Browsing by Author "Urvas, Anniina Sofia"

The European Green Deal (EGD) is a response to multiple ecological problems caused by human activities, most notably climate change. Some of the main goals of the EGD is to reach net zero in emissions by 2050 and an economic growth decoupled from resource use. To do that, the EU is aiming to transform its energy system by moving away from fossil fuels to a renewable energy provision. Realising these goals would, however, translate into a drastic increase in raw material demand needed for renewable technologies. Extracting these materials is associated with severe socio-environmental effects. This thesis uses Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis combined with the theory of environmental justice to carry out an explanatory critique of the European Green Deal from a global environmental justice perspective. The material consists of the main communication from the European Commission on the European Green Deal paired with EU publications on critical raw materials and the Just Transition Mechanism. The thesis critically assesses the justice implications of the European Green Deal, which to a large extent relies on a dramatic increase in extractivism outside of the Union, reproducing unequal power relations between regions in forms of ecologically unequal exchange, ecological debt and green sacrifice zones. The analysis aims to study what elements of the EGD discourse contribute to this problem and make it discursively possible. The analysis finds out that the discursive understandings of ‘green’ economy, ‘clean’ energy, and a ‘just’ transition may conceal the sustained resource intensiveness of the economic system, the unequally distributed environmental justice issues related to the production of renewable technologies, and the lack of global perspective in the ‘justness’ of the transition to renewables. By pointing out how the European Green Deal discourse may reinforce the excessive increase in extractivism outside of the Union, the thesis underlines the role and responsibility of the EU in mining ventures outside of its borders and related negative consequences of the energy transition.