Green new deal

Green New Deal

In response to the overlapping economic, climate change and energy crises, the World Development Movement is calling for a Green New Deal for the world’s poor. A Green New Deal means investment in low-carbon projects, renewable energy and green jobs. It also aims to bring about greater economic equality by restructuring the financial system to support a green transition.

This approach links radical reform of the global financial system with a massive green investment programme to enable poor countries to pursue low-carbon, socially equitable development pathways. It is about redirecting credit away from the speculative casino economy and towards the real productive economy, particularly public infrastructure in the developing world. It involves a package of measures to channel both public and private financial flows into poor countries to develop green energy, transport and construction sectors, and to build a ‘carbon army’ of new jobs in the green economy that could lift millions out of poverty.

The Green New Deal is about a massive environmental transformation of the economy to tackle the triple crunch of the financial crisis, climate change and insecure energy supplies. Specifically, it is about:

• More and secure jobs as well as the skills and training to create and sustain them. In a time of recession, shifting to green energy will produce countless new jobs, and create many more pound-for-pound of investment, than propping up the current system.
• Investment in a low-carbon economy that will yield financial, environmental and social benefits. Investment can come from public and private sources, as well as our savings. We can spend ‘better’ by reforming taxes, so that we tax more what we want less of (like pollution and reckless speculation) and less what we want more of (like green goods and services and fairer, greener food production and trading systems). And shutting tax havens could raise billions more for public investment in both rich and poor countries.
• A better banking system is another essential element to a green new deal. Everyone agrees that new rules are needed to prevent a repeat of the banks’ catastrophic errors, but there’s also a new opportunity for change. With the taxpayer now owning several banks we can make sure that they invest and lend at low, affordable interest rates to support the economy’s environmental transformation.
• Greater security for our pensions and savings. Many people’s pensions have taken a battering, but there’s a chance to create new, low risk steady return vehicles for saving. New bonds and pensions targeted at green energy and transport infrastructure could help bring mutual long-term benefits to both savers and the world as a whole.
• Global leadership. The Green New Deal is about setting the economy, nationally and globally, on a path to live within its environmental means. It is also about fair play in a warming world and calls for new financial mechanisms to help poor countries adapt to climate change as well as breaking the carbon chains of fossil fuel dependence. Unless rich nations like the UK show that they can implement change at home, poorer countries are unlikely to make the shift.