Description
The EU positions itself as a climate leader through policy frameworks such as the European Green Deal to drive decarbonisation and the move towards a circular economy. It has also committed itself to carbon neutrality by 2050. Externally, Green Deal Diplomacy is used to shape foreign policy, and to “advocate for the EU’s vision of the transition towards a sustainable future…and help others to do the same” (Borrell, 2019). The EU’s Climate Diplomacy has the aim to “accelerate a global energy transition that is just, inclusive and leaves no one behind, promoting energy efficiency, renewable technologies and well-functioning global markets” (EEAS, 2021). However, the narratives that shape EU Green Deal Diplomacy policies and tools are embedded within the broader colonial history of resource extraction and “solutions put forward lend themselves to the entrenchment of patterns of socially and ecologically uneven exchange” (Bhambra and Newell, 2022). Through narrative analysis of interviews, and policy and official documents this paper will trace the diverging narratives between EU Green Deal Diplomacy practitioners, climate activists and professionals in Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa, India, Indonesia and the Philippines. It will argue that competing visions of world orders limit the ability of the EU to advocate for a Green Deal that does not acknowledge the parameters of the colonial history in which it is embedded. Policy frameworks require an understanding of colonial histories to develop climate futures that are just and question the very systems of injustice that produced climate change.
