What is (not) the point of just transition in food systems?

Food systems are confronted with a low-carbon transition challenge. The need for significant emission reductions in industrial food systems implies significant systemic transformations in food production, processing, and consumption. The wide-reaching impacts of such transformations have evoked public discussion and academic research on just transition in food systems. The undisputable legitimacy of the idea of just transition makes it an attractive concept for all food system actors who might be affected by low-carbon transition policies in direct and indirect ways. Some of the claims that are being made are warranted claims for justice, some merely defend the achieved privileges and benefits. In addition, existing food injustices have evoked suggestions that just transition must be about making the food system overall just and sustainable. All these calls complexify low-carbon transition. How to make sense of these partly conflicting claims for justice and just transition in food systems?peerReviewe

Täsmäratkaisuja kestävään tulevaisuuteen : suosituksia planetaarisen hyvinvoinnin tukemiseen poliittisessa ohjelmatyössä

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Against human exceptionalism: environmental ethics and the machine question

This paper offers an approach for addressing the question of how to deal with artificially intelligent entities, such as robots, mindclones, androids, or any other entity having human features. I argue that to this end we can draw on the insights offered by environmental ethics, suggesting that artificially intelligent entities ought to be considered not as entities that are extraneous to the human social environment, but as forming an integral part of that environment. In making this argument I take a radical strand of environmental ethics, namely, Deep Ecology, which sees all entities as existing in an inter-relational environment: I thus reject any “firm ontological divide in the field of existence” (Fox W, Deep ecology: A new philosophy of our time? In: Light A, Rolston III H (eds) Environmental ethics: An anthologyBlackwell, Oxford, 252–261, 2003) and on that basis I introduce principles of biospherical egalitarianism, diversity, and symbiosis (Naess A, Inquiry 16(1):95–100, 1973). Environmental ethics makes the case that humans ought to “include within the realms of recognition and respect the previously marginalized and oppressed” ((Gottlieb RS, Introduction. In: Merchant C (ed) Ecology. Humanity Books, Amherst, pp ix–xi, 1999)). I thus consider (a) whether artificially intelligent entities can be described along these lines, as somehow “marginalized” or “oppressed,” (b) whether there are grounds for extending to them the kind of recognition that such a description would seem to call for, and (c) whether Deep Ecology could reasonably be interpreted in such a way that it apply to artificially intelligent entities.This paper is part of the project ALLIES (Artificially Intelligent Entities: Their Legal Status in the Future) that has received funding from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement n◦ 600371, el Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (COFUND2014-51509) el Ministerio de Educación, cultura y Deporte (CEI-15-17) and Banco Santander.

Mobilising Consumers for Food Waste Reduction in Finnish Media Discourse

Raippalinna explores how consumers are mobilised for food waste reduction in media discourse. Food waste reduction initiatives are often criticised for putting the responsibility on individual consumers, but little research exists on the mobilisation of consumers in actual contexts. Through critical discourse analysis of media texts, Raippalinna investigates how the food waste problem and consumers are constructed in relation to each other in Finlands leading newspaper Helsingin Sanomat 2010–2017. The analysis demonstrates that the discourses of consumer mobilisation appear mostly as consumer education where the consumer’s role is to manage individual consumption and household practices. The theoretical framework combines governmentality studies with a practice theoretical approach on consumption. Raippalinna discusses if and how media discourse can contribute to a transformation of food (waste) related practices.peerReviewe