  • And more.

To address the systemic causes of climate change at their roots, to weaken the shackles that bind the Global South, and to help build a global system that works for both people and planet, the DSA IC commits to the struggle for a transformative Global Green New Deal. At the same time, we must be clear: a Global Green New Deal is not the ceiling of our ambition, but the floor of it — one step toward, one facet of, the ultimate goal of dismantling empire and realizing planetary socialism.

As socialists living in the imperial hegemon, whose capitalist government is the primary force behind the propagation of this unjust system, it is our particular duty to resist it. We call on all DSA members to recognize the necessity of struggle at the level of the global economic system and to join us in organizing for a just alternative.