Equitable, Just Access to Natural Resources: Environmental Narratives during Worsening Climate Crises

Abstract

The emergence of distinct resource management narratives—based on principles, analysis, strategies, tactics and alliances—is a natural signal of a maturing field. The speed of this process has been hastened since the 1990s thanks to concern about climate change. What had existed as a relatively minor area of environmental economics that can be termed ‘ecological modernisation’ suddenly was put into practice—e.g. in water commoditisation and carbon markets—by the time of the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development. Simultaneously a discourse about society-nature relations known as environmental justice emerged as a result of differential race impacts of pollution. By the 2000s, this approach had also given birth to ‘climate justice’ politics. The divergences associated with these arguments are evident in global climate governance, where the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement and G7 deal a few months prior reveal very different standpoints. Now the Trump regime’s withdrawal from international obligations amplifies why a new approach that reconciles the ecological modernisation, sustainable development and climate justice perspectives is vital. One useful case is the gradual adoption of ‘natural capital accounting’ techniques, which in Africa should justify an anti-extractivist politics. The bottom line, though, is that the current neoliberal regime which relies upon market signals is not appropriate for natural resource management, especially in addressing the most vital problem: climate change.