Book talk: 'The sustainability class' with Vijay Kolinjivadi and Gert Van Hecken

Name: Antwerpen Leest
Price range: $

‘The Sustainability Class’ challenges many of the popular ideas about environmentalism, showing that it is actually the sustainability class itself that is unsustainable. By contrast, real-world examples of movements for housing and food production, transport, and waste management demonstrate how ordinary people around the world are building a more ecological future by working together.

The book has been talk of the town in Canada, and has been discussed on the websites of Time Magazine and Newsweek. De Groene Waterman kindly invites you to attend the interview with the author, because together we can start the conversation in Belgium.

About the book

An original argument that environmental sustainability has been co-opted by the urban elite, along with examples from around the world of ways we can save our planet“Caring for the environment means reclaiming ecology for everyone.” —from the introductionA sustainability apartheid is emerging. More than ever, urban residents want to be green, yet to cater to their interests, a green-tech service economy has sprung up, co-opting well-intentioned concerns over sustainability to sell a resource-heavy and exclusive “lifestyle environmentalism.” This has made cities more unsustainable and inaccessible to the working class. The Sustainability Class is about those wealthy “progressive” urbanites convinced that we can save the planet through individual action, smart urbanism, green finance, and technological innovation. Authors Vijay Kolinjivadi and Aaron Vansintjan challenge many of the popular ideas about environmentalism, showing that it is actually the sustainability class itself that is unsustainable.

The solutions they propose work to safeguard an elite minority, exclude billions of people, and ultimately hasten ecological breakdown, not reverse it. From Venice Beach, Los Angeles, to Neom in Saudi Arabia and beyond, the authors explore with biting humor how investors around the world are rushing to capitalize on going green. By contrast, real-world examples of movements for housing and food production, transport, and waste management demonstrate how ordinary people around the world are building a more ecological future by working together, against all odds. In doing so, they show us how sustainability can be reclaimed for everyone.

Sustainability isn’t about vibes and superficial green facades. It’s about building people power to reimagine the world.

About the author and the interviewer

Vijay Kolinjivadi is an assistant professor at the School for Community and Public Affairs at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. He is the co-author, with Aaron Vansintjan, of The Sustainability Class (The New Press). He's written a lot about the financialization of nature and its problems from a social justice lens and has been involved in anti-colonial climate justice activism in Montreal - especially in support of anti-gentrification campaigns and migrant justice. He's also a reporter for the Earth Negotiations Bulletin on UN environment-related topics. His work has been published in Al Jazeera, the Transnational Institute, the New Internationalist, and The Conversation.

Gert Van Hecken is an associate professor at the University of Antwerp and an associate researcher at Nitlapan-UCA, Nicaragua. His research and teaching focus on the politics of knowledge in global environmental policies, analysing processes of financialization of nature, green colonialism, and uneven development, with a focus on how communities and social movements resist these forces. He is particularly interested in the intersections of struggles for climate and social justice. He is actively involved in organizing within and across universities, with a strong focus on Palestine solidarity, and critically engages with the increasing corporatization of academia and its complicity in global injustices.