Green Growth, Unequal Futures: Is Climate Action Creating a New Form of Colonization?

Thi Mai Anh Tran

Michigan Technological University, United States

30-05-2026

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Imagine two countries facing the same climate crisis.

One possesses advanced laboratories, skilled engineers, and abundant investment capital to develop cutting-edge green technologies. The other struggles with poverty, limited infrastructure, and weak innovation systems. Both are asked to participate in the global transition toward sustainability, and both are told that green growth is the future (Aghion et al., 2009; Lu et al., 2025).

But only one can afford the ticket.

This is the uncomfortable paradox emerging from the global pursuit of green growth.

Over the past decade, governments and international organizations have increasingly promoted green growth as a solution to climate change. The idea appears straightforward: economies can continue growing while reducing carbon emissions through cleaner technologies, renewable energy, and eco-innovation. Eco-innovation, understood as the development of environmentally friendly products, processes, and technologies, has become a central pillar of this vision (Hickel & Kallis, 2020; Ben Lahouel et al., 2023).

At first glance, the approach seems like a win-win solution. Economic prosperity and environmental protection no longer appear to be opposing goals. Yet beneath this optimistic narrative lies a troubling question: who gets to participate in the green economy?

A recent study by Ofori (2026), examining 108 countries between 1990 and 2024, found that eco-innovation generally promotes green growth. However, the study also revealed something equally important: income inequality significantly weakens these benefits. In societies with high inequality, eco-innovation becomes less effective as a driver of sustainable development.

The finding may sound technical, but its implications are profound.

Historically, colonial powers extracted resources from less-developed regions while concentrating wealth, knowledge, and technological capabilities in a few privileged centers. A similar pattern may be emerging today through different mechanisms. Wealthier countries possess the financial resources, educational systems, research institutions, and industrial capacity to develop and deploy green technologies. Poorer countries are largely left on the receiving end of these innovations, consuming what others produce.

The result is an absurd situation (Vuong, 2025; Tran, 2026). The global climate crisis demands collective action, yet the very tools proposed to solve it may deepen existing inequalities. Nations that contributed least to historical greenhouse gas emissions may find themselves dependent on technologies, patents, expertise, and financing controlled elsewhere.

Green growth and eco-innovation remain valuable ideas. The evidence simply shows that technological progress, on its own, cannot guarantee environmental protection and justice (Khuc & Nguyen, 2026; Nguyen, 2026).

The study also found that eco-innovation significantly boosts green growth in high-income economies but shows little effect in many middle-income countries where innovation systems and institutions remain underdeveloped. In other words, green technologies flourish where advantages already exist.

The climate transition therefore faces a choice. It can become a pathway toward shared prosperity, where knowledge, resources, and opportunities are broadly distributed. Or it can evolve into a subtler form of colonization, one where power is exercised through control of the technologies needed to survive a warming world, rather than through territorial conquest.

Whether humanity can fully decarbonize through green growth remains an open question. What seems clearer is that the pathway being pursued carries a real risk of reproducing the inequalities that have long hindered sustainable development.

References

Aghion, P., Hemous, D., & Veugelers, R. (2009). No green growth without innovation. Bruegel. https://www.bruegel.org/policy-brief/no-green-growth-without-innovation-0

Ben Lahouel, B., et al. (2023). Inclusive green growth in oecd countries: what are the impacts of stringent environmental and employment regulations? Environmental Economics and Policy Studies. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10018-023-00362-4

Hickel, J., & Kallis, G. (2020). Is green growth possible? New Political Economy, 25(4), 469-486. https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2019.1598964

Khuc, V. Q., & Nguyen, M. H. (2026). Cultural Additivity Theory. Available at SSRN 6767760. https://ssrn.com/abstract=6767760

Lu, Y., et al. (2025). Green growth and sustainable energy transitions: evaluating the critical role of technology, resource efficiency, and innovation in europe's low-carbon future. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 12, 1527. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-025-05823-7

Nguyen, M.-H. (2026). Ayn Rand and Kingfisher on zero-carbon bombs and a sustainable future. Visions for Sustainability, 25(13474), 1-13. http://dx.doi.org/10.13135/2384-8677/13474  

Ofori, P. E. (2026). Eco-innovation and green growth: The income inequality trap. Journal of Environmental Management, 409, 129944. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2026.129944

Tran, T. M. A. (2026). Conversations with Kingfisher: Wisdom from Vuong’s wild wise weird stories. Planet Forward. https://planetforward.org/story/kingfisher-stories/   

Vuong, Q. H. (2025). Wild Wise Weird. AISDL. https://books.google.com/books?id=C5dDEQAAQBAJ