“Hemp can be used to make over 50,000 products.”
This popular claim has become a cornerstone of modern hemp advocacy — symbolic of the plant’s vast potential and re-emergence as a climate solution. But in a time defined by ecological overshoot and planetary boundaries, such sweeping narratives deserve closer scrutiny. This article takes a deeper look at how hemp — and cannabis more broadly — is positioned within sustainability discourse today, and whether the stories we tell align with the planetary reality we face.
The hype began in 1985 with Jack Herer’s The Emperor Wears No Clothes, which reignited hemp’s legacy in the U.S. and catalyzed a European movement. To bring Cannabis sativa L. back into industrial use, the plant was rebranded as “hemp,” deliberately distancing it from its psychoactive counterpart. This separation helped to revive hemp — but at the cost of fragmenting public understanding of the broader cannabis plant.
Now, nearly 40 years on, hemp is hailed as a multipurpose climate ally: carbon-negative building material, superfood, soil remediator. The claims are mostly true — but rarely contextualized. And many apply equally to the rest of the cannabis family, still caught on the web of prohibition, stigma, policy limbo, and systemic injustice.
To ground this discussion, we must zoom out. In 2009, the Stockholm Resilience Centre introduced the Planetary Boundaries framework, led by Johan Rockström. It defines nine Earth system processes essential to life as we know it — from climate and biodiversity to freshwater use and synthetic chemicals. Today, six of these boundaries have already been crossed.
By 2019, the European Green Deal incorporated these scientific thresholds, and hemp was promoted by several NGOs as a tool to meet sustainability goals. Yet in attempting to meet those goals, the hemp industry itself risks veering into unintended greenwashing — especially when it fails to acknowledge the plant’s full geopolitical and historical complexity.
If we want hemp to thrive as a climate solution, we must also embrace its cannabis heritage. Long before “hemp” entered industrial vocabularies, cannabis cultures thrived across Asia, Latin America, and Africa. These regions possess deeply adapted, climate-resilient genetics — now sidelined due to global prohibition and the legacy of the War on Drugs.
While North American and European hemp varieties have flourished, they’ve done so at the expense of original genetics — genetics that are better suited to many environments and already deeply embedded in local traditions. Prohibition has devastated communities across Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Colombia, and South Africa, where cannabis once supported rural economies and cultural practices.
Mid-April marks Earth Day. One of the Netherlands’ largest hemp farmers noted he sowed earlier than ever this year — the result of prolonged drought and unusually high temperatures. Meanwhile in Pakistan, a professor reports that imported North American hemp seeds failed under local conditions. Despite government interest in hemp’s economic promise, prohibition prevents farmers from cultivating local cannabis varieties, even though they grow wild across the region. The risks of repression remain high — for plants and people alike.
If we want to truly move toward an Earth-supportive cannabis economy, we must shift away from extractive capitalism, acknowledge past biopiracy, and allow each region to move forward with its own genetics. Only then can hemp advocacy become a genuinely green mission.
As the author of H is for HEMP, I had to spend two years developing hemp paper — one of those “50,000 products” that didn’t exist when I needed it. If we want to walk our talk, we must take an all-inclusive approach and reunite hemp with cannabis. Anything less continues to fuel armed conflict, black markets, and accelerate the overshoot of planetary boundaries.
As a Climate Impact Storyteller, Maren Krings leverages her expertise in photography, filmmaking, content writing, and keynote speaking to highlight the potential of hemp for climate resilience and social justice. She holds a B.F.A. in Photography from the Savannah College of Art & Design, a degree in Climate Change Studies and Environmental Science from the University of Exeter, and multiple certifications in related fields.
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