Our guest this week is Max Ajl, who is an associate researcher with the Tunisian Observatory for Food Sovereignty and the Environment and a postdoctoral fellow with the Rural Sociology Group at Wageningen University. He has written for multiple journals and is an associate editor at Agrarian South & Journal of Labor and Society.

It was his 2021, his book, 'A People's Green New Deal', published by Pluto Press, that brought Max to my attention. If you've been listening to the podcast for any length of time, you'll know that one of our regular contributors, Simon Michaux, is adamant that the material flows for the various posited Green New Deals don't exist - that they are logistical impossibilities. But what Max argues strongly and with brilliant clarity in his book and elsewhere, is why these things should not happen even if they could: why they are better viewed as extensions of the Giant Vampire Squid wrapped around the face of humanity (not his phrase) - and that there's a better, much more deeply green set of ideas and ideals based in actual earth connection, the restoration of what should be fundamental human rights across the world and the widespread implementation of agro-ecological principles.

His book seems to me an eco-socialist manifesto and while its values are closely aligned with the podcast, the nature of this as a political theoretical and practical concept is not something we'd previously explored on the podcast. So now we have. In the course of our early discussion, we touched on the Cochamamba Peoples' Agreement - and then never came back to it. So very briefly, I'd like to fill you in, because this agreement is both an internationally agreed document and, in itself, a statement of core ecosocialist principles. The conference from which it arose took place in April 2010, when more than 35,000 people from 140 countries gathered in Cochabamba, Bolivia, and developed a consensus-based document reflecting substantive solutions to the climate crisis.

Two things arise immediately. First, thirteen years on, we would call it the climate, ecological and cultural crisis. Second, and more important than the semantics - much though they matter - was the ways this agreement came into being. There were 17 working groups, and a lot of effort was put into consensus building - working out what mattered and what worked, or could be imagined to work - not the failed COP process of deleting anything that offends a member state until you have a basically meaningless document. I've attached links in the show notes and I really recommend you follow them, because it is profoundly important.
It is, in fact, the framework we need to work towards. What's distressing is that it's over 13 years old and hardly anyone in the hegemonic nations of what Max Ajl calls the core - as opposed to the periphery - has heard about it and still fewer care. So we need to change that. If you do one thing after this podcast, as Max says, it'll be to join an organisation. If you do two things, the second will be to tell people about the Cochabamba People's Agreement. And Max's book.

The sound quality was not the best. but Alan has woven his production magic and I hope your ears will accept the result as a price worth paying for the ideas we explore here.

A People's Green New Deal https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745341750/a-peoples-green-new-deal/
Cochabamba People's Climate Agreement https://www.climateemergencyinstitute.com/uploads/Peoples_climate_agreement.pdf
and
https://archive.globalpolicy.org/social-and-economic-policy/the-environment/climate-change/49253-need-for-recognition-of-cochabamba-peoples-agreement-in-un-climate-negotiations.html
Landworkers' Alliance https://landworkersalliance.org.uk/
La Via Campesina https://viacampesina.org/en/
Colin Duncan The Centrality of Agriculture https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/the-centrality-of-agriculture-between-humankind-and-the-rest-of-nature-colin-a-m-duncan/3518385?ean=9780773513631
Selimah Vaiani Rethinking Unequal Exchange: the global integration of nursing labour markets https://utorontopress.com/us/rethinking-unequal-exchange-4

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New Economy Network Australia https://www.neweconomy.org.au

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