Sydney Environment Institute presents
Strategies for a just and democratic climate economy
The economy is an increasingly significant terrain of climate politics. The climate debate has moved on from carbon pricing as the cornerstone of climate economics and is now focused on how climate change is, or should be, reshaping markets, industries and statecraft. However, existing climate agendas have placed significant faith in private capital to lead the transition, failed to wind down the fossil economy, and are becoming ever more entangled with geopolitical tensions and interests.
In this context, debt, equity and insurance markets, the global asset management industry, state industrial and trade policy, ‘critical’ sectors and infrastructures, and international financial institutions and architectures, have become key sites of climate activism. Social movements are developing new and creative strategies to end public and private finance for fossil fuels and combine demands for expanded climate mitigation and adaptation with goals including Indigenous self-determination, workers’ rights, environmental protection and international solidarity. These strategies stretch from pushing existing market and policy structures in a more progressive direction to visions that use climate change as a basis to create a more just and democratic economy.