The “green economy” is increasingly being promoted as a way of creating socially and environmentally viable forms of development. Using the specific case of an attempted nongovernmental organization (NGO) intervention in a minor peasant community in the Recuay region of the Peruvian Andes, this article raises the question of how to get from green economy as a theory of development to green economy as a tool of governance. The article is based on 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork in the region. Peru has experienced a decade of rapid growth, but this impressive progress hides the fact that large numbers of rural poor have been left untouched by the national economic boom. An examination of the household economy through the idea of “ecologies of production” underscores the social, economic, and environmental embeddedness of Andean household economies and explores pathways to the market. Articulation and governance are the main concerns when it comes to understanding the ways in which the peasant economies are maintained through environmentally embedded social relations, which in turn govern how natural resources and ecosystems are managed. The article concludes by pointing to three issues of importance with regard to a green economy: (1) In conditions of poverty, economically risky investments are rarely sought; (2) matters of governance inform production; and (3) articulation to the market is crucial in terms of production input and output.