Green party

This article is about the green parties around the world. It describes differences between green parties in a broader sense and "Green Parties" in a narrower sense. Formally organized political parties (and political movements) based on the Four Pillars of the Green Party and similar value systems are referred to as Green Parties (capitalized) in the rest of this article; on the other hand, green parties (lower case) includes parties that share only parts of this common value system. Discussed here are also the history of green parties, green movements, and the collaboration among them. For information about a specific Green party, see the links at the end of the article or the List of Green party issues.

Greens — supporters of Green Parties — generally view grassroots democracy, pacifism, and social justice causes — especially those related to the plight of indigenous peoples — as inherently related to ecology and human bodily health. Thriving natural ecoregions, preventing global climate change, and preserving other aspects of the natural environment (see environmentalism) are viewed as necessary to maintain human life.

Definitions

'Small-g' green parties

A (generic or 'small-g') green party is any contemporary political movement which springs out of concern for the destruction of ecosystems — "environmentalism". But such a green party is not necessarily committed to the entire program of the Green Parties as such.

Greening

The term "green" is heavily appropriated by politicians and marketers, even used as a verb — it is not uncommon to hear of "greening" a party or a candidate. Typically these 'small-g greens' do not support the Green parties in all particulars, but are movements or factions within existing or established political parties.

green party smokes weed and eats tacos

Green Movement

Green Parties are part of, but do not exclusively represent, a larger political movement to reform human governance to better fit the constraints of the biosphere — usually called the Green movement to contrast it from the electoral participation of the legally-registered Parties.

In some countries, notably the U.S. and France, there are or have been multiple parties with differing platforms naming themselves Green.

Many people also confuse Green Parties with Greenpeace, a global NGO prominent in the ecology movement, which like the Green political movement was founded in the 1970s, and shares some green goals and values, but works with different methods and is not organized as a political party.

'Capital-G' Green Parties

The distinction is very often made between "green parties" (generally spelled in lowercase) in a general sense of emphasizing environmentalism, and specific organized political parties with the name "Green Party" (capitalized) that have grown up around a statement of principles called the Four Pillars and the consensus decision making process built on them. The main difference between a Green Party and a 'generic or small-g' green party is that the former, in addition to environmentalism, also stress goals of social justice and global peace. While most of this article covers Green Parties in the later sense, the discussion of green politics touches on many issues also relevant for 'small-g' green parties.

The organized Green Parties themselves may disagree with the distinction between "green party" and "Green Party", as many Greens argue that there is no respect for nature without peace, and no viable peace without thriving ecoregions, seeing "green" as a new coherent system of political values.

Four pillars

The four pillars or four principles of the Green Parties are:

Ecology - ecological sustainability
Justice - social responsibility
Democracy - appropriate decision-making
Peace - non-violence

History

In March 1972 the world's very first green party (the United Tasmania Group) was formed at a public meeting in Hobart, Australia. At about that same time, in Atlantic Canada, 'the Small party' was formed with similar goals. In May 1972 a meeting at Victoria University of Wellington, in Wellington, New Zealand, launched the Values Party, the world's first national green party. A year later in 1973, Europe's first green party, the UK's Ecology Party, came into existence. The term 'Green' (German: grün) was first coined by the German Greens when they contested their first national level election in 1980. The values of these early movements were gradually codified into those of today's worldwide Green Parties.

Growth and maturity of Green Parties

As Green Parties generally grow from the bottom up, from neighborhood to municipal to (eco-)regional to national levels, and are often ruled by a consensus decision making process, strong local coalitions are a pre-requisite to electoral breakthroughs. Usually growth is sparked by a single issue where Greens can bridge the gap to ordinary citizens' concerns.

The first such breakthrough was by the German Green Party, famous for their opposition to nuclear power, as an expression of anti-centralist and pacifist values traditional to greens. They were founded in 1980 and having been in coalition governments at state level for some years, have been in federal government with the Social Democratic Party of Germany in a so-called Red-Green Alliance since 1998. In 2001, they reached an agreement to end reliance on nuclear power in Germany, and agreed to remain in coalition and support the German government of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder in the 2001 Afghan War. This put them at odds with many Greens worldwide but demonstrated also that they were capable of difficult political tradeoffs.

Other Green Parties that have participated in government at national level include the Finnish Green Party, Agalev (now 'Groen!') and Ecolo of Belgium and the French Green Party.

Green Party's politics

Values and Ethics

Green Parties participate in the legal electoral process and seek to influence the definition and enforcement of law in each nation in which they are organized. Accordingly, Green Parties do not advocate an end to all law or all violent or potentially-violent enforcement of law, although they prefer peace, de-escalation, and harms reduction approaches to enforcement.

Often confused with "left" political parties advocating central control of capital, Green Parties usually advocate stark divisions between public commons (in land or water) and private enterprise, with little cooperation — higher energy and material prices are presumed to create efficient and ecological markets. Green Parties rarely support subsidies to corporations — sometimes excepting research grants to find more efficient or ecologically sound industrial techniques.

Many "right" Greens follow more geo-libertarian views which emphasize natural capitalism — and shifting taxes away from value created by labor or service and charging instead for human consumption of the wealth created by the natural world. That said, Greens may view the processes by which living beings compete for mates, homes, and food, ecology, and the cognitive and political sciences very differently. These differences tend to drive debate on ethics, formation of policy, and the public resolution of these differences in leadership races. There is no single Green Ethic.

Values of indigenous peoples (or "First Nations"), and to a lesser degree the ethics of Mohandas Gandhi, Spinoza and Crick, and the growth of awareness of ecology, have had a very heavy influence on Greens — most obviously in their advocacy of long-term "seven generation" foresight, and on the personal responsibility of every individual to make moral choices. These ideas have been summed in the Ten Key Values drafted by the U.S. Green Party which include restatement of the Four Pillars that European Greens used. On the global level, the Global Greens Charter proposes six key principles.

Critique of green policy

Critics sometimes claim that the universal and immersive nature of ecology, and the necessity of converting some of it to serve humanity, predisposes the movement towards authoritarian and intrusive policies, particularly with regard to the means of production, as these sustain human life. These critics often see Green programs as just a form of socialism or fascism — although many Greens counter that these are more characteristic of Gaians or non-parliamentary groups such as Green Anarchists, who are part of the Green Movement but less committed to democracy.

Skeptics point out that industrial nations are in the best position to adopt state-of-the-art clean energy and corresponding high pollution standards — and that Green Parties advocate going against progress. However, Greens respond that industrial nations are still those which use the most resources, and contribute most to climate change, and that as the poor world develops, we must help it develop with renewable rather than finite/carbon-based energy sources.

A further criticism is that Green parties are strongest among the well educated in the developed world, while many policies could be seen as operating against the interests of the poor both in rich countries and globally. For example, the Greens strong support for indirect taxation of goods which they perceive to be polluting inevitably results in the less well off sharing a higher share of the tax burden. Globally, Green opposition to heavy industry is seen by critics as acting against the interests of rapidly industrialising poor countries such as China or Thailand. Green participation in the anti-globalisation movement, and the leading role taken by Green parties in countries such as the United States in opposing free trade agreements, also leads critics to argue that Greens are against opening up rich country markets to goods from the developing world, although many Greens would argue that they are in favour of trade justice. Contrary to the above view Greens, i.e. in Europe, advocate the lowering of trade barriers and argue for the elimination of export subsidies for agricultural products in the industralised nations. The only exception to this rule in Europe is with the Irish Green Party of the Republic of Ireland, which tends to be Euroskeptic.

Finally, critics argue that Greens have a Luddite view of technology, opposing technologies such as genetic modification which their critics see as positive. Greens have often taken the lead in raising concerns about public health issues such as obesity which critics see as a modern form of moral panic. Whereas a technophobic point of view can be found in the early Green movement and parties, Greens today reject the argument of Luddism, countering that their policies of sustainable growth encourage 'clean' technological innovation like solar energy and anti-pollution technology.

Platforms

Green platforms draw terminology from the science of ecology, and policy from Feminism, left-liberalism, libertarian socialism, Social Democracy (Social Ecology) and even sometimes libertarian survivalists.

It is rare for a Green platform to propose lower fossil fuel prices, unlabelled genetically modified organisms, tax, trade and tariff liberalizations that remove protections for ecoregions or communities.

Alliances

Still, what defines green parties is respect for ecology and mimicry of its decentralized control (which operates by feedback, not rules). Depending on local conditions or issues, platforms and alliances may vary. In line with the goal of bioregional democracy, neighboring ecoregions may require different policies or protections.

Green Parties are often formed in a given jurisdiction by a coalition of scientific ecologists, community environmentalists, and local (or national) leftist groups or groups concerned with peace or citizens rights.

A Red-Green Alliance is an alliance between Green Parties and left-wing or social democratic parties. Such alliances are typically formed for the purpose of elections (mostly in first-past-the-post election systems), or, after elections, for the purpose of forming a government.

Some Greens find more effective alliances with spirit groups, or with more conservative groups (Blue-Green Alliance) or indigenous peoples — who seek to prevent disruption of traditional ways of life or ecological balances they depend on.

Alliances often highlight strategic differences between participating in Parties and advancing the values of the Green Movement. For example, Greens became allied with centre-right parties to oust the centre-left ruling PRI party of Mexico. Ralph Nader, the 2000 presidential nominee of the US Greens, campaigned with ultra-conservative Catholic Pat Buchanan on joint issues such as farm policy and bans on corporate funding of election campaigns, although this "alliance" between Nader and Buchanan was very specifically limited to the purpose of showing that there was broad support for certain specific issues, across the political spectrum.

Many people, especially members of the Democratic Party, hold Ralph Nader's campaign to blame for the election of US President G. W. Bush in 2000, but US Greens grew dramatically throughout 2001. However, stable coalitions (such as that in Germany) tend to be formed between elections with 'the left' on social issues, and 'the grassroots right' on such issues as (what they consider to be) irresponsible corporate subsidies and public ethics.

Many Democrats and the Green Party strongly resisted Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005.

Policy issues

A few issues affect most of the green parties around the world, and can often inhibit global cooperation. Some affect structure, and others affect policy:

On matters of ecology, extinction, biosafety, biosecurity, safe trade and health security, "Greens" generally agree or at least have some agreement to agree, typically based on (scientific) consensus, using a consensus decision making process.

There are very substantial policy differences between and among Green Parties in each country and culture, and constant debate about the degree to which natural ecology and individual needs align.

Global Reach

Around the world, there has been an explosion of Green Parties over the last 30 years. Green Parties now exist in most countries with democratic systems: from Canada to Peru; from Norway to South Africa; from Ireland to Mongolia. There is Green representation at national, regional and local levels in many countries around the world. Even in some countries without democratic systems, there are now Green NGOs: for instance, in China there is Green-Web. Links to all the Green Parties around the world can be found at www.greens.org.

Most of the Green Parties are formed to win elections, and so organize themselves by the presented electoral or political districts. But that does not apply universally: The Green Party of Alaska is organized along bioregional lines to practice bioregional democracy.

Global Gatherings

There is a growing level of global cooperation between Green parties. Global Gatherings of Green Parties now happen. The first so-called Global Gathering took place in Canberra, in 2001. It agreed a proposal from the African Green Parties that the next Global Gathering will be hosted by them, no later than 2006.

Global Green networking dates back to 1990. A First Planetary Meeting of Greens was held in Rio de Janeiro May 30th-31st, 1992. At this meeting, a Global Green Steering Committee was created, consisting of two seats for each continent. In 1993 this Global Steering Committee met in Mexico City and authorized the creation of a Global Green Network including a Global Green Calendar, Global Green Bulletin, and Global Green Directory. The Directory was issued in several editions in the next years. In 1996, 69 Green Parties from around the world signed a common declaration opposing French nuclear testing in the South Pacific, the first statement of global greens on a current issue. A second statement was issued in December 1997, concerning the Kyoto climate change treaty. [1]

At the 2001 Canberra Global Gathering delegates for Green Parties from 70 countries decided upon a Global Greens Charter which proposes six key principles. Over time, each Green Party can discuss this and organize itself to approve it, some by using it in the local press, some by translating it for their web site, some by incorporating it into their manifesto, some by incorporating it into their constitution. [2] This process is taking place gradually, with online dialogue enabling parties to say where they are up to with this process. [3]

The Gatherings also agree on organizational matters. The first Gathering voted unanimously to set up the Global Green Network (GGN). The GGN is composed of three representatives from each Green Party. A companion organization was set up by the same resolution: Global Green Coordination (GGC). This is composed of three representatives from each Federation (Africa, Europe, The Americas, Asia/Pacific, see below). Discussion of the planned organization took place in several Green Parties prior to the Canberra meeting. [4] The GGC communicates chiefly by email. Any agreement by it has to be by unanimity of its members. It may identify possible global campaigns to propose to Green Parties world wide. The GGC may endorse statements by individual Green Parties. For example, it endorsed a statement by the US Green Party on the Israel-Palestine conflict. [5]

Thirdly, Global Green Gatherings are an opportunity for informal networking, from which joint campaigning may arise. For example, a campaign to protect the New Caledonian coral reef, by getting it nominated for World Heritage Status: a joint campaign by the New Caledonia Green Party, New Caldonian indigenous leaders, the French Green Party, and the Australian Greens Party.[6] Another example concerns Ingrid Betancourt, the leader of the Green Party in Colombia, the Green Oxygen Party (Partido Verde Oxigeno). Ingrid Betancourt and the party's Campaign Manager, Claire Rojas, were kidnapped by a hard-line faction of FARC on 7 March 2002, while travelling in FARC-controlled territory. Betancourt had spoken at the Canberra Gathering, making many friends. As a result, Green Parties all over the world have organized, pressing their governments to bring pressure to bear. For example, Green Parties in African countries, Austria, Canada, Brazil, Peru, Mexico, France, Scotland, Sweden and other countries have launched campaigns calling for Betancourt's release. Bob Brown, the leader of the Australian Greens Party, went to Colombia, as did an envoy from the European Federation, Alain Lipietz, who issued a report. This campaign was joined also by other parties, like the Dutch liberal democratic party Democrats 66 (Democraten 66). [7] The four Federations of Green Parties issued a message to FARC. [8] Ingrid Betancourt and Claire Rojas are still prisoners, facing death. However, the efforts of the Green Parties shows their potential to unite and campaign jointly.[9]

Global Green Meetings

Separately from the Global Green Gatherings, Global Green Meetings take place. For instance, one took place on the fringe of the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesberg. Green Parties attended from Australia, Taiwan, Korea, South Africa, Mauritius, Uganda, Cameroon, Republic of Cyprus, Italy, France, Belgium, Germany, Finland, Sweden, Norway, the USA, Mexico and Chile. The Global Green Meeting discussed the situation of Green Parties on the African continent; heard a report from Mike Feinstein, former Mayor of Santa Monica, about setting up a web site of the GGN; discussed procedures for the better working of the GGC; and decided two topics on which the Global Greens could issue statements in the near future: Iraq and the 2003 WTO meeting in Cancun.

Global Greens Web Site

The GGC was responsible for creating a Global Greens web site. This web site represents the efforts of the GGC to deepen communication between Green Parties, and to facilitate action on matters of global consequence.

The Green Federations

The member parties of the Global Greens (see for details) are organised into four continental federations [10].

The European Federation of Green Parties formed itself as the European Green Party on 22 February, 2004, in the run-up to European Parliament elections in June, 2004, a further step in trans-national integration.

Critique of Green Networking

The disadvantage of global organizing and of the Global Greens Charter is that to imposing things from the center does not sit well with the Green way. The Green spirit is about decentralization, localization, and 'power to the people.' This is more of a valid criticism of the Green Charter than it is of the GGC — since unanimity is always required — or of the GGN, which is limited to coordinating campaigns and campaigning jointly, or of the Global Green Gatherings, since they are merely an opportunity to talk together.

However, in the case of the Charter, it does consist of generalizations, when circumstances are unique. To impose generalizations is seen by many Greens as the root of authoritarianism. However, many Greens accepted a degree of centralisation as part of a process of realpolitik.

Specific Green Parties

The following highlights some aspects important only for specific Green Parties. For information about the programme and the history of a Green Party in a specific country, use the list at the end of the section.

Green Parties in the English-speaking World

In English-speaking countries, Green Parties face electoral systems that have traditionally disadvantaged smaller parties, and a culture which has not been subject to invasion or colonization by others: they have achieved influence in Australia (where they are represented in the Australian Senate and the legislatures of four states and one territory) in Ireland (where they have six representatives in Dáil Éireann, the House of Representatives), in the United Kingdom, in New Zealand and (as mentioned above) the United States. Two provinces of Canada, British Columbia and Ontario, have strong provincial Green Parties. In the United States, at least 221 Greens hold elected positions the local level as of 2004, including 67 in California (according to [11]). In Australia, New Zealand, in almost every country in the European Union, and recently in some elections even in the United Kingdom, proportional representation and other Electoral reform strengthened the position of the Green Parties and enabled them to participate directly in legislatures and committees.

In countries following British-style 'first past the post' electoral rules, Green Parties face barriers to gaining federal or provincial/regional/state seats. As of the end of 2002, there were no Greens in the elected houses of the national legislatures of the United States, United Kingdom or Canada. Accordingly, in these countries, Green Parties focus on Electoral reform.

Green Parties in the Developing World

Green Parties in the developing world are often organized with help from those in other nations. As of 2002, most notably in Africa ('Crisis of Growth?', Agreement between the African and American Federations). However, the European Federation of Green Parties has worked to support weak Green Parties in European countries. Until recently, they were giving support to Green Parties in the Mediterranean countries. These Green Parties are now making electoral gains, e.g. in Spain and Republic of Cyprus, or getting organized to do so, e.g. in Greece and Malta. Green Parties in Italy and France are part of the political pendulum and return to government with the success of the main parties of the left. So the European Federation is now turning its attention to Eastern Europe -- all these countries have Green Parties, but in materially-poor Eastern Europe the success of Green Parties is very patchy ( Text about the Green East-West Dialogue, The Green East-West Dialogue).

Other than hosting the first Afghanistan peace conference as part of the German government, Green Parties in the developed world have made few concrete moves to spread their values using the diplomatic channels. This is usually seen as one of the responsibilities of the Green Movement — letting parties concentrate on their voters. However, the leader of the Kenyan Green Party, Wangari Maathai recently won the nobel peace prize, enhancing Green Parties across the third world.

List of Green Parties

This list is sorted alphabetically by country. Only capital-G Green parties are listed.

Australia - Australian Greens
Austria - Austrian Green Party
Belgium - Ecolo
Belgium - Groen!
Canada - Green Party of Canada
Czechia (Czech Republic) - Strana zelených Green Party
England and Wales - Green Party of England and Wales
EU - Greens/EFA (Group in the European Parliament)
Europe - European Federation of Green Parties (including a list of the 32 member parties)
Finland - Vihreä Liitto (Green League)
France - Les Verts
Germany - Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen
Ireland - Green Party/Comhaontas Glas
Ireland (North) - Green Party in Northern Ireland
Israel - Ha-Yerukim
Italy - Federazione dei Verdi
Japan - Niji to Midori (Rainbow and Greens)
Netherlands - De Groenen (The Greens)
Netherlands - GroenLinks (GreenLeft)
New Zealand - Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand
Philippines - Green Party of the Philippines
Poland - Zieloni 2004 (Greens 2004)
Portugal - Os Verdes
Scotland - Scottish Green Party
South Africa - Green Party of South Africa
Spain - Los Verdes
Sweden - Miljöpartiet de Gröna
Switzerland - Green Party of Switzerland
Taiwan - Green Party Taiwan
United Kingdom - see England and Wales, Ireland (North), and Scotland above
USA - Green Party of the United States
World - Global Greens (including list of Global Greens network members)