The geographies of the green economy

The ‘green economy’ has been widely touted as an organising concept that can enable the simultaneous pursuit of economic growth, environmental protection and social justice, and gained significant institutional support at the United Nations ‘Rio plus 20’ Summit held in 2012. However, despite its evident significance for the geographies of economic interaction and sustainable development more broadly, to date the green economy has received limited attention from geographers as an identifiable concept or logic. The aim of this paper is to initiate debate among geographers and scholars in cognate disciplines on the drivers, processes, spatialities and implications of the green economy. The first part of the paper seeks to elucidate the ‘green economy’ as a concept and set of spatial relations and functional domains around which financial, institutional, regulatory, and cultural economy agendas (from scales of environmental governance, to green entrepreneurship and green intellectual property) are emerging. The second part explores theoretical in-roads that may assist in comprehending and critically analysing the green economy. We argue that understanding and scrutinising the geographies of the green economy requires a multi-theoretical approach that draws on various traditions of social science research into environmental governance and nature-society relations. We then examine some of the theoretical avenues available, focusing in particular on theories of socio-technical transition, ecological modernisation and the commodification of nature, environmental discourse, the cultural green economy, and the green economy as a post-political project.