The Ecological Crisis and the Dilemmas of Labour Environmentalism (Part 1)
Language: English, French and Spanish
Saying the crisis is ‘human made’ conceals the central role of the capitalist profit-driven production system, which exploits workers and nature alike. Workers across the world fight against their own exploitation and the exploitation nature, including extractivism, land grabbing, deforestation, water pollution, and oil pipelines; they are developing just transition plans and demanding decent work, thereby creating alternative solutions to the ecological crisis.
Besides job blackmail, state repression, and emissions reduction policies that ignore social justice, today's labour environmentalisms also face internal dilemmas. They must reckon with the effects of work on nature as a life-support system, whether to support ‘their own’ industry from external competition, or develop international solidarity, whether they buy the idea that only perpetual economic growth can guarantee a good life for all, or redefine concepts of a good life.
How are workers in the global north and south through different organisations and policies developing new forms of labour environmentalism? How do they relate to state policies, create alliances with other movements, defend new forms of social justice? What are the barriers to and the varieties of labour environmentalism?