The focus of the green stimulus is on growth, jobs and tackling poverty. Also, the policy document says, the objective is to reduce carbon dependency and ecosystem degradation.

The present global financial crisis began in the developed countries, particularly in the United States and spilled over to most parts of the world encompassing the banking sector, securities and currency market, and institutional and individual investors.

From 2008, it has been the breaking news in the international media and also helped to bring down the Bush era in the US. This financial crisis is similar to that of the Great Depression in the 1929-30 and many researches show a strong conviction of the leaders of the Bretton Woods conference in 1944 that the World War II in one way or the other was the result of the Depression.

That means the Great Depression caused the war and the war led to the creation of the Bretton Woods Institutions such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, etc with the guarantee for future world peace.

There was also the conviction that the Depression was the product of the frenzied speculative activities by the big financial institutions in a climate of easy money and the absence of strong regulations and capital controls. There was thus a strong determination to re-establish a new financial architecture which would regulate financial markets to avoid such crises and prevent another war in the future.

In the New Deal legislation of President Roosevelt, it was made clear that there must be strict supervision of all banking, credits and investments.

The New Deal was a deal among rich and industrialised countries competing with each other to dominate the world market and dividing the world between themselves. Interestingly, ‘war’ among the industrialised countries is known as ‘world war’ while war against non-western weak countries is marginalised and considered as having no ‘world’ significance despite the fact that the war in the Middle East is fundamental to the survival of the fossil-fuel based industrial societies.

War, militarization and violence have always been the part of us since the establishment of Bretton Woods institutions. War against Afghanistan and Iraq removed the veil of un-sustainability of the industrial fossil-fuel based societies and there is hardly any option left to ensure energy security for their survival through military means and, therefore, construction of new kind of ‘enemies’ to perpetuate war and violence to keep up with the over-consumption and oil-based lifestyle of the rich in the western countries.

The example of fossil fuels indicates clearly that the issue is no more economy as such, creation of wealth in the form of money, commodity and technology, but the way we relate to nature in generating our life, lifestyles and the future. It implies that we can no more talk about any ‘deal’ without fundamentally reviewing our conception of economy, ecology and lifestyle and putting our efforts to construct a vision and science that starts to link these already obsolete sciences that claim independence from each other, while they indeed are integral to the very activity of human beings that build civilisation. The new deal must be the deal for post-industrial, post-capitalist green civilisation.

Since nature, or the natural value of commodities, remains outside the consideration of the economic science; in other words, ecology and biodiversity are considered de-linked and lifestyles and value of local cultures and knowledge has never been the part of the paradigm of ‘development’, so the Bretton Woods Institutions have been active in financing projects that are destructive to environment and people’s livelihood.

In the early sixties of the 20th century, the World Bank made conditional loans to the developing countries to adopt ‘modern agriculture’ – a package of chemical fertilisers, pesticides, irrigation system with diesel or power in the name of achieving higher yields and thereby attaining food self-sufficiency.

By ‘food’ the World Bank meant cereals and the focus was on the staples. As a result, while cereal production increased in some cases in countries like Bangladesh, oil seeds, lentils, forest products and in general the biomass – a major source of energy in the rural areas – have decreased. Misconception of ‘agriculture’ is scandalously obvious here. Agriculture does not only produce food, but also fuel woods, fibres, medicines, construction materials, etc.


The new, green economy would provide a new engine of growth, putting the world on the road to prosperity again. This is about growing the world economy in a more intelligent, sustainable way. The 20th-century economy, now in such crisis, was driven by financial capital. The 21st-century one is going to have to be based on developing the world’s natural capital to provide the lasting jobs and wealth that are needed, particularly for the poorest people on the planet.

Pragmatically, the ‘Green New Deal’ would like to take advantage of the unique opportunity presented by the multiple crises and the ensuing global recession with multilateral and national efforts, simultaneously addressing the interconnected global climate, food, fuel and water challenges that threaten society over the medium term.

There is a widespread acceptance that neo-liberal model has collapsed and the so-called ‘free market’ cannot work any more. The unregulated market can not resurrect itself on its own from the historic collapse and without significant and co-ordinated government interventions.

Nevertheless, the premise of profit-based competitive capitalist global architecture is not under question, although there is more willingness to listen to new solution. It is assumed that the enormous fiscal resources being released can potentially be used to achieve ‘critical mass’ of investment and employment in order to kick-start the new sustainable paradigm.