A Blue New Deal.
| Author | Armstrong, Chris |
In February 2019, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ed Markey proposed a Resolution to the US Congress calling for a radical 'Green New Deal'. Later in the year, back in the UK, the idea would play a key role in the Green Party's election manifesto, while the Labour Party's It's Time For Real Change declared the need for a 'Green Industrial Revolution'. Despite the inevitable differences of emphasis, these proposals share a common thread, in aiming to tackle climate change and runaway inequality simultaneously. A 'green revolution' could generate millions of new, well-paid jobs, especially within communities left behind by recent economic shifts. (1) Given that a green transition is necessary, why not use it to empower people in marginalised communities?
Proposals for a Green New Deal are important and inspiring. But they may also possess their own blind spots. Their focus has largely been on reforms to land-based sectors of the economy. But they have had very little to say about the ocean, or about coastal communities. This neglect must be urgently corrected. The ocean is crucial to the global climate system, and to our post-carbon future. It contains fifty times as much carbon as the atmosphere, and the ocean industries of the future have the potential to safely sequester still more. (2) On the other hand, people living on the coast are on the very front line of climate-related challenges. Coastal communities are already among the most deprived, with many of their inhabitants suffering the consequences of deindustrialisation. (3) Sea level rise and dangerous weather patterns threaten to make a bad situation still worse.
As a result, any adequate Green New Deal must contain a significant ocean-oriented component. There are signs that our leaders are becoming more alert to this need. In September 2019, Elizabeth Warren agreed that a 'Blue New Deal' would be an indispensable element of a successful green revolution. (4) Such a revolution must focus clearly upon the specific deprivations faced by people living in coastal communities. And it must recognise the potential of the ocean industries of the future to tackle climate change. As yet, however, the precise role ocean-facing communities could play is not well understood. My goal is to explore in more detail what a 'Blue New Deal' - conceived of as an indispensable element of a broader Green New Deal - might look like. First, I will sketch the core ideas of a Green New Deal. I will then suggest some key priorities for a Blue New Deal focused on coastal communities. Finally, I will shift focus from the local to the global. A satisfactory response to the climate crisis will require concerted global action. What might be some key steps towards a truly global Blue New Deal?
Understanding the Green New Deal
The House Resolution on the Green New Deal envisaged a ten-year national mobilisation aimed at securing a major reduction in carbon emissions by 2030, and promoting the resilience of both the environment and local communities. It aimed to kill two birds with one stone: greening our economies at the same time as regenerating impoverished communities. The shifting tides of our economies have brought new opportunities to many. But the fact that new jobs are available elsewhere is little consolation to people rooted in communities which have been 'left behind'. Even those with jobs have faced decades of wage stagnation. (5) The financial crisis, meanwhile, has exacerbated existing inequalities in income, wealth, and economic opportunity between majority-white populations and people of colour. The burden of the austerity policies which followed the crisis has fallen disproportionately on women, and especially women of colour. (6)
The transition to a low- or zero-carbon economy, by contrast, will create many winners. Who they are will be determined, in part, by the nature of state policy. Defenders of a Green New Deal often draw a parallel with the massive fiscal stimulus engendered by Roosevelt's New Deal of the 1930s. But their proposals differ from that earlier New Deal in two important respects. First, the large infrastructure projects of the original New Deal eventually came to be associated with considerable environmental damage. The Green New Deal, by contrast, aims to defend the environment and protect biodiversity. Second, the original New Deal was narrowly focused on promoting economic growth, whereas advocates of the Green New Deal focus much more explicitly on questions of social justice. Specifically, they demand that the Green version ensures a broad sharing of the benefits arising from this new mobilisation of resources. A successful Green New Deal has the potential to counteract systemic injustices, creating millions of new jobs skewed towards deprived areas and communities.
Success will demand sensitivity to the nature of the challenges faced by marginalised communities. When a community experiences deindustrialisation, it will typically be faced with major economic losses, including shortages of jobs and local investment. But it will usually incur significant non-financial losses too. People who lose their jobs may experience losses to their self-esteem, to their social networks, and to their physical health. (7) As a result, we should explore policies which would place the economic destinies of members of marginalised communities in their own hands once more, allowing them to make decisions about their future economic life. This demands a focus on empowerment and agency, and on mitigation and adaption policies which are dynamic and forward-looking.
From Green to Blue
There are three reasons why the ocean will be at the centre of any successful Green New Deal.
The first and most obvious is that coastal communities are among the most deprived. Many have suffered enormously from the dwindling of tourist, fishing and boatbuilding businesses. In the United Kingdom, coastal communities have higher proportions of low-wage, low-skill, seasonal and part-time employment than the rest of the country. (8) They include higher-than-average numbers of people with long-term health issues that limit their daily activities, and disproportionately high numbers claiming sickness and disability benefits. (9) They have also been among the hardest-hit by austerity. Nine of the ten cities most severely affected by public-sector job losses in the UK are coastal, whereas only one of the ten least affected cities is. (10)
Second, coastal communities will be among the hardest-hit by climate change. Because they are often relatively poor, their capacity to...
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