Sustainability in the Market Ecotopia: Contributions of the Global South to the Emergence of Biocentric Green Transitions

The present paper deals with the language of sustainability born in the struggles (De Sousa Santos 2019) against extractivism in Latin America, by focusing on the Southern Ecosocial Pact – an initiative launched in June 2020 by a group of critical scholars and activists. As a recent coagulation of stances against extractivism and struggles for eco-social justice across Latin America, the Southern Ecosocial Pact along with problematizing consumer capitalism, is an invitation for (re)imagining alternatives from and with the Global South. In the era of Green New Deals, originating in the Global North, it calls for a socially conscious green transition benefiting the many. It is a stretch to discuss the claims of the Socio-Ecological Pact in terms of sustainability since what it does is precisely indicate the limits of the green pacts born in the global north and their focus on the “return to normalcy”. Contrary to the inter-generational focus of the hegemonic sustainability discourse, the proposal from Abya Yala brings into focus the current precarization of social and ecological life. Therefore, my paper, along with engaging with the vocabulary of the SEP, falls into the category of works at the intersection between critical sustainability studies and decolonial approaches. Recent discussions on Global South's contribution to the emergence of the SDGs (see Fukuda-Parr and Muchhala 2020), along with the long-lasting criticism towards the future-oriented and Anthropocenic vocabulary rooted in the language of the Bruntland Commission Report (Mebratu 1998; Baker 2005; Lozano 2008) raise important questions related to the promised ecotopia of Green New Deals. With the reality of emissions trading, the transition to electric cars, the dominance of the smart city discourse, with the centrality of the individual in initiatives dealing with pollution reduction, we are witnessing a market ecotopia. This market ecotopia is problematized by the Ecosocial Pact, which announces the coming of age of biocentric perspectives in the design of green transitions.