Download Sustainable Welfare

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
• Western welfare states developed in the post-war circumstances as a
‘class compromise’ or trade off 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
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
An empirical approximation: Operationalising
welfare and ecology performances of 28 European
countries (1995 and 2010)
1. Welfare: Decommodification: Overall expenditure for
social protection as % of GDP; stratification: Income
Inequality, GINI Index
2. Ecology: Performance:Electricity generated from
renewable sources as % of gross electricity consumption;
CO2 emissions per capita, National Ecological Footprints
Regulation: Environmental taxes as % of GDP, public
expenditures for environmental protection as % of GDP
• Sources: EUROSTAT, OECD, Worldbank, Global
Footprint Network
Koch, M & Fritz, M, Building the EcoSocial State: Do Welfare Regimes
Matter? Forthcoming in Journal of
Social Policy 43 (4)
Correspondence analysis: Positional Changes of Countries in the
λ =0.077
Eco-social Field
(21.5%)
2
ECOLOGY +
SE95
SE10
WELFARE +
DK10
AT10
NO95
FR95
AT95
FI95
DK95
NO10
CH95 PT10
0.5
SI95
PT95
TR10
FI10
SI10
IT10
DE95
NL10
ES10
FR10
ES95
BG95
DE10
IT95
EL10
UK95
TR95
CH10
EL95
SK95
RO95
LV95
LV10
0.5 SK10
λ 1 =0.148
(41.6%)
RO10
HU10
IE10
BG10
BE10
NL95
HU95
BE95
LT95
UK10
IE95
CZ10
EE10
PL10
LT10
CZ95
LU95
PL95
ECOLOGY -
WELFARE -
LU10
EE95
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
Ecological Sustainability, Social Inclusion and the Quality
of Life: A Global Perspective (138 countries in 2012)
Ecolog. Sustainability
Material
CO2
standard of
emisliving (GDP per sions in
capita, constant tons per
$ per year,
capita
purchasing power
parity (ppp))
Ecological
footprint
of production in
global ha
per capita
Ecological
footprint of
consumption in
global ha
per capita
Social Inclusion
Gini
Index for
income
inequality
Homicide
rates per
100,000
persons
Democracy
Index
Quality of Life
Freedom Life
House
ExpecIndex
tancy
Literacy
Rates
Subjective
Wellbeing
‘Poor’ (below
3200$;n=32; e.g.
Chad, Uganda)
0.2
1.2
1.3
41.1
8.3
4.0
2.5
58.9
58.3
4.2
1.7
1.8
1.8
41.6
13.2
5.1
3.1
68.6
84.8
5.1
4.4
2.6
2.8
42.0
9.8
5.4
3.3
73.0
92.6
5.4
9.8
5.6
5.3
32.2
2.8
7.8
5.5
79.0
98.8
6.5
18.2
6.7
7.1
37.2
1.4
5.5
3.2
78.8
95.5
7.0
‘Developing’
(3200-11000$;
n=33; e.g.
Ghana, Nigeria,
Bolivia, Ecuador)
‘Emerging’
(11000-21500$;
n=33; e.g.
Argentina,
China, Romania,
Venezuela)
‘Rich’ (2150050000$; n=32;
e.g. Australia,
Denmark,
Sweden, Japan,
Germany)
‘Over-
developed’
(+ 50000 $; n=8;
e.g. Qatar,
Kuwait, Norway,
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
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?
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: Sustainability and the Political Economy of Welfare
(edited by Max Koch and Oksana Mont)
• Twelve chapters in three main parts, mostly with
interdisciplinary authorship
PART I: PERSPECTIVES on SUSTAINABLE
WELFARE
• Chapter 1: The concept of sustainable welfare: Eric
Brandstedt and Maria Emmelin
• Chapter 2: Human needs, steady-state economics and
sustainable welfare: Max Koch and Hubert Buch-Hansen
• Chapter 3: Reconceptualizing prosperity: 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
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 welfare state in a shrinking
economy: the role of reduced work time: Oksana Mont
PART III: EMERGING PRACTICES OF
SUSTAINABLE WELFARE
• Chapter 9: Diversifying degrowth 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 and Håkan 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