Green Politics and International Development

Gas by Peter Newell

In 2015 the UN Sustainable Development Goals were agreed, addressing a range of global development issues and sustainability challenges. Covering everything from access to water and energy to health, education and security, they chart a course for the international community over the coming decades in its elusive quest for development for all. But whose vision of development do they represent and what are the chances that it will do more to address inequality and unsustainability than previous efforts?

Our latest 'Gas’ (by Peter Newell, Professor of International Relations at the Uninversity of Sussex) argues that we urgently need to bring Green politics to bear to chart a different model of development that provides real prosperity and well-being for all the planet’s inhabitants while placing sustainability centrally. This would be a radically different approach to development that addresses the root causes of under-development in growth mania, unregulated global business, militarism and worsening inequalities. To achieve this requires a progressive development politics that forges alliances with sympathetic governments and institutions and social movements and NGOs seeking to realise a vision of development as if both people and planet mattered.