Green Politics: The hope for a better tomorrow

Authors: Anurag Mishra and Aaditya Vikram Sharma

Green Political Parties in India

To pick from the last instalment, the culture of Indian environmentalism is indeed ancient and quite veritably primitive. For the record, India has various Green parties. The prominent one is of course is the India Greens Party which runs as an offshoot of the Global Greens and is a full member of the Asia Pacific Greens Federation. To take a measure of how green politics fares in the Indian context would only require us to take a quick visit to the Indian Green Party’s website. The events calendar for the IGP is blank for the month of July as well as the previous month. The last press release made by the IGP was in the month of March. A google search doesn’t even yield a Wikipedia page for the IGP because there isn’t one.

The Coronavirus pandemic poses a grave danger to humanity but also throws open an opportunity for laying the path which the posterity will tread. It is however disheartening that the response to the pandemic has more or less remained limited to  desperate search for a vaccine. A vaccine nevertheless is the acute need of the hour but what is of no less importance is a future plan for humanity which is closer to nature and yet at a safe distance.

Global Green Political Parties

Here, we look at the contemporary Green parties around the world. We primarily focus on North America and the Asia Pacific. In North America, Canada got its first Green parties starting 1983. Being a federal country, Canada has such parties present on provincial as well as the national level. The provincial parties include the Green Party of Ontario, the Green Party of Prince Edward Island, the Green Party of British Columbia and the Green Party of New Brunswick. The parliamentarians who get elected are colloquially known as “Green MLAs.” In the United States of America, the Green Party of the United States happens to be the primary such entity. It should be noted that as of April 2018, 156 Greens held elective office across the US in 19 states. The states with the largest numbers of Green elected officials are California (68), Connecticut (15), and Pennsylvania (15). Titles of offices held include: Alderman, Auditor, Board of Appeals, Board of Finance, Board of Selectmen, Borough Council, Budget Committee, Circuit Court Judge, City Council and so on. The Green Party has contested six U.S.A. presidential elections: in 1996 and 2000 with Ralph Nader for president and Winona LaDuke as vice president, in 2004 with David Cobb for president and Pat LaMarche for vice president, and in 2008 with Cynthia McKinney for president and Rosa Clemente for vice president. In 2000, Nader received more votes for president than any Green Party candidate before or since. Jill Stein ran for president on the Green ticket in 2012 and 2016; the vice-presidential candidates were Cheri Honkala in 2012 and Ajamu Baraka in 2016. Stein, who received over one million votes in the 2016 race, led unsuccessful attempts toward 2016 election recounts in three states: Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

On the other side of the planet, the Asia Pacific Greens Federation is of prominence. It is a federation of national Green parties, social and environmental organizations in countries in the Pacific Ocean and Asia, and is one of the four federations that constitute the Global Greens. 32 Parties from 30 nations got together in February 2005 in Kyoto, Japan, to found the network. There they elected a Membership Panel, and delegates to the Global Greens Coordination (GGC). The federation has a presence in countries such as Australia, India, Mongolia, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Korea etc.

A Common Agenda?

The Agenda of these parties overall can be derived through their principles and policies- a list of such guidelines available on some websites of the Green parties. Overall these can be divided into the following headers- Ecological Wisdom, Social Justice, Participatory Democracy, Non-violence, Sustainability and Respect for Diversity. Overall, the idea seems to be in conformity with international treaties and upcoming practices for environmental governance. The agendas also seem to comply with global requirements for climate commitments, such as that of the Paris Agreement.

However, environmental policies are just one part of international relations. Thus, it is not clear what the other policies of green parties would be. Thus, their agenda needs to more well defined and encompassing.

Conclusion

Netflix released the second season of its popular school drama The Politician last month. Where the first season of the series had focused almost entirely upon the protagonist’s political ambition and his run to the office of school president, the second season centred around his political campaign based entirely upon environmentalism. A strong movement requires novel instruments of mass mobilization and symbols which people can relate to and take to. The Global Green Movement needs to make itself ‘catchy’ to generate mass participation without which it is bound to remain a fringe movement even after fifty years since the United Tasmania Group coming into being. What seems to be the only way forward is mainstreaming of the Green agenda and making it “cool” and part of the popular culture.

However, it is not just awareness that would suffice and thus the scientific developments in the areas of energy, agriculture and food among other things need unprecedented attention and investment. In the food industry, the way Veganism has caught people from diverse range of countries is an example how an idea can travel far and wide and can bring about even the most difficult and unimaginable lifestyle changes. The technology has tried keeping pace with companies like Impossible Foods and Green Meat Co. coming up with vegetable based meat etc. The growing popularity of EVs and renewable sources of energy have steadily moved in the direction of creating a global ecosystem based on the idea of sustainability and environmentalism. All we need is a huge push and unrelenting spirit.

Anurag Mishra
Anurag Mishra
Anurag Mishra is an independent researcher. He holds an LL.M degree from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.