Abstract
Development interventions have historically struggled to promote equitable and inclusive outcomes for marginalised people. As new conceptualisations of development emerge as potential solutions to address global social, economic and environmental crises, these new forms of development must ensure that marginalised people are not left behind. Against this backdrop, the ‘green economy’ concept has gained prominence in the global development discourse over the past 15 years as a policymaking paradigm that can potentially combat environmental crises and promote inclusive development outcomes. The green economy is defined as an economy that results in improved human well-being and social equity while also reducing environmental risks. However, current scholarship has overlooked how the concept actually engages with social issues, such as poverty and inequality. Given that many countries have embraced green economy principles in their national policies and strategies, it is crucial to further our understanding of how the green economy can achieve inclusive development outcomes in practice.
This thesis advances current thinking on development and inclusion by critically analysing the green economy concept as it is understood and applied in rural South Africa. Using a qualitative case study approach, it investigates the patterns and processes through which green economy practices seek to include marginalised people in the Agulhas Plain region of the Western Cape province. The Agulhas Plain is a biodiversity hotspot that is home to a large constituency of marginalised people who have been excluded from post-apartheid social and economic progress, and where local stakeholders believe green economy initiatives can be implemented to conserve the region’s rich biodiversity while uplifting marginalised people's livelihoods. This thesis applies a multi-dimensional ‘inclusion framework’ to assess recognition, procedural, distribution and contextual equity in four green economy initiatives to shed light on the underlying structures influencing how the green economy is expected to include marginalised people.
The empirical findings reveal that green economy initiatives primarily include marginalised people in a perfunctory fashion via job creation, delivering some mild distributive benefits while ignoring the multiple equity dimensions contributing to exclusion, thus mirroring exclusive forms of neoliberal development. Moreover, these initiatives seek to include marginalised people using strategies premised upon unrealistic assumptions that lead to undesirable inclusion outcomes. Ultimately, it is argued that green economy theory and practice must embrace stronger forms of sustainability that encourage dialogue between stakeholders and challenge existing power inequities in order to effect political change that leads to more inclusive development outcomes. These findings are of value in the South African context, where the government has embraced the green economy as a policy tool to overcome high rates of poverty, unemployment and inequality. These findings also contribute to counter-hegemonic development discourses by building on existing critical literature to construct pathways that more meaningfully include marginalised people.