The Green Economy Cannot Reproduce the Old One: It Must Work for Everyone
About the session
The transition to a low-carbon economy requires minerals, forests, agricultural commodities, and manufacturing capacity concentrated overwhelmingly in the Global South.
The Democratic Republic of Congo is central to global cobalt supply. Zambia and other African nations hold critical copper reserves. Indonesia, Brazil, and Central Africa are home to forests increasingly valued by carbon and nature markets. Across Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia, smallholder farmers, artisanal miners, and local communities are already embedded in the supply chains the green economy depends on.
The question is whether that dependence translates into greater prosperity and agency for them.
Too often, value flows in the opposite direction.
Global climate commitments depend on transition minerals while the communities involved in extracting them can remain at the margins of responsible sourcing frameworks. Carbon markets and nature finance place increasing value on forests without necessarily ensuring that the communities stewarding them retain meaningful economic benefit. Agricultural companies make sustainability commitments at the brand level that do not always translate into fairer prices, more stable incomes, or greater agency for producers.
At the same time, geopolitical fragmentation is reshaping global trade. Reshoring, friend-shoring, industrial policy, and economic nationalism are changing supply chains and investment decisions, often through policies designed far from the countries whose exports and development strategies will be affected by them.
There is a risk that the green economy replicates the extractive logic of the economy it is intended to replace: minerals, commodities, forests, and labor concentrated in one part of the world, while capital, technology, processing, and retained value accumulate somewhere else.
So what would it take to build a different model?
How can resource-rich countries convert climate ambition into locally retained economic value rather than simply hosting extraction? What does a responsible supply chain look like when accountability reaches the artisanal miner, smallholder farmer, or forest community rather than stopping at the multinational company? How can trade and industrial policy support Global South economic sovereignty? And what role can governance, transparency, finance, and collective action play in changing who captures the benefits of the transition?
Discussion Group Leaders
Joshua Kaluwasha is Policy Advisor at Embassy of Zambia, advancing diplomacy, trade, investment, and international engagement that strengthen Zambia’s global partnerships and economic opportunities.
Sarah Backstrand is Research Assistant at University of Notre Dame, advancing research on artisanal and small-scale mining and more responsible approaches to mineral sourcing.
Mario Picon is Founder and Senior Director at Governance Action Hub, advancing collaborative governance and institutional change across climate, democracy, and development.
What to expect
A frank, cross-sector conversation connecting what happens on the ground with the global rules shaping the green economy.
Participants will move between mining, agriculture, forests, supply chains, trade, and industrial policy to examine where value is created, where it is captured, and who currently has the power to determine the terms.
The conversation will use concrete experiences from resource-rich countries and communities to interrogate a much larger structural question: can we build a green economy without reproducing the economic relationships the transition is supposed to transform?
Rather than treating responsible sourcing, climate finance, trade policy, and community benefit as separate conversations, the session will put them in the same room and ask what would have to change across the system.
Who this is for
This session is for governments and diplomats from resource-rich countries, supply chain practitioners, climate and nature finance specialists, trade and industrial policy professionals, responsible sourcing advocates, development economists, philanthropists, investors, and anyone working at the intersection of the green economy, economic justice, and Global South sovereignty.
What you will get out of it
A clearer picture of how dependence on Global South minerals, forests, and agricultural supply chains translates, or fails to translate, into locally retained economic value
Perspectives on what economic sovereignty requires from climate finance, trade, and industrial policy
Ground-level insight into what responsible sourcing frameworks can miss when they focus on companies rather than producers and communities
Practical thinking about how supply-chain accountability can reach miners, farmers, and forest communities
A sharper set of questions for funders, investors, governments, and companies about whose interests the green economy is designed to serve