TY - JOUR
T1 - Accounting matters
T2 - Revisiting claims of decoupling and genuine green growth in Nordic countries
AU - Tilsted, Joachim Peter
AU - Bjørn, Anders
AU - Majeau-Bettez, Guillaume
AU - Lund, Jens Friis
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Authors
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - Ecological modernisation in the form of support to the notion of green growth remains the dominant discourse in environmental policy globally. Still, questions of limits to economic expansion and growth on a planet with finite natural resources have been at the core of environmental discourses at least since the 1970's. A recent effort by Stoknes and Rockström (2018) seeks to unite notions of ecological limits with the concept of green growth by proposing genuine green growth as denoting a situation when growth respects planetary boundaries. Focusing on recent trajectories in emissions intensity, they highlight Nordic countries including Denmark as examples of such genuine green growth. In this article, we demonstrate that the specific conceptualization of genuine green growth and resulting claims about the Nordic countries rest on particular assumptions, specifically concerning national-level carbon accounting frameworks and the size of the remaining global carbon budget. By opening up these assumptions for analysis we illustrate the partiality and potentially misleading nature of the conceptualization of GGG.
AB - Ecological modernisation in the form of support to the notion of green growth remains the dominant discourse in environmental policy globally. Still, questions of limits to economic expansion and growth on a planet with finite natural resources have been at the core of environmental discourses at least since the 1970's. A recent effort by Stoknes and Rockström (2018) seeks to unite notions of ecological limits with the concept of green growth by proposing genuine green growth as denoting a situation when growth respects planetary boundaries. Focusing on recent trajectories in emissions intensity, they highlight Nordic countries including Denmark as examples of such genuine green growth. In this article, we demonstrate that the specific conceptualization of genuine green growth and resulting claims about the Nordic countries rest on particular assumptions, specifically concerning national-level carbon accounting frameworks and the size of the remaining global carbon budget. By opening up these assumptions for analysis we illustrate the partiality and potentially misleading nature of the conceptualization of GGG.
KW - Carbon accounting
KW - Ecological modernisation
KW - Environmental governance
KW - Green growth
KW - Indicators
KW - Nordics
U2 - 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2021.107101
DO - 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2021.107101
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:85108060158
VL - 187
JO - Ecological Economics
JF - Ecological Economics
SN - 0921-8009
M1 - 107101
ER -