Global Development Institute podcast
In Conversation: Joan Martínez-Alier on Environmentalism
In this episode, GDI's Armando Caroca and Rose Pritchard speak with Joan Martínez-Alier, an economist and emeritus professor of economics and senior researcher at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
Throughout his career, Joan has made important contributions to ecological economics and political ecology in his work on environmentalism of the poor. In this episode, we discuss Joan's new book: 'Land, Water, Air, and Freedom: The Making of a World Movement for Environmental Justice' which can be found here.
Armando Caroca is a GDI PhD researcher working on topics of mining waste and territories of extraction in Chile.
Rose Pritchard is a Presidential Fellow in Socio-Environmental Systems at GDI.
Find out more about the Global Development Institute:
Intro music Anna Banana by Eaters
In this episode, GDI's Armando Caroca and Rose Pritchard speak with Joan Martínez-Alier, an economist and emeritus professor of economics and senior researcher at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
Throughout his career, Joan has made important contributions to ecological economics and political ecology in his work on environmentalism of the poor. In this episode, we discuss Joan's new book: 'Land, Water, Air, and Freedom: The Making of a World Movement for Environmental Justice' which can be found here.
Armando Caroca is a GDI PhD researcher working on topics of mining waste and territories of extraction in Chile.
Rose Pritchard is a Presidential Fellow in Socio-Environmental Systems at GDI.
Find out more about the Global Development Institute:
Intro music Anna Banana by Eaters
Armando Caroca [00:00:21] This podcast is part of a series that brings new discussions to the table on topics such as, of course, development, poverty reduction, displacement, urban reforms, working conditions, and many others. You can find this podcast and all chapters the under Global Development Institute podcast on Spotify. So I am Armando Caroca. I am a Chilean researcher working at GDI at the moment, and I work on topics of mining waste and territories of extraction in Chile. I will now pass the mic to Rose Pritchard.
Rose Pritchard [00:01:12] Hi, I'm Rose Pritchard. I'm an environmental social scientist also based here in the Global Development Institute. And I'm also the lead for the resources, Environment and Development research group, which has a lot of people who work around things like environmental justice and who work with things like the EJ Atlas that we'll be talking about today.
Armando Caroca [00:01:32] Okay. Today we are happy to have you with us, Professor Joan Martínez-Alier. Joan Martínez-Alier is an economist and emeritus professor of economics and economic history and senior researcher at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. He has been a research fellow at St. Antony's College, Oxford, and co-founder and president of the International Society for Ecological Economics. Joan has published numerous books and articles, including "Ecological Economics,""Energy, Environment and Society," "Varieties of Environmentalism: Essays North and South," and "The Environmentalism of the Poor: A Study of Ecological Conflicts and Valuation," which was the book where I knew him in the first place. He has received several prizes for all his work, including the Balzan Prize in 2020 and the Holberg Prize recently in 2023. He now co-directs the Atlas of Environmental Justice and is now launching his new book here at the University of Manchester called "Land, Water, Air, and Freedom: The Making of a World Movement for Environmental Justice." environmental justice, and many other questions. We will be discussing some of the topics of this book, the whole experience of environmental justice, and many other questions. We will see how many things we can tackle in this short but very interesting podcast. Hey, Joan, how are you? Thank you for being with us.
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:03:23] Thank you.
Armando Caroca [00:03:48] I wanted to ask you about the Environmental Justice Atlas in the first place, because it's really an amazing effort. You started with a group of people in 2011, and now you have almost 4,000 cases of conflict around environmental justice issues around the globe. Could you please tell us about these?
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:03:52] Well, in fact, today, because this number moves up a little bit every day, we have almost 4,095 cases of what I call ecological distribution conflicts, which means normal people, what causes environmental conflicts. But then when economists talk about distribution, it comes in and so on. And it belongs to everybody—to social historians, anthropologists, human geographers, political ecologists. These are the people who would use it most, including historians, because it has become a part of very contemporary history. But many of the cases were included already 12 years ago when we started.So we started, as you said, as a group of people. It’s quite impossible for one person to do this. It takes like half a week or one week to research one of the entries in the atlas, and it's not done by one person alone. We might have, for instance, a master's student, but more likely it will be an activist somewhere. For instance, in Chile, I remember cases in Chile, people sending news about some conflicts in Antofagasta and saying, "Can you put this case in the atlas because we want it to be more visible?" This happens more in Latin America than in China, for instance, this kind of activist help. But this is an activist and academic tool or dissent and political ecology. It’s also used quite often in our teaching at the undergraduate level, but mostly, of course, at the master’s and Ph.D. levels. And it's also for advocacy, meaning helping the activists do something, which is the part that we think is most relevant in a way. Because the atlas wants to help the World Movement for Environmental Justice, which I think exists, but it's not so powerful. So many people would deny that it exists. So that's something we could debate, perhaps.
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:06:25] Is there world movement for environmental justice?
Armando Caroca [00:06:31] Which is the main question of your book I think, or one of the main objectives of why you have written this book. So how do you evaluate this environmental justice? Compared with the original plans, how is everything going?
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:06:50] This idea came from somebody called (inaudible) from Canada who was a student in Barcelona in environmental and ecological economic planning. And she thought since I had done this book before on the environmentalism of the poor with 150 kind of vignettes as somebody called them. Not case studies but they are well done summaries of some conflicts. And the others we can quantify some valuable lessons. So leaving aside whether they are vignettes or not, we started with 115 now we have 4000, so it proves in a way that there are many of these conflicts which are all about environmental issues. So what we did (inaudible) people who now appear as authors of articles or theses first and now books and articles based on the other, was to do the form, the database form. A bit inspired by (inaudible) who had done something similar, but only for the Mediterranean countries and based only on newspapers and she didn't go very far. But she is, of course, a specialist in social movement theory, and we are very good friends, and she supported the others very much. And the inspiration also comes from the US, from the environmental justice movement in the US in the 1980s with Robert Mueller and Paul Mihai. David Pedro, for instance, was a bit younger. So that work, environmental justice, to me comes from the States, from the black movement. It's not a colonialist word it's an anti-colonialist, an anti-racist word. And they use this word environmental racism, isn't it? So this is another source of inspiration for both work around the world in political ecology and the environmental justice movement in the US. But they were doing case studies, a little bit of statistics, but not too much, and not quite willing to say what it meant to these at world level. Because they had been in India and Latin America.
Armando Caroca [00:09:22] The idea now is to have a more systematic kind of database? And you're telling me that also...
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:09:33] ...So their temp was like six months in Berkeley. That this was impossible. And I think you are right, that part is impossible. But we have learnt.
Armando Caroca [00:09:44] I mean, it's a lot. But for example, in Chile, I know that there are even more cases. For example, the case I'm researching in Chile still not there on the on the air too. So I think we have to send an entry for that. And similarly for mining cases.
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:10:08] Mining.
Armando Caroca [00:10:08] Mining waste/
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:10:10] Copper mining I knew it. So these are an issue that worries me and all of us that we are listed as dates and knowledge incomplete. And in some places like Central Asia or parts of Africa, we have no good contacts. I was in China for one month myself. So we have some context. But sometimes it's difficult even because, well, somebody in China tell me these are very sensitive issues in English because it's difficult to make... But we're going to do it. We do it.
Armando Caroca [00:10:46] Do you have cases where these cases are closed, like, okay, this is over.
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:10:53] So to some extent, to me, to tranquillise is to think it is as an archive because I was something of a social historian at the beginning of my academic career, doing things, for instance, in Peru about peasant movement. And so being an archive, an archive on the web, not the paper. When the cases are closed, either because of success, which quite often is provisional, because if it is copper or gold there some other company will come probably. Or sometimes because they are defeated, quite often the movement are defeated, and therefore it is not a success. Therefore the case is closed. But in a way, for research this means that you can do like historians, I say, but it is also good when the cases are still alive. But then from the technical point of view, we are uncertain, concerned because we have no women and manpower to actualise the cases, to update the case, because it's quite impossible for a thousand cases or even a few thousand. So what we put in that database from is start date, in which the case was, finished in the sense of return for the last thing. If there is some novelty as this happens somehow, then somebody perhaps updates it, can update the case and put some more in. What I would emphasise about the others is the amount of work. Actually, it's a very large amount of work. But what we can do is a kind of comparative, even in statistical political ecology.
Armando Caroca [00:12:50] You're going to show some of those data later on. I think at your book launch.
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:12:54] Yeah.
Rose Pritchard [00:12:55] Yeah. So that that brings us into a slightly different topic that we were hoping to ask you about today. So of course, you're with us at the University of Manchester today to talk a bit about your new book, so Land, Water, Air and Freedom: The Making of World Movements for Environmental Justice. Can you tell us a bit about the book and kind of how you came to the idea of writing?
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:13:18] Well, the book came because we were having so many conflicts in the atlas, and then at one point we had to change the platform also about three years ago. And so we were concerned about it. And some people told us, you are working a lot, but you are not producing many things. And also another factor is that people were writing to say, can we use the data and the others to do our drawing features in data, from the states quite often. Master's thesis or yeah, doctoral thesis by people who perhaps wouldn't, we thought very up to it intellectually, because they were very young people, sometimes, or because we wanted to do it ourselves. So about 3 or 4 years ago we were really starting to publish articles in science and nature places and also global environmental change in the kind of our general business studies where you also partially publish your on your own writings, human geography and political ecology and ecological economics...
Armando Caroca [00:14:26] So it's been seen in many places...
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:14:29] And now we have almost like 99 articles, collective or individual, sometimes based on the others. So the book came out of these after so many articles. I thought I should write the book because I am getting old also. And we wanted to do a book, I say in quotation. It was a kind of of trilogy. Which the first book is the ecological economics In the 80s, mid-eighties, with the title Ecological Economics, which was the first book with this title, but of course, based on Justice Corrigan. And we had Mandeli or Kenneth Boulding, other people who could be my, I wrote that and myself, who founded ecological economics. And what I did was to look at discussions about the economy from the energy point of view, the energy in the 19th century and early 20th century, and the debates at the time. This is my book, and the book Ecological Economics, which the subtitle is energy, Society and Environment, and that we have a few pages about who could use this kind of research for politics to put it very briefly. So these, the peasant movements or who is going to use these, which is a critique of neoclassical economics, and to some extent a critique or a compliment, perhaps to Marxist economics, because Marxists really didn't do energy accounting. Or the Marxists did not count the social metabolism. They talked a little bit about these, but these are the accounts that we are doing now. So this was the first book. The second book was The Environmentalist. The book. Yeah. Like saying who is going to use this critique of economics? The people who complain about what the economy is doing to them and who are not going to talk about the externalities or use an economic vocabulary. But they are trying to have social movements, complaining and using different valuation languages, different languages. So they say that the lake or the river or a mountain at that point in Peru or in the Andes is sacred on the mountains with snow in the Andes. And when people (inaudible) something sacred, you go down and do some sacrifices, work so that the water will come down for irrigation and so on. And the fact that they have snow, which they are losing, the snow now, symbolises this kind of holiness. This happens all around the world. There are sacred groves in India, Gil has books about these. Sacredness is something that you cannot translate into money, and also livelihood, and also ecological values. Some people try to convert everything into money. The companies. And the government sometimes. And the economies by training.
Armando Caroca [00:17:54] That will be one of the main problems.
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:17:56] But it is a mistake. Well, some people use these philosophical works, words, would say these are an ontological mistake. People like my friend Arturo Escobar.
Armando Caroca [00:18:09] You don't like to use those more academic words?
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:18:14] I was saying analytic philosophy. When he was in (inaudible) for four or five years, and they don't like this continental philosophical term. Joking. I quite understand, for instance, at the risk of, criticise me and say, you talk about distribution conflicts, but you talk a lot about the economy, but it's not like this, people have different ontologies, which is quite true. And therefore they can use valuation languages. Their own values cannot be reduced. Their social values cannot be reduced to money, to companies. They can but they shouldn't.
Armando Caroca [00:18:56] Indeed, it doesn't sound that different to what you are saying. Actually, yes.
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:19:00] No, I think that I was already saying this, but Mario Blazer. But I said, you know him? He said that I was too much of an economist. But I think valuation languages is what I found at the end of the book. I think of what it means to the poor, just experiences on an initial level. Yeah, in Chile, but also happen... I think you count the damage in money terms. And then you can discuss a lot of money or little money. If someone is killed, a human life, what is it a human life? Is it more expensive in Manchester than in Bolivia? You can discuss inside one standard evaluation, but you can discuss across various and say a human life has no price.
Armando Caroca [00:19:48] So there's a moral component to it.
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:19:50] Apart from the social insurance. Yeah.
Armando Caroca [00:19:52] Would you say has like a moral or ethics to it in this kind of...
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:19:56] (inaudible)
Armando Caroca [00:19:57] Impossibility to translate.
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:19:59] I call it incommensurable values, which comes from analytic philosophy, from from modern knowledges and from William Kapp, an economist. (Inaudible) in the 20s and 30s in the debate on the socialist economy, again, (inaudible) actually and von Mises, he was saying, if we want to decide what to do in a planning economy after the revolution of 1919, I'm talking about Europe in the 20s. He said, we have to compare things, but we differ across different values. We can not reduce their singular value. And John O'Neill, in this university here in Manchester, he did a lot about this. He read my first book, actually, and he discovered like he knows more than I myself about that. I don't know, just hit on here to really talk about environment and valuation.
Armando Caroca [00:21:07] I have to ask this.
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:21:10] (inaudible) your conflict in Chile, he will analyse it for you. Philosophically.
Armando Caroca [00:21:18] That's interesting because I wanted to ask you...
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:21:23] He will say the analytic issues of valuation.
Armando Caroca [00:21:28] I wanted to ask you, maybe this is not important for anybody just for me, but because I'm studying this case in Chile about, a town that is heavily polluted by mining waste, by tailings.
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:21:43] From copper.
Armando Caroca [00:21:44] From copper.
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:21:45] Yes.
Armando Caroca [00:21:46] And, I analyse this in terms of valuation or languages of valuation, and I found that every actor talks in terms of economics and productivity. So there was no other like radically different language available. You know, sacredness.
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:22:04] About health, human appearance.
Armando Caroca [00:22:06] We talk about it, but even even health, even some environmentalists would trade health for a good compensation, for example.
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:22:15] And the people themselves. And so.
Armando Caroca [00:22:17] Yeah, they they didn't even know that they were polluted. So it's terrible. But so I wanted to ask you...
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:22:24] In Chile because of Pinochet actually I think there was a kind of...
Armando Caroca [00:22:29] Change.
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:22:30] In mentality. Yeah. I mean.
Armando Caroca [00:22:33] It even comes from the
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:22:35] the reform.
Armando Caroca [00:22:36] Okay. But what do you do when you don't have these kind of alternative languages of evaluation. How do you create alternatives or resistance or mobilisation?
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:22:46] You know, for instance, I just try to listen to what the people are saying, okay, I think we can because of course, these are written material. And it's true that sometimes they put just the same person in the morning for instance and say, this lake is sacred. Yeah. Like happens, for instance, in Chile, in this place with settlers, you know, the one with the black necked swans, you know. How much is that? Worse in modern times. Exactly. Because cannot be, you cannot put it if it is an artificial intelligence, one is not the same thing. And this was a real conflict. With different languages. But it could be that in the morning people say this and then if they lose the case then they will say give us some money.
Armando Caroca [00:23:43] Yeah.
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:23:43] Maybe because we have to live here because they want it to be a dam or something that were not in Chile in the south, this wind (inaudible) complaining about a dam, a very famous one. And they stayed there and they didn't move until the very end. And they had to move because the water was coming.
Armando Caroca [00:24:05] So, so would you say that people accepting compensation and like entering the same language of economics and money would be like a defeat for this movement, for the social or social environmental movement?
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:24:23] No. There will be some people who from the beginning saying we want money, compensation. And people saying we have been defeated. This happened very much with taxes. And also if, if somebody is killed and we should have space or something. You can not resurrect anybody with money. So the pain that travels for the family and so on. If this has been done on purpose or by negligence is what we're discussing. This case in Soldado, there are so many cases arise and this where I use industrially colours (inaudible) and I'm just saying this because. What happened is that, all three of them commodities coming into the economy, the raw materials, the energy and the materials cannot be used twice.
Armando Caroca [00:25:30] No, no.
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:25:32] When it is energy, because of the second law of thermodynamics, means that if you are using coal or oil or gas once, then you cannot use it again. When it is copper, for instance, I don't know how much is recycled, but let's assume 10%.
Armando Caroca [00:25:49] I think it's ten.
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:25:50] Because copper, you change that copper, then you have to go to the melting factory, which uses a lot of energy and pollutes a lot. Normally with carbon, liquid sulphur dioxide and so on. And then at the end you have...
Armando Caroca [00:26:10] Copper.
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:26:11] Got exported from Chile. You have brought a lot of different kinds of pollution. Which cannot be reversed easily. And you have used a mineral which was produced, you know, when millions of years ago through, they call it metal genetic, how that geology of metals, which is a bit chemical, purely chemical, and a bit biological. Yes. So we cannot do this again. Humans cannot. We have not the technology or the time to produce copper. We extract copper and we smelt it, and we use it. And you put it in some place. Like a computer here, and this in theory could be to some extent is like, but it is very expensive in energy terms.
Armando Caroca [00:27:10] (inaudible)
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:27:13] The materials are also entropic. They are subject to the entropy law, which means the law that you cannot recycle. This provokes like an entropy hole.
Armando Caroca [00:27:27] Yeah. I wanted to ask you about the...
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:27:30] Or a circularity gap. Why these men (inaudible) would call it metabolic drift. Because Marx talked about fertilisers and agriculture. According to these, yeah, they're all synonymous. Entropy hole, circularity gap, which I now research about these. Metabolic drift, if you like. Or metabolic gap and circularity drift.
Armando Caroca [00:28:00] So what you say is like...
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:28:02] there are many conflicts.
Armando Caroca [00:28:03] So you say, circular economy is not really possible, under any circumstances because of this hole, because of the entropy, as it were.
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:28:15] And the hole exists because it is practically impossible or very energy intensive, or would take a lot of time to recycle. So even the biomass. The trees for instance, large trees in in Chile. Perhaps I mentioned 5000 years or 1000. Yeah. Very old. If they cut it for sale with their company and they put eucalyptus plantation where the eucalyptus grow very fast. Yeah. What do they do? They take a lot of water. They take the fertility of the soil. And this is not recovered, isn't it?
Armando Caroca [00:29:02] Exactly.
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:29:03] And when they burn, and they burn quite often, they produce CO2. But these old Patagonian trees? They're stable. They produce slowly and in a way there is no entropy. Because the sun and the water is producing the trees and heat and genetics. But if you bought another type of biomass, it becomes also entropic entropy. So sometimes in the book, I say at the end of the book in 2 or 3 pages of the book that we are in the Anthropocene, we are also in the capitalist scene, we are in the plantation scene, all this...
Armando Caroca [00:30:02] But did you see then we.
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:30:04] Are also mainly, perhaps in the Anthropocene because of that industrial revolution, but also if you look at the biomass or even at the metals, and they can be recycled, but they are so expensive in energy and time that they are not recycled.
Armando Caroca [00:30:27] Mining companies use a lot that or any extractive industry they use a lot. The idea of compensation, of replacing, for example, a mining company, like, clearing a forest for mining, then would they would claim that they are like reforest in some other area and that would be like...
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:30:49] Not with the same species.
Armando Caroca [00:30:51] Not the same species. No. You don't have a thousand years to grow it again.
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:30:58] And what kind of lab you want to produce that copper. So that's what the word extractive is, which is so much used in Latin American environmental movement. So, yeah, one thing is to produce something. Another is to take it, to extract it and to spend it.
Armando Caroca [00:31:17] Yeah. And to dissipate.
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:31:19] Yeah. And this was already written like 30 or 40 years ago. The difference between production and extraction. Talking about an equity change in Latin America. By Steve Bunker in Brazil. But then (inaudible) like a school of anti-structivist economics which but also should be also active in Indonesia and in the Philippines and in Africa.
Armando Caroca [00:31:54] So those are the places you think more of these anti extractive movements should be boosted in. And do you think we are now in the in the neo extractive based era or a post neo extractivist era?
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:32:11] No. We are in the entropic era and the most destructivist era ever. One thing that happens is that the population, the world is stopping. The growth is stopping. Yeah. Which is new, but it's not bad. It's a good thing. Maybe bad for the small indigenous people. But because they are really decreasing about the population in America after the conquest.And I mean, this is, you know, but for other people, I think for all the races, it is also good that there are new technologies, but in general, things are going very badly because of this, the extractive economy, is also a polluting economy and because the waste is polluting. And the CO2 is like waste. In fact, this other waste becomes very good for the plants in the spring. And here they grow because of carbon dioxide. But we're producing so much as we know. We are changing the climate. And we should look at the carbon dioxide, the excessive amount of carbon dioxide, as waste. And who is responsible for this?
Armando Caroca [00:33:31] Because also CO2 capture happens over long periods of time. Could be millions of years for nature to capture all that carbon. And now we're releasing it very quickly.
Rose Pritchard [00:33:48] Can I move this back? Actually, just picking up some of what you said in the answer to the last question that you've touched quite a few times on the differences between different geographic areas and particularly highlighting the differences in Latin America. And I think that makes me really curious in terms of your book and how do you think about a global movement for environmental justice and kind of what would your key message be in terms of, is there a globalised movement, or do you still see an awful lot of difference...
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:34:18] Things that happened, for instance, in in the late 80s when we founded Equitable People, ecological economics coincided with, Mrs. Brandon report on sustainable development. So in ecological economics, very early on, (inaudible) said we are not against development, but we think that sustainable development is nonsense. Which is a contradiction because development usually means economic growth. And economic growth is not sustainable by using the fossil fuels. It goes like this, you have to tell the truth, including myself. We did not join the anti-development group of foreign tax or tourist cover or (inaudible) in India, the Katari brothers in India, (inaudible) and other people. So both in India and Latin America, (inaudible) in Mexico they wrote this book, a famous book against development. I don't remember the title, on post development. Yes. In the 90s. We should have joined this I think as ecological economists. But we didn't even discuss this. And much later, like ten years later, it was much more coincidental with people like (inaudible) and many people who started to say we are against the notion of development, which I don't know how this was received here in Manchester, especially in Sussex. And what is the connection between that critique of development and more radical positions like our view of multidimensional poverty. The development, but to take people out of poverty, but not only GDP. Many other things. And this is Amartya Sen and other people. I think between ecological distribution conflicts and multi-dimensional poverty, there are many connections which I've mentioned in the book, but I don't develop in the book.
Armando Caroca [00:36:59] Oh, I see.
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:36:59] We had done this already 20 years ago. Would have been better to say, now when we, the ecological economies worry that people are losing what many years ago we called amenities. But they are not -drinking water and eating is not an amenity.
Armando Caroca [00:37:23] Yeah. It is surviving.
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:37:25] So if you are in a village and you get money, but your water is polluted? Your poverty in some dimensions is larger than before. Therefore, we should have had this critique of development, the multidimensional poverty, the ecological distribution conflicts and the critique of economic growth should have come together. This would be what we should do next. One problem was that (inaudible) said himself was totally uninterested. Or rather, he thought the environment meant the elephant and the tiger.
Armando Caroca [00:38:07] Yes, something outside.
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:38:09] Which are non-human to us. And they're important, but not for humans. He thought, okay. (Inaudible) but also a kind of speciality. The environment goes together. They're humans and non-humans. We are part of the same thing. And therefore, we should bring together ecological issues and complex multidimensional poverty thing. And the critique of development, which now has taken a new incarnation. Which is the pluriverse, isn't it? The pluriverse, my best friends are very much into this, like Federico de Maria. Yeah, and (inaudible). They have this book, which is surprisingly a success for because he's a victim of words. Performative words. You say something and it happens. Well, I'm not sure, but of course we all fight about words also. Development or anti development
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:39:23] The economics of these words. But I think I am involved with them. But I think that I got a bit envious perhaps, because of the success of the pluriverse. But I was against a notion of universal development. So you had universal development from the beginning of development, criticised by some people, but very strongly by Escobar, who is the most quoted anthropologist in the world. Oh, according to Google Scholar. It depends on the measurement. Yeah, but he's very successful as an anthropologist.
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:40:03] Because of his work encountering development. And his new books also.
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:40:10] Land development, critique of development and a willingness to, to fight against multi-dimensional poverty, but not at the cost of economic growth which is not viable. Yeah, and the Sustainable Development Goals, which you probably teach here to your students.. are wrong! Several people have said are wrong. Immediately Jason (inaudible) confirms the first one. But msyelf, right? Also, I know people say number eight.
Armando Caroca [00:40:43] The eighth is the problem. The main problem.
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:40:45] Yeah. Right. Yeah. You have one in a collection of ten and one is wrong. Because they should be careful to rephrase it and I'm sure there would be no consensus. In the United Nations. If you say 'we don't want any more growth, we want something different, but not just in words, because then let's call it development', let's call it, I don't know what else they could invent. But it's not the question of words, because they say GDP should grow 7%.
Armando Caroca [00:41:20] Yeah, it's very specific.
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:41:24] The only way of getting the
Armando Caroca [00:41:27] Thing approved
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:41:28] Yeah. In my book there are 3 or 4 pages on this.
Armando Caroca [00:41:32] Let me just read SDG eight. It says to promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment, and decent work for all.
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:41:41] So that's the piece that I was against the idea that sustainable and not from sustainable development, now we have gone backwards to GDP.
Armando Caroca [00:41:58] Not multi-dimensional.
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:42:00] Not productive employment. Which feminist economies and anybody with any sense knows that this doesn't mean useful work. Not useful work.
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:42:10] Work you care for. And decent work where care work is very important. Productive employment. (Inaudible)
Armando Caroca [00:42:26] You see a problem of language here.
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:42:29] Have problem of I don't know I was not in this discussion at the UN, but probably after ten hours of discussing somebody said 'let's give up'. And this is a... We vote number eight. Yeah. I don't know how.
Armando Caroca [00:42:47] These are political negotiators.
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:42:49] I know that Brunel was trying to stop the environmentalists from a Keynesian, social democratic point of view, and he's very consistent. We have to come up with something because the environmentalists are winning in the 80s. Because of Chernobyl, even more. In 86 and so on. And they are winning. We have to, we can not just give up the Keynesian social democratic people. So we're inventing new things, sustainable development. That's my own interpretation. And I know some of the people, I think the persons who were involved in this. And also from the South it didn't help because in the South can say, no, we don't want development. We want, some (inaudible)
Armando Caroca [00:43:40] (Inaudible)
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:43:40] Yeah. I grew up in the 80s in the South. People were...
Armando Caroca [00:43:45] They have their own.
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:43:45] (inaudible) their own goals.
Armando Caroca [00:43:49] So you created the concept of environmentalism of the poor, or you helped to create it.
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:43:57] Well this was created in India by by Ram Guha in his book on (inaudible) by Agarwal who was running the centre for Science and Environment. Yeah, but (inaudible) Blanco in Peru who had like an article in La Republica. Inspired by myself and by Guha, but more or less simultaneous. (Inaudible) I was the first. Doesn't mean... It's very silly because it was in opposition to this environmentally sort of conservationists.
Armando Caroca [00:44:38] The conservation from the U.S., mostly.
Joan Martínez-Alier [00:44:40] From the U.S. but you know the big mammals, which is very important to preserve them I think, also the eco efficiency people, the economists, and the engineers, which are really running the show now. And the poor people and indigenous people, because they would call it now environment of the poor and the indigenous, 5% in the world now. But they are very often the protagonists of these conflicts because they differ their commodity extraction from this.