What can we achieve together that we cannot accomplish alone? Why do many ambitious efforts to change the world inadvertently replicate the structures they intend to dismantle? How can we displace oppressive practices and unlearn organizing methods that seem devoid of spirit and soma? As student-practitioners of activism, popular education, and social transformation, we constantly grapple with these questions of practice. This article introduces the Global Green New Deal and Post-Extractive Futures, two budding and complementary initiatives that aim to integrate radical care into our practice of internationalism.

Toward a Global Green New Deal

Since 2020, The Global Green New Deal has been building a vision of an economy that works for people and the planet—one that moves away from systems of limitless extraction and exploitation, towards those of care and repair.

But what are the main contradictions or tensions between GND demands in the Global North and climate justice demands in the Global South? Where are alignments that Global North activists should be pushing right now in allyship? And what is the common thread that holds together these diverse proposals and visions?

In attempting to synthesize the many issues and demands from movements across the Global North and South that must make up a truly comprehensive and internationalist GGND, we have identified four tests against which interventions that set out to address the climate crisis should be measured. Through its four tests, this GGND offers clear criteria that distinguish between action and climate-just action:

• Does it keep us below 1.5 °C, with everyone doing their fair share of effort?
• Does it tackle inequality and poverty?
• Does it put people and the planet first and allow us to thrive within planetary boundaries?
• Does it uproot historical injustices and systems of oppression and build a society based on care and repair?

Working towards realizing the four key principles above, the central premise of the GGND framework is that a just recovery from the climate crisis must guarantee the right of all living beings to exist with dignity by tackling the systemic causes of poverty, inequality, and ecological breakdown—addressing the historic responsibility of the Global North while developing avenues for a fair and just recovery that respects our planetary limits and ecological systems. These four tests provide us with a clear lens that can be applied to existing policy frameworks.

While drawing on various streams, a GGND response is fundamentally anchored in two principles: courage and connection.

Courage: The Global Green New Deal is a metaphor for ambition, for meeting the ecological crisis in its magnitude and having the courage to reimagine the economy on a planetary scale. The GGND is an orientation of boldness, gearing social and economic policy towards the global environmental challenge. Rejecting piecemeal approaches to systemic crises, it is a visionary proclamation not just of what we do not want but of what we are for. It is an attempt to envision what the world could look like.

Connection: The goal of a Global Green New Deal is ensuring a dignified and thriving life for all. Cutting across all GGND pillars and proposals is a desire to improve health and well-being for all people. What is wrong about the economy is not the choices of individuals: it is a system, and one that must be transformed.

Post-Extractive Futures: Beginnings

Post-Extractive Futures first came into being during a meeting in 2022, hosted by War on Want, Tipping Point UK, and Junte Gente (Puerto Rico).¹ This gathering fostered collaboration between movements fighting for and creating futures beyond extractivism, uniting those working in environmental and climate justice, just transitions, post-growth and degrowth, ecosocialism and postcapitalism, decolonization and abolition, and ecofeminism.

When we asked grassroots movement organizers what they wanted from an event that brought together activists, campaigners, and system changers from around the world, the unanimous response was a focus on how we do things, not just what we do. They wanted to learn about experiments, models, and examples of emancipatory change.

Questions, Reflections, and Hypotheses about the Systems We Transform: Organizations and movements often have transformational capacities that go unnoticed due to differing language and vocabulary. Embracing a broader understanding bridges these gaps. It is vital to prioritize networks rooted in genuine care and shift from spectacle-driven politics towards relational values like ubuntu. Systems are ever-evolving, often resistant, but our resilience matches theirs. The essence of care lies in being genuinely present, which demands introspection, rest, and patience. As we are all system components, change demands holistic self-awareness and ecological movement. In essence, our approach should match the complexity of the systems we aim to revolutionize.

Provocations about Our Engagements: We embrace diverse roles, from project incubators to caregivers, valuing shared learning and skill acquisition. Our strength lies in limitless creativity, breaking traditional sectoral boundaries, and flexibility. Prioritizing experimentation over established methodologies, our role is akin to a doula for our ecosystems, nurturing new possibilities while respecting transitions. Power, in our view, stems from collective ownership and relationality, differing from conventional oppressive paradigms. We aim to foster self-sustaining initiatives, emphasizing the sacredness of solidarity, always present but eternally beyond full grasp.

Vision: What Can We Do Together That We Cannot Do Alone?

Together, we can teach and challenge each other to imagine the world in new ways.

Together, we believe in a diversity of worlds of life, where no being is disposable, and no land is desecrated. Worlds where everyone’s essential needs and well-being are honored, where the labor of nourishing life is equally shared.

Worlds of reparations and memory, radical love and intersectional solidarities, of celebrating, music and ceremony, of joy and connection, of more time with family and loved ones, of public abundance and commons, of decolonial thinking-feeling, of abolition and harm reduction, of liberation and justice, of sovereignties in our territories and waters.

So many things hold us back from these worlds. Among them is rigidity—an inability to believe the world could look differently, or that we can do things differently to get there. Against rigidity, we propose play, experimentation, ritual, embodiment, and curiosity.

We envision Post-Extractive Futures as a space of encounters between movements fighting for and creating these futures today, a space of weaving and seeding networks of solidarity, of daring visioning, co-inspiring and co-learning, a space to share concrete skills and tools, but also to embrace and nurture each other, for the collective healing and energy we need to continue our struggles, as part of broader infrastructures for caring and walking together.

1. Today Post-Extractive Futures is comprised of Tatian Garavito (Tipping Point UK), Gustavo Garcia (Junte Gente), Liliana Buitrago (Ecosocial Pact of the South), Vasna Ramasar (Global Tapestry of Alternatives), Delmy Cruz (Mujeres Transformando Mundos), Sebastian Ordoñez (War on Want), Daniel Voskoboynik & Marta Music.