CBS pro­fess­or re­ceives pres­ti­gi­ous ERC grant to ex­plore the para­dox of the green eco­nomy

We are surrounded by green products. Coffee grown with climate considerations in mind. Biodynamic wine produced with respect for nature. Biofuels designed to make transport more sustainable.

Yet greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, biodiversity continues to decline, and pressure on natural resources continues to grow.

So what do we actually mean when we call something green?

That is the question Professor Stefano Ponte from the Department of Management, Society and Communication at Copenhagen Business School will explore.

He has been awarded an European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant, a highly prestigiousgrant given to established researchers with outstanding scientific achievements and groundbreaking ideas.

In the five-year € 2.5 million project GreenWorlds, Stefano Ponte will investigate how companies, governments, industry organisations and civil society create, negotiate and legitimise ideas about green transitions in global value chains and how these ideas shape practices and economic and environmental outcomes.

“Receiving an ERC Advanced Grant is both a great honour and a unique opportunity. Personally, it is deeply rewarding because it recognises many years of research and collaboration with colleagues. Professionally, it provides the freedom and resources to pursue a research agenda that would otherwise be difficult to realise,” says Stefano Ponte.

He is particularly looking forward to building a strong research team around the project.

Who benefits from green value?

In recent years, green qualities have become an increasingly important part of the global economy. However, they are no longer simply a matter of ethics or environmental concern. They have also become a way of creating or capturing economic value.

This is evident in markets such as coffee, wine, avocados and biofuels – the four value chains that GreenWorlds will follow from producers in Argentina, Ethiopia, Indonesia, South Africa and Italy to consumers across Europe.

The project is built around a question that Stefano Ponte believes is often overlooked in debates about green transitions: Who decides what counts as green, and who benefits from it?

“I hope GreenWorlds will fundamentally change how we understand the green economy. Much of the existing research explains green transitions either in terms of economic interests shaped by power relations or in terms of environmental values and norms. This project brings these perspectives together by examining how different ideas about what counts as green are mobilised to create, justify and capture value in global value chains.

In doing so, GreenWorlds seeks to open a new avenue of research on the material and normative foundations of contemporary capitalism and the possibilities and limits of greening the economy.”

Green transitions under pressure

The project begins at a time when green transitions are facing increasing political opposition in Europe and around the world.

While governments and business continue to invest heavily in green solutions, criticism is growing over whether current initiatives are delivering the environmental changes they promise. Questions are also being asked on whether we need ‘green transformations’ –  fundamental restructurings of economic, social, technological and institutional systems – instead of the gradual changes implied in ‘green transitions’.

According to Stefano Ponte, this makes GreenWorlds particularly timely.

“As governments, business and civil society grapple with climate change and biodiversity loss, there is growing disagreement about what green actually means and whose interests current sustainability initiatives serve.

“While green policies face increasing political backlash in Europe and elsewhere, some form of the green economy is likely to endure. This makes it an especially important moment to examine the competing justifications that underpin the green economy and the practices they enable.”

He hopes the project will generate new knowledge that can support policymakers, businesses and civil society organisations alike.

“I hope GreenWorlds will help policymakers, business and civil society distinguish between the green transformations that can deliver meaningful environmental change and the green transitions that primarily reproduce existing patterns of capital accumulation and inequality.”