Abstract
Current headlines suggest that the world at large has missed the opportunity to ‘build back better’ from COVID-19 by way of a green recovery. However, such claims do not consider novel trends among plurilateral summit institutions, especially the extent to which global governance of a green recovery is encapsulated by the burgeoning norm bundle of the ‘Global Green New Deal’. Plurilateral summit institutions like the G20, G7 and the BRICS have the potential to play a key governance role in implementing a Global Green New Deal, given the breadth and depth of reform required to ‘build back better’ from COVID-19. This contribution adopts a practice-relationist methodology to explore this thesis. Green recovery practice is analysed through novel interrogation of the open-source stimulus spending data of the Global Recovery Observatory. The results reveal that the G7, the G20 and the BRICS are all funding proportionally more clean than dirty stimulus in response to COVID-19. However, the proportion of clean stimulus is much stronger among members of the G7. A relationist frame is then used to assess this practice against the potential norm entrepreneurship role of the G7, both as individual member states and as a collective. It concludes that although this norm entrepreneurship role is undoubtedly nascent, it yields valuable insights into the pathways and barriers for further norm diffusion of the Global Green New Deal among plurilateral summit institutions. In this way it highlights the unique role plurilateral summit institutions can play in not only globalising the green new deal, but crucially operationalising it. Thus, while the world may not yet be ‘building back better’ as a collective, it is institutional norm entrepreneurs who currently hold the blueprints.
Highlights
The Global Green New Deal (GGND) first emerged in response to the Global Financial Crisis (GFC)
Despite the GGND’s growing ubiquity in global affairs, it remains poorly understood as a conceptual phenomenon
To assess the GGND’s evolution and impact on attempts to ‘build back better’, scholars must cast aside preconceptions and freshly consider the contemporary role it could play in international relations (IR)
Summary
The Global Green New Deal (GGND) first emerged in response to the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). The G7 more strongly signalled a commitment to a green recovery in their most recent communiqué (G7, 2021b; Lawder, 2021) To interrogate these trends further, it is necessary to gain a sense of the practice and relationality of the GGND among PSIs. Practice of PSIs. Practice among PSIs member states, as largescale players in global governance, are an essential determination of the likely success of its diffusion as a norm bundle. To assess the G7 further as potential norm entrepreneurs it is first necessary to consider how its members continue to build a shared consensus of the GGND as a norm bundle internally and externally This includes consideration of the historical role the G7 plays in addressing climate change, the domestic strategies its members employ and early signs the G7 is pursuing norm diffusion of the GGND. The G7 working to overcome the governance gap in external coordination of the GGND will likely prove crucial to its norm diffusion
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