Green Economics from a Youth Perspective

A recent weekend training workshop entitled, ‘Green Economics for European Green Party Activists’ was held in Berlin on the 12th-14th December 2008, in the German Green Party Head-Quarters. It was an organised event by both The Green Economics Institute, Oxford (GEI) and the Federation of Young European Greens (FYEG), with full financial sponsorship by The Green European Foundation and The European Parliament.

Twenty-six students in total were selected; nineteen were from European countries, with seven from non-European countries. These students were selected to represent the following countries, Ireland, Scotland, Spain, Belgium, Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, Finland, Austria, Malta, Cyprus, Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Moldova & Russia. Turkey, Belgium, Germany and Spain were the only countries who had more than one representative.

Representatives were selected from a wide variety of Green Activist backgrounds, not necessarily coming from a formal Green Party one. The emphasis for qualifying was placed on each student demonstrating an active enthusiastic engagement with public awareness-raising on green issues, whilst also illustrating a sincere desire to learn more about the nature of economics and being committed to sharing such knowledge with others.

As the inspirational E.F.Schumacher once said; “Can we rely on it that a ‘turning around’ will be accomplished by enough people quickly enough to save the modern world? This question is often asked, but whatever answer is given to it will mislead. The answer “yes” would lead to complacency– the answer “no” to despair. It is desirable to leave these perplexities behind us and get down to work.”

The overall student demographic for economic training was a diverse one, three of the students were from the European Network of Green Seniors, (ENGS), with the remainder of the students being from the Young Green category. Such diversity of ages added a greater dimension to the weekend in terms of experience earned and shared. Tony Cooreman, Head of ENGS, pointed out how important it is that we embrace the valuable resource of experience, which many of our senior citizens have. He says many of the ENGS members have worked in a wide variety of jobs throughout their lives and as a result have gained immeasurable experience in many key areas, which can contribute to the  green movement. Another point which Tony is keen to make is the abundance of time which senior citizens can have in their retirement to help assist in the greening of our societies to being more sustainable.

“Individually we are but one drop, collectively we are an ocean” – Ryunosuke Satoro

This sense of inclusion is a valuable asset when addressing issues such as economic poverty, accelerating specie extinction, diminishing ecological resources, global warming and the realities of untold global pollution. The nature of Green Economics is to embrace all of these key areas as an essential part of a rational economic system, to organise society in aHolistic and Sustainable way. A economical system which serves to create a realistic marketable society, based on ecological balance and sustainable resources for all symbiotic life-facilitating existence, which we humans are only a mere part of.

A system that encompasses the true nature of how life can co-exist and how we are all are co-dependant on our ecological balance to live. An economic system, which translates such ecological realities, through the language of economic exchange. A system that values all aspects of ecological involvement as an inherent part of the bigger picture. A system which is an alternative to short sighted approximations of superficial realities. A Green Economic System that is a crucial step in greening our societies and to greening one of the most universally understood languages in our modern World – that of economics.

This international awareness of economic power is a strong motivational force in the consideration of people’s justified actions. Throughout history, people’s motivation for financial security has encouraged some appalling behavior, such as mindless pillaging of natural resources in a desperate attempt to make more short term profits at the expense of our entire ecological system. The sad reality is that contemporary economics has also failed to acknowledge the true worth of our natural resources and so our current economic exchanges are entirely unrealistic.

As we learned over the weekend, the Greek work ‘Oikia’ means house/home, which in English means ‘eco’, where the term ‘economics’ means ‘household management’. Green Economic growth aims to reintegrate this core meaning back into financial systems, where there is an equal emphasis on the value of ecological preservation, resource replenishment, social nutrition, female social care, childhood nurture, clean water, clean air, stable environment and successful sustainable trade with ecologically harmonious footprints. Progress and development are measured by real-life indicators in Green Economic. Profit, prices, markets and competition are regarded as incidental, rather than drivers of the economic system. Green Economics treats people (not labour power), the planet, nature, non-human species, and the bio-sphere as beneficiaries, not just resources or economic factors of production. The aim is to ensure that they are all as well-off following an economic transaction as they were before. If we look at our systems today, we can see clear evidence that the current economic model is simply not working in respect of ecological preservation and continuity of all social living. It is so essential that our economic and financial systems truly grasp these realities. To put our lives in context, we are biological entities living simultaneously with other biological entities for biological survival and fullest enjoyment of life, for ourselves and for future generations of the human race. As Green Economics suggests, we need to operate our business in harmony with nature, creating sustainable success in unison with conscientious steps forward.

Sustainable success is inherently dependent on the entire eco-system of our planet earth as it is spinning around our solar planetary system. Our survival is first and foremost dependent on the air that we breadth, the climate we inhabit, the growth of the food we eat, the clean water we drink and the regenerative rhythm of these cycles. To look at the collective again in a creative way, we can see that we are symbiotically surviving with other ecological beings on a thin vegetative layer in context to the volume of the planet earth itself. We co-exist as part of the earth’s ecological skin. To understand this, is to understand the fundamental origin of life, and what our biological lives encompass.

On these issues, Greens can score very high in terms of ecological understanding and the nature of our environments survival. However it is a long held belief that Green Activists can score very low on the economics front and this in part was the motivation for both GEI and FYEG to work together to create a more economically educated and accomplished Green Elective running for office. An elective who can put themselves forward offering realistic and sustainable societies as the alternative options of current system breakdown.

In this way economics can be an extraordinarily efficient tool for successfully recreating a more effective systemic change for the improvement of our destructive societies, to more sustainable holistic ones. A system that is sophisticated, colourful, exciting and fundamentally ecologically harmonious***

Economics if re-organised in a holistic way and sustainable way, can be a valuable asset to all of society, improving standards of living substantially. If done in an efficient and well-organized way, the greening of our societies and planet can serve to be a highly rewarding venture of all of humankind. Green Economics offers an improved system in every regard. In order to a achieve this sense of holistic nurture of the social and global we desperately need more female decisions makers sharing the load of their male counter-parts. A balanced conscientious step forward is needed and balanced leadership is key to this. An unbalanced male led society can no longer be justified. By effectively retro-fitting and improving our contemporary societies we are working for the green agenda in a more positive way.

Over the course of the two and a half day training workshop, we learned some of the discursive aspects of mainstream economic thinking and briefly skimmed on the various theorists’ schools of thought, which have helped shaped economic evolution. Simultaneously to this we were brought through the consequential realities of such a inherently flawed and short sighted system of an immature and unquenchable take, take, take mentality, with no realistic system replenishment understanding. Such naive economics have managed to achieve disastrous global pollution and mass exploitation of our life giving resources.

With dramatic ecological and specie extinction along with the magnitude of what climate change could bring for us, we now need a much more mature and responsible human race to move forward, empowered by the essential understanding of the nature of life, and our need for a rich and varied bio-diversity. We can no longer afford to sport a gluttonous contempt towards our little finite planet as to do so would be to accelerate our evident vulnerability as living, prospering life forms. With diminishing resources and accelerating ecological damage, we need to look towards many new alternatives and acknowledge the urgency for such radical changes to be made. It has been once said that only when we can we heal ourselves, can we begin to heal the world. So I say lets do both simultaneously, for both modes of healing can serve for the betterment of all, especially when considering the time limitations that we
have. We must acknowledge this balance of time, which features in suchshifts of human consciousness and enlightenment, it can start slow but can pick up pace quite quickly – much like the ecological desolation that we currently find ourselves in, so lets get to work and inspire a more enlightened focus for the future. In the training of Green Economics we were given no easy solution for implementing governmental economic changes. This is still a work in progress and will be specific in some respects to the nature and culture of each country. One thing that was strongly emphasized over the weekend by the GEI training team, was how extremely URGENT it is that we as Green Activators act now and in the most efficient and effective way possible. We must be very focused, as Innovative Green Active Social pioneers are urgently needed to be the driving force LEADING this crucial movement, and creating the sustaining, inspirational power necessary for this evolution.

Green Economics is an attempt to work within the current infrastructure of society, while radically overhauling it to one more conducive to continued ecological and economic growth and renewal. The time has come for a strong and empowered Green Revolution to inspire strength and empowerment for all people to acknowledge their own powerful part to play.

We must remember we are all like brothers and sisters disagreeing at times, friends at others but all the while we are all the same ecological beings living on planet earth. Even the most corporate-capitalist fat-cat polluters are so ecologically dependant on the very infrastructure, which they are destroying. For there to be real change we must work with these people, as with all people, because we are these people. Everyone has the same ability for a developed reawakening and an evolutionary enlightenment for greater good for all. Simultaneous to a top-down approach, we also need to inspire a bottom-up approach in accelerating our social, ecological system changes. For the challenges that we all face, it is so essential that we as the enthusiastic Green Campaigners raise as much public awareness and momentum on these crucial aspects as much as possible. It is our duty to do so, as much of society simply does  not know the full story and as a result, are totally unaware of their own part to play in all of this. By teaching people the full story we can then inspire and empower a whole Family/Community/Nation/Globe of people to be much more mindful of the systems that they actively support. To inspire change through the sharing of power, education and solution finding at a grassroot level, is an essential component of the bigger picture. It is only then that we can truly see a new Global Change in our active lifestyle systems.

A simple way for explaining active Green Economics is as follows: If you have a company who tries to save about €5 million by dumping byproduct waste into a nearby natural ecological site such as an ocean habitat or the atmosphere, Green Economics will illustrate the correct pricing of such pollution. The resulting damage could now represent a €5555 Billion deficit for the ocean. It’s as if the natural resources will now have their very own balance sheet, which will become an automatically incorporated into international economics as no company or indeed citizen can afford to go Environmentally Bankrupt. As a result the logical response for society as a collective will be to ensure that all  such companies etc operate in the most efficient way possible in terms of energy, resources and with an accurate considerations for all the overheads used in conducting business.

As a pragmatic approach to moving forward into an uncertain economic crisis of our World, it is imperative that we look into the possibilities of employing a 70% Local – 30% Global objective for sourcing goods, until we fully develop a beautiful form of ecologically harmonious transportation system to minimize on additional pollution. The trick here  is so start setting up economic robust, exciting, colourful and joyous community gardens, which serve to include the community in a co-op structure, guaranteeing food security amidst a World of fluctuating oil prices and pollution for the large-scale transportation of food. This is just one baby step in the right direction, which could serve to green cities, communities and serve as alternative creative and rewarding job aspect in wake of a major Global recession. With these current crisis we need new Holistic, Creative Thinking backed in strong grounding realistic Success in the most innovative of ways, pooling together all of our Creative Intellectual Resources Creative Ingenuity*****

***Creative & Inspirational Thinking is Key to All Future Successes****

In terms of GEI training, a broad overview is presented to help create a more enriching insight into the economic and ecological challenges we all face, after such a training it is up to us individually and collectively to act in a more conscientious way for the greater good of all.

The Art of the Challenge we all face is figuring how BEST TO ACHIEVE THE BEST SOLUTIONS************
Letting our Creative and Ecologically Conscious Imaginations soar we can learn to liberate ourselves to inspire, empower and enrich people with the possibility of another world….we just have to get up and work and be part of its Creative Blossoming. Let 2009 be a very exciting and rewardingly successful year for all Greens Internationally.
When We Know Better We Do Better………….. ;0)

Balance Power, Balance Ecology, Balance Gender, Balance Life Balance All For the Greater Good of All*********

References:

- ‘International Journal of Green Economics’, Vol 1, Nos. 1/2, 2006. Edited By: Miriam Kennet Published By: Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.
- ‘Thinking Green Economy’, Green European Summer University, Germany and Poland, 28-31 August 2008. GEI
Participatory Training Handbook.
- ‘Green Economics for European Green Party Activists’, Presented & Supported By: GEI and Progressive
Economics. In connection with Green European Foundation and FYEG. Berlin December 12-14 2008.

Essay By: Niamh Beirne, Irish Green Party
Dublin Central Communications Officer 2008-2009
xXx ;0)