A
Blue-green alliance describes an
alliance between
political parties and other organizations.
It has several different meanings that may be evidence that
green politics is "neither
left nor
right", and can ally with either in a
given context.
- The Green Party of
Ontario and to a lesser extent, the Green Party of Canada are considered
"blue-green" because they are more economically centrist or even
right wing. See Blue Greens.
- On 13 June, 2007,
the Irish Green Party / Comhaontas
Glas agreed to a coalition with Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats, going into
government for the first time in their history. However, although
they are a centre-right party, Fianna Fáil use green (Irelands
National Colour) to represent
themselves, the PD's do use blue, but they are economic liberals.
- The now defunct Progressive Green
Party was a political group with a strong environmental focus.
It was closely aligned with the centre right National Party. The "blue-green"
Progressive Greens were contrasted with the better-known
"red-green" Green
Party, which generally takes a left-wing position. (A third
group, the Green Society, rejected
both "blue-green" and "red-green" politics.)
- In the
context of United
Kingdom
politics it refers to a possible alliance on
certain issues between the Conservative Party and ecologists or
environmentalists such as those found in the UK Green Party. This
alliance may occur as a result of the Conservative view that
market economics help preserve the
environment and a tendency toward Deep
England views of pastoralism, and the Green view that profit is not anywhere near as much of a
threat to natural systems as debt. However, the
UK's various green parties are usually considered to be leftist
greens, and coalitions with the Tories such as on Leeds City Council have proved unpopular
with the parties membership and voters
- In the
context of the politics of the United States
, the term refers to alliances between labor union and environmentalists, and sometimes
specifically to cooperation between American Greens and blue-collar labor activists. The
core issue of this alliance is opposition to globalization and to free trade, and it was significant in the
candidacy of Ralph Nader in the 2000 Presidential election,
as Nader was endorsed by some labor organizations (the overwhelming
majority of labor unions and environmental organizations are loyal
to the Democratic
Party and endorsed Al Gore). It also
continues to be used more generally to refer to any efforts at
coalition-building between environmenalists and labor, as with the
famous "teamsters and turtles" politics of the WTO Meeting
of 1999 and the continuing anti-globalization movement. One
such example is the Blue Green Alliance, a grouping of officials,
staff, and activists from organized labor and major environmental
organizations representing more than nine million members,
including the nation's largest union and largest environmental
organization. This group has been very active in promoting a
labor-friendly plan to stop global warming. Other relevant
organizations include the Alliance
for the Sustainable Jobs and the Environment and the Apollo Alliance.
See also
Norwegian government initiated a study on research in the
agricultural and fisheries/aquaculture sector in 2003, with the
objective of creating a cross-cutting, interdisiplinary research
organinization.. The work, concluded in a white paper " The Blue
-Green Food Alliance", leading to the creation of the merged
research institute Nofima.
References