The Journal of Peasant Studies
ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: www.tandfonline.com/journals/fjps20
The geopolitics of green colonialism, global justice
and ecosocial transitions
by M. Lang, M. Manahan and B. Bringel, London, Pluto Press, 2024, 255 pp.,
£24.99 (Paperback), ISBN 9780745349343
M. Florencia Fossa Riglos
To cite this article: M. Florencia Fossa Riglos (2024) The geopolitics of green colonialism,
global justice and ecosocial transitions, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 51:7, 1693-1695, DOI:
10.1080/03066150.2024.2392691
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Published online: 04 Sep 2024.
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THE JOURNAL OF PEASANT STUDIES 1693
ecological thinking. This insightful work appeals to scholars and students of critical agrarian
studies, rural sociology, and geographies of uneven development within and beyond Africa.
Researchers of rural, agrarian, and peasant-led movements will find the discussions on quoti-
dian and overt forms of resistance particularly insightful. Overall, the book offers a compelling
demonstration of the power of well-triangulated ethnographic evidence in the study of poli-
tics at the margins.
Dhouha Djerbi
Department of International Relations/Political Science, Geneva Graduate Institute, Geneva,
Switzerland
[email protected]
© 2024 Dhouha Djerbi
https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2024.2353083
The geopolitics of green colonialism, global justice and ecosocial transitions, by
M. Lang, M. Manahan and B. Bringel, London, Pluto Press, 2024, 255 pp., £24.99
(Paperback), ISBN 9780745349343
The Geopolitics of Green Colonialism brings together a group of renowned scholars from
diverse academic disciplines who address the global policies associated with the environ-
mental crisis and green economy transition models from the perspective that, rather than pre-
serving ecosystems, these policies consolidate a new geopolitical order based on ‘extractivism’
of key resources for the benefit of the global North at the expense of the South. The overarch-
ing concept underpinning the analysis presented in this book is ‘green colonialism’ which is
not unequivocally defined. However, it is summarised in an introductory chapter in terms of
four constitutive dimensions: (1) the assumption of unlimited raw materials, (2) the imposition
of certain conservationist formats on the territories of the Global South, (3) the use of the
Global South territories as a dumping ground for toxins and e-waste, and 4) the perpetuation
of unequal global trade through green markets and technologies causing further impoverish-
ment of the Global South.
The analysis of this new order throughout the book is anchored in the concept of the ‘dec-
arbonisation consensus’, a term that draws upon M. Svampa (Chapter 2) previous research on
the ‘commodity consensus’ in South America, extrapolated to the field of climate change and
environmental crisis. From this perspective, the consensus is founded upon the implemen-
tation of international policies that prioritise the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and
appeal to the rhetoric of ecological sustainability while preserving the logic of neoliberal
reason, leading to a new phase of environmental degradation and dispossession in the
global South through ‘accumulation by defossilisation’. The latter relies particularly on scien-
tific and technical expert language, which excludes grassroots actors from the debate. Finally,
two cross-cutting conclusions guide the reflections of all authors: on the one hand, global
justice is a necessary condition for a real ecological-social transformation, and on the other
hand, economic degrowth in the Global North is imperative.
The first part of the book presents a geopolitical mapping through five chapters, reviewing
various multilateral treaties and international and national policies on energy transition based
1694 BOOK REVIEWS
on diverse resources (hydrogen, lithium, copper, and solar energy) and their consequences in
some of the territories where they are located: the South of South America (Chapters 1 and 2)
and North Africa (Chapter 3). It also highlights key actors and aspects for eco-social transitions:
the role of regulatory policies by the state (Chapter 1); the relevance of addressing distributive
inequality, decommodification, and strengthening civil society, given that concentration of
energy resources occurs both at the private actors and the public sector (Chapter 2); the sover-
eignty over the ownership of natural resources (Chapter 3); as well as the specific role of scien-
tific knowledge and multilateral organisms in the ideological construction of the technocratic
rationale of global decarbonisation policies that legitimise the new ‘green grabbing’ without
questioning the capitalist mode of production (Chapter 4 and Chapter 5).
In light of all these complexities related to the particularities of contemporary globalised
capitalism, the extrapolation of the category ‘colonial’ to the present seems somewhat mis-
leading and obscures the entanglements addressed in the second part of the book, especially
regarding the role of transnational corporations and multilateral organisations. Moreover, the
use of the global North/South categorisation, without critical examination, overlooks the per-
sistence of inequalities within both hemispheres and between nation-states and transnational
corporations. Similarly, the concept of a ‘decarbonization consensus’ undervalues the signifi-
cance of diplomatic negotiations, as well as scientific discussions and disagreements between
scientists and political representatives within organisations such as the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The second part of the book is divided into six chapters that provide a detailed analysis of
the global interdependencies that emerge during green transitions. The Latin American theory
of unequal exchange from the 1950s is revisited to demonstrate the continuity of impoverish-
ment and dependence on economically and environmentally unequal exchange between the
economies of the North and the Global South (Chapter 6). While these theories remain highly
relevant to understanding the structuring of geopolitical inequalities, the arguments demon-
strate that the ‘Global South’ is anything but a homogeneous periphery. The situation reaches
a crescendo when the question of whether China should be included in the global South is
posed with uncertainty, evidencing the necessity to rethink the accuracy of these categories
in the contemporary multipolar geopolitical landscape. The role of debt as a mechanism of
neoliberal subjection is also analysed, and it is shown how this is now perpetuated in the
form of national GHG inventories for socio-ecological transition (Chapter 7). Furthermore, it
presents a multidimensional and multiscalar view (Chapters 8, 9, and 10) that includes the ter-
ritorial and social dimension, the rights of nature and populations, the implications of environ-
mental damage on domestic reproduction and gender inequalities, the role of the state, local
and indigenous knowledge, as well as the impact of transnational corporations on global
governance through multistakeholderism in multilateral governance bodies (Chapter 11).
The final section addresses a comprehensive and thought-provoking array of alternative
pathways towards eco-social transitions, which are explored in seven chapters: (a) degrowth
(Chapters 14 and 15), (b) just and popular energy transitions (Chapter 12), (c) ecofeminists per-
spectives (Chapter 13), (d) just ecosocial transitions (Chapters 16 and 17) and (e) eco territorial
internationalism (Chapter 18). While the degrowth horizon is proposed as an imperative
alternative for the global North to stop hyper-consuming at the expense of the South, the
other horizons emerge from diverse experiences ‘from below’ in South America, North
Africa, and South Asia. However, all of them advocate for a departure from market logic, a
rethinking of the concept of commodities and labour to include the reproduction of human
and non-human life, the historical reparation of the ecological debt, the resolution of inequal-
ities within global capitalism, and the democratisation of decision-making and sovereignty.
Despite the book’s frequent assertion that it avoids indigenist romanticism, certain
THE JOURNAL OF PEASANT STUDIES 1695
unaddressed topics open up future avenues of inquiry and analysis. These include non-indi-
genous alternatives such as agroecology movements, alternative paths considered by grass-
roots organisations in the North as well as North/South experiences of knowledge co-
production for the construction of sustainable pathways.
M. Florencia Fossa Riglos
Escuela Interdisciplinaria de Altos Estudios Sociales, Universidad Nacional de San Martín, Buenos
Aires, Argentina
[email protected] http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2167-9601
© 2024 M. Florencia Fossa Riglos
https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2024.2392691
