Green transition, dependency and utopias: what are the challenges and possibilities for an emancipatory socio-ecological transformation?

Abstract

Global pressures in the face of climate change, pollution and the dramatic loss of biodiversity have led to different international commitments to reduce carbon emissions, avoid deforestation and protect ecosystems. This green transition, without discussing the relations of production, circulation and consumption, deepens neocolonial relations and accelerates extractive pressure on the territories of the global south, reinforcing geographical inequalities. This article proposes to analyze the premises towards a just socio-ecological transformation, which includes the protection of common goods, the reproduction of life, care, multi-scalar sovereignties and the decolonization of the economic agenda. From a perspective of the political ecology of Abya Yala, the first part addresses the historical-structural challenges that exist for socio-ecological transformations in Latin American countries. In a second moment, the existing trajectories of struggle are reconstructed, as potentialities, practices of collective resistance and utopias for transformation.