From Development to Economy

Abstract

We are witnessing a paradigm shift in global environmental politics. The aim of this thesis is to understand the focus shift, from Sustainable Development to Green Economy. Both concepts emphasize three dimensions an environmental, an economic and a social dimension. Within the UN-context, Green Economy has been introduced as the leading buzzword. The language change is not only linguistically, but also a focus shift. Green Economy has made economic growth a major point while development issues have received less attention. Through theory and method that derives from Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis, this thesis describes how the Sustainable Development discourse in 1992 differ from the Green Economy discourse in 2012, with emphasizes placed on the social dimension. The shift from Sustainable Development to Green Economy is an essential one that originates from industrialized and emerging countries. Emerging countries has more common interest with industrialized countries then ever before. There has been a growing amount of clubs and institutions among rich and emerging countries, demonstrating the new economic structure. This also implies that the poorest countries have less power in 2012 than they had in 1992, and this is evident in the discourses.