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Green worlds of value and valuation: The material and normative drivers of green capital accumulation in global value chains

Objective

In today’s global economy, ‘green’ attributes are central to how the quality of goods and services is defined, marketed, and valued. Yet the rise of green value creation has occurred alongside the persistence of the carbon economy, raising fundamental questions about how capitalism adapts to ecological pressures while maintaining its logic of accumulation. GreenWorlds is an ambitious and innovative interdisciplinary project that tackles this complex theoretical challenge with analytical precision and conceptual originality. It breaks new ground by theorising and empirically investigating how capitalism materially and normatively legitimises itself amid intensifying environmental crises.
In GreenWorlds, I introduce the concept of ‘green worlds’ of value and valuation – internally coherent systems of justification mobilised along global value chains—and explore how they configure a green regime of accumulation. Focusing on the agro-food sector, where climate change endangers a wide range commodities, I trace four agro-food value chains (avocados, biofuels, coffee, wine) in five countries (Argentina, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Italy, South Africa) to consumption in EU – where debates on reforming the EU Green Deal are challenging green discourses. I compare cases across two axes—degree of EU vs non-EU producer competition, and degree of product differentiation.
I develop groundbreaking theoretical insights into how green worlds emerge, consolidate and decline; how they govern value chains and shape a green accumulation regime; and how this regime in turn supports or disrupts dominant green worlds in particular locations and value chains, and in time—reinforcing, adjusting or breaking a green cycle of capital accumulation. With GreenWorlds, I make a major contribution to understanding the contradictory entanglement of ecological concern and capital accumulation, and the limits and possibilities of green transformations under capitalism.

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Keywords

Programme(s)

Topic(s)

Funding Scheme

HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants

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Call for proposal

(opens in new window) ERC-2025-ADG

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Host institution

COPENHAGEN BUSINESS SCHOOL
Net EU contribution
€ 2 487 286,00
Address
SOLBJERG PLADS 3
2000 Frederiksberg
Denmark
Region
Danmark Sjælland Vest- og Sydsjælland
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Links
Total cost
No data

Beneficiaries (1)