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Sustainable Welfare : Background, objectives, outcomes

Sustainable Welfare : Background, objectives, outcomes. Max Koch. Welfare and Sustainability: the need for theoretical integration. Welfare is commenly conceptualized in terms of equity, highlighting distributive issues in growing economies

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Sustainable Welfare : Background, objectives, outcomes

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  1. Sustainable Welfare: Background, objectives, outcomes Max Koch

  2. Welfare and Sustainability: the need for theoretical integration • Welfare is commenly conceptualized in terms of equity, highlighting distributive issues in growing economies • Western welfare states developed in the post-war circumstances as a ‘class compromise’ or tradeoff between management and labour • Sustainability researchers point to the evidence that material Western welfare standards cannot be generalized to the rest of the finite planet • ‘Brundlandt report’ on Sustainable development: meeting the needs of the present generation without undermining the needs of future generations • Yet key welfare notions such as human need are often absent in sustainability discourses: Nowhere does the Brundlandt report define what a need is

  3. Key issues in existing research on sustainable welfare: Synergies and conflicts in existing (welfare) states and the role of GDP growth • Ecological modernisation or green growth discourses believe in the institutional capacity of existing welfare states to also develop the ‘green state’ • Social-democratic welfare states are seen as especially well placed to manage the intersection of social and environmental policies (‘synergy’ hypothesis) in growing economies and to perform best in ecological terms • Growth-critical approaches expect competition and conflict between welfare and sustainability, within and beyond the state. Ecological performance is believed to largely depend on GDP growth

  4. An empirical approximation: Operationalising welfare and ecology performances of 28 European countries (1995 and 2010) • Welfare: Decommodification: Overall expenditureforsocialprotectionas % of GDP; stratification: Income Inequality, GINI Index • Ecology: Performance:Electricity generated from renewable sources as % of gross electricity consumption; CO2 emissions per capita, National EcologicalFootprintsRegulation: Environmental taxes as % of GDP, publicexpendituresfor environmental protectionas % of GDP • Sources: EUROSTAT, OECD, Worldbank, Global Footprint Network

  5. Koch, M & Fritz, M, Building the Eco-Social State: Do Welfare Regimes Matter? Forthcoming in Journal of Social Policy 43 (4) Correspondence analysis: Positional Changes of Countries in the Eco-social Field

  6. Towards an Eco-social State? • No quasi-automatic development of the green state on top of already existing welfare institutions: representatives of social-democratic welfare regime are spread across relatively well, medium and badly performing ‘eco-states’ • This does not exclude that social-democratic and market coordinating institutions indeed facilitate the building of the green state. In this case, this potential would need to be actualised much more • The opposite to the ‘synergy’-hypothesis cannot be excluded: that the dialectics of real-existing welfare state lies in ‘enabling’ vast parts of the population to lead ecologically harmful lifestyles

  7. Ecological Sustainability, Social Inclusion and the Quality of Life: A Global Perspective (138 countries in 2012)

  8. Results • Strong association between ‘economic development’ (GDP) and ecologically (un)sustainable performances: the richer a country the more CO2 it emits and the bigger its ecological footprints • No empirical evidence for an absolute decoupling of GDP growth, material resource use and carbon emissions (which would be necessary to meet IPCC targets) • Social inclusion and Quality of Life indicators increase with economic development but do no substantially affect sustainability performances.Subjective wellbeing increases with economic development! • The ‘overdeveloped’ countries are a peculiar mix of democratic and authoritarian countries

  9. Purpose and objectives (for project team, workshop and beyond) • How can human well-being, social welfare and ecological sustainability concerns be reconciled? • How does the research agenda need to develop to respond to the challenges of ‘sustainable welfare’? • What are the most important practical steps in order to move towards sustainable welfare societies?

  10. Project team and main outcome • Project group: ‘Welfare’ and ‘Sustainability’ researchers from five Lund University faculties and ten departments • Main outcome: An edited volume to be published in the Routledge Studies in Ecological Economics series in 2016: Sustainabilityand the PoliticalEconomyof Welfare (edited by Max Koch and Oksana Mont) • Twelvechapters in threemain parts, mostlywithinterdisciplinaryauthorship

  11. PART I: PERSPECTIVES on SUSTAINABLE WELFARE • Chapter 1: The concept of sustainable welfare: Eric Brandstedtand Maria Emmelin • Chapter 2: Human needs, steady-state economics and sustainable welfare: Max Koch and Hubert Buch-Hansen • Chapter 3: Reconceptualizingprosperity: Some reflections on the impact of globalisation on health and welfare Maria Emmelin and Kate Soper • Chapter 4: The future isn’t what it used to be: On the role and function of assumptions in visions of the future: Eric Brandstedt and Oksana Mont

  12. PART II: POLICIES TOWARDS ESTABLISHING SUSTAINABLE WELFARE • Chapter 5: The global political economy from ‘green’ economic perspectives: Eric Clark and Jamil Khan • Chapter 6: Does climate change generate a new generation driver of social risks: Roger Hildingsson, Håkan Johansson and Jamil Khan • Chapter 7: Welfare state recalibrations and eco-social policies: The case of personal carbon emission allowances: Max Koch and Roger Hildingsson • Chapter 8: Sustaining a welfarestate in a shrinkingeconomy: the roleofreduced work time: Oksana Mont

  13. PART III: EMERGING PRACTICES OF SUSTAINABLE WELFARE • Chapter 9: Diversifyingdegrowth and sustainable welfare: Carbon emission reduction and wealth and income distribution in France, the US and China:Annika Pissin, Erin Kennedy and Hubert Buch-Hansen • Chapter 10: Experiences of social economics and degrowth: Eric Clark andHåkan Johansson • Chapter 11: What is possible, what is imaginable? Stories about low carbon life in China: Erin Kennedy and Annika Pissin • Chapter 12: The interaction of policy and experience: An “alternative hedonist” optic’: Kate Soper

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