Everything Stays the Same while Everything Changes

Abstract

UNDP, Human Development Report 2020. The Next Frontier: Human Development and the Anthropocene. New York: United Nations Development Programme, 2020. 412 pp. Available for download at: https://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/hdr2020.pdf The last years have seen bombshell reports dropped from international institutions with mounting frequency, including reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2018, 2019, 2021) and the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD, 2019). These reports appeared at the same time as highly visible Euro-Atlantic proposals to deal with the climate crisis, for example, Ocasio-Cortez's ‘Green New Deal’ resolution,1 the 2021 ‘Biden Plan’2 and the European Commission's 2019 ‘Green New Deal’.3 Against a background hum of mounting popular unease with structural inequalities and polarization, such reports share at least two notable traits: first, these documents now acknowledge that ‘business as usual’, in every sense of the phrase, blocks the shifts they demand. The 2018 IPCC report, for example, calls for ‘rapid and unprecedented societal transformation’ (IPCC, 2018: 77). Second, these reports register unease about the degree of social polarization and how it and poverty heighten exposure to climate disasters. Accordingly, these reports sometimes discuss or at least refer to capitalism as having produced income inequality, and even ecological crisis. Furthermore, in response to rising anti-racist (Ransby, 2018) and anti-colonial mobilization (Estes, 2019) within the imperial core, such rhetoric is scattered throughout these reports. Yet, if they at times discuss colonialism and capitalism, the reports never explicitly theorize them (although they do have a theory for them).4 Sometimes implicitly, sometimes explicitly, these documents suggest modern capitalism has gone awry — prices are ‘wrong’, finance is running rampant (see, for example, UNCTAD, 2019: 27) and democratic institutions and social movements need to re-tame capitalism so that it does not fatally undermine its natural-ecological substrate. However, the reports do not take aim at capitalism: the production of commodities through private monopoly control of the means of production towards the ceaseless and globally polarized accumulation of surplus value. They avoid analysing capitalism as based on exploitation, and in doing so, they write warrants for a new, tamed, ecologically sensitive capitalism that enfolds the natural world into its accounting matrices. Thus, by failing to see it and remedy it, the reports make exploitation inevitable. They do the same for South–North resource transfers and the degraded participation of Southern states in the international system (Mundy, 2021) — the varied patterns of oppression and exploitation marked by such flows and full or partial denudation of sovereignty, which have been identified historically and in the present as colonialism, neo-colonialism and imperialism. Such false assumptions are cumulative. Erasures beget erasures: if one can see the past only in its grossest detail, one is unlikely to take account of the demands of those whose pasts shape their particular paths to the social-ecological horizons these reports often outline. This is the background against which we can interpret the Human Development Report 2020. The Next Frontier: Human Development and the Anthropocene (hereafter, HDR 2020 or the Report), which distils, represents and crystallizes such contradictions.5 In what follows, I first provide a framework for interpreting a wide array of calls for change coming from the global North and South.6 I then summarize the Report's key interventions and critically assess them, focusing on the deployment of categories such as Indigenous, colonialism, capitalism and nature-based solutions. I use the framework of accumulation on a world scale and the national question, the bundle of political issues related to self-determination, imperialism, sovereignty and national liberation, to interpret the Report and to compare it with kindred and more radical calls for worldwide green transformation. Calls for change, both local and global, can be grouped into four general ‘types’ of transformation, blurring and blending into one another at the margins (Ajl, 2021a). Each type is partially distinguished from the others on a series of axes, including ambitions for domestic social and technological change; ambitions and responsibilities vis-à-vis international social and technological change; the presence or absence of agriculture/agricultural land bases and resources in any transition; and — touching on one of the preoccupations of the HDR 2020 — which social and political agents, conceived not as abstract structural elements or ideal-typical elements of a class society but as historical and contemporary forces, have agency and legitimacy within the world system. A final central element is how each approach tends to analyse the world social-ecological system, and whether they consider the colonial legacy and neocolonial present, a point I reserve for the following section. Proponents of one such type of proposal, ‘transformation from above’, defend current distributions of property, in some cases evincing disinterest in suppressing carbon dioxide emissions at all. Accordingly, these calls converge on the following point of unity: there is no mention of climate debt/reparations. Furthermore, the Climate Finance Leadership Initiative (CFLI), an online consortium which includes Bloomberg, Goldman Sachs and HSBC, calls for greening the US military and envisions agriculture as a new frontier for financialization (CFLI, 2019). Then there are calls for mobilizing public investment in the North and South to ‘crowd in’ capital currently sitting in the bond sector and push it towards Southern state-guaranteed low-risk loans (see, for example, Gabor, 2020). Spratt and Dunlop (2018) focus extensively on control of population movements, while organizations such as the Energy and Resources Institute (2020) calls for biofuels in lieu of current hydrocarbon deployment in sectors difficult to decarbonize like maritime and aerial transport and steel. Others, such as Dutkiewicz et al. (2020) and Willett et al. (2019), call for extensive intervention in diets and pastoral or small-farmer production. Agriculture is mentioned only as the object of climate-smart interventions and possible land-sparing intensification (Asafu-Adjaye et al., 2015; Rifkin, 2019). Additionally, the CFLI has warned that fossil fuel assets may be forcibly retired and may not receive public compensation (CFLI, 2019: 276), and uses the language of ‘just transition’ for dealing with the consequences for workers in the energy sector. This model does not mention core‒periphery or North‒South polarization. Southern actors have no role outside of the concern that they might nationalize newly installed clean energy infrastructure. A second type of transformation maintains large portions of the first and is notable in having no clear constituency. It is essentially a green Keynesian industrial growth policy, one that seeks to increase social wealth, avoid hard internal redistribution and renew the core industrial base. Proponents of this type of proposal, such as the US Government's ‘Green New Deal’,7 call for massive investments in renewable energy, often but not always targeting a zero-carbon energy system in the US by 2030 through full renewables replacement (Jacobson et al., 2015; see also Trainer, 2018). This type of transformation proposal incorporates the following some to but through the of like or more to clean but as a new frontier of and the US as a of the the and with an sense of whether such technological transfers be in the of industrial the or control and capital the Furthermore, this type of transformation on and inequalities and some to colonialism and even more to an — as we an element of the HDR 2020. it is on and climate and often but not always on Southern the and are A type of transformation is the not to and the of or demands which the social to push them Proponents of this such as US and ‘Green New call for of wealth, always sometimes on a world scale or some of climate also et al., 2019). This type of transformation investments to the use to core and social towards social and like and It calls for a massive renewables sometimes with a of carbon emissions by sometimes targeting while climate as and 2020). It has a highly and with often core political of the such as to call the 2019 in a mention of US for it, and demands for climate and Such calls for global energy use and against any of such as which as or which as to structural but more any of or within the world system and the of redistribution and change in see also 2020). there is an element of technological within these one that on carbon and or 2020). A type of transformation a in world energy a in core energy use and an increase in energy use towards and of and to the of energy (see, for example, 2020). It also calls for worldwide with and for land and carbon dioxide (Ajl, climate of of of states The and the global political to avoid degraded through of sovereignty within the world system and It is against the of this that we the HDR 2020. The Report like another with elements including to world income and for Furthermore, it is to in the ‘types’ of two and converge on they any theory of they are on climate they are on and they no to to is as an object of or of or as with climate-smart or radical interventions in diets to land to They are to in lieu of social transformation, the elements of by or that the global South the of the North 2020). they are on or of the of the past and I the and elements of the HDR and them within the The HDR 2020 with a of the of the world a world of wide and which exposure to and of rising and inequalities in the of assets and the Report a of and and and as a to the means of production is not and of is of to that for the or large the Report that the of the population more carbon emissions the of and those for investment are for the emissions which from the The Report states that current based on of and to of and a the and the the the current system is to and from those the system more and These or a system which crystallizes a of which to the have a of within the system In HDR 2020 capitalism as a system in its current to provide to deal with to control inequality, to and to avoid social these of a sense of of and and The HDR 2020 a of which and it a of actors be can in new to 77). In the Report that if agency and change it be possible to and international responsibilities it that the two are to social The Report for example, that currently prices patterns of production and investment which are to those It calls for to and social but the Report only which those or for their for of the a of and possible those can they may and change or 77). they can and and which the of in at least in in like the are to the In is a means to these whether it within or outside of them this is from of to shifts such against the background of a of which how make vis-à-vis production and to such The Report that one is through even with do not in In and institutions to the and in the system. 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