The river runs through it:Naturalising social policy and welfare

This paper reconceptualises social rights through an integration of human welfare and environmental welfare. This is essential if we are making a case for the radical policy changes required to respond to the current environmental crisis, such as maximum living standards and maximum income. As living standards and the demand for social rights increase across the world, this will lead to a concomitant pressure on nature. A maximum living standard based on an ecological footprint is a starting point to think about the need to grant legal rights and resources to nature. Following Polanyi, both humans and the environment are fictitious commodities; we therefore need to rethink our approach to social policy and decommodification to include the environment. This requires approaching social rights from an ecological perspective and breaking the anthropocentric barriers welfare policies create between society and nature. Here, we draw on the work of Michel Serres on the natural contract in order to rethink the content of the social contract and develop an argument in favour of decommodifying nature. Using rivers as legal entities in New Zealand as our example, we illustrate how this theoretical approach could provide the foundations for sustainable eco-social policies in general and maximum living standards in particular

Low Carbon Energy Transitions in the Nordic Countries: Evidence from the Environmental Kuznets Curve

Low carbon energy transitions are important to mitigate climate change, reduce air pollution, and reduce fossil fuel resource depletion. The Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden) are seen as leaders in low carbon energy transitions. This paper provides a comparative data analysis of low carbon energy transitions in the Nordic countries from the 1960s to 2015, and assesses evidence of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC). The paper finds that the EKC has been observed in Denmark, Iceland, and Sweden in terms of total CO2 emissions, but not in Norway and Finland. For per capita CO2 emissions, there is evidence for the EKC in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, and Sweden, but not for Norway. For energy use per capita, the EKC is only observed for Denmark, while improvements are needed for the other countries. Norway is an outlier, in comparison with the other Nordic countries, hence the country should implement more stringent climate change mitigation policies to reduce its emissions. Overall, the research suggests that the Nordic countries, particularly Denmark, Iceland, and Sweden, can provide valuable lessons for national, regional, and global low carbon energy transitions

The stuttering energy transition in Germany: Wind energy policy and feed-in tariff lock-in.

This article aims to examine whether the formulation of specific low carbon policy such as the feed-in tariff for wind energy in Germany can partly be a barrier to a comprehensive energy transition (Energiewende). Despite their short and medium-term success, these policies could create a long-term lock-in if they are formulated in a way that leads to a stagnation of systems innovation. The research finds that while the share of wind energy has increased rapidly over time, the feed-in-tariff and other low carbon policies and incentives have not been sufficient to achieve a socio-technical regime transition in Germany yet. We suggest that the German feed-in-tariff has incorporated wind energy (a niche-innovation) and wind energy actors (pathway newcomers) into a slightly modified socio-technical regime that is rather similar to the earlier ‘fossil fuel dominant’ socio-technical regime

Internalizing animals and ecosystems in social citizenship and social policy:From political community to political country

The aim of this editorial is to explore, conceptualize, and research the need to internalize both animals and ecosystems in our understanding of social citizenship and social policy. This editorial should be seen as a brief overview of the themes that should be covered in the contributions to the Special Issue, “Internalizing Animals and Ecosystems in Social Citizenship and Social Policy: From Political Community to Political Country”. This Special Issue argues the importance of integrating animals and ecosystems as a way to re-politicize humans’ social relation with both animals and our ecosystem as in sustainable development and social policy. If environmental policy becomes social policy, we would re-construct social citizenship to include consideration for animals and ecosystems as integral part of social policy. This expansion in scope is a progression from seeing humans as part of a political community to becoming more involved in their political country. This aligns with the concept of Country—an all-encompassing term in Australia, involving a people’s territory, land, water, biological resources, the complex obligations and relationships involved

The Environmental Paradox of the Welfare State: The Dynamics of Sustainability

Thus far, there has been a reluctance to instigate a dialogue and engage with the tensions between two literatures with significant insights for each other. The first is the literature on the fiscal sustainability of welfare states, which is invariably predicated upon future growth primarily to manage demographic changes. The second is the post-growth literature, which has enjoyed a renaissance in recent years due to an environmental critique of economic growth. Both literatures contain implications for the analysis of welfare state sustainability. The primary contribution of this paper will be to explore the intractability of the tensions between these discourses and the difficulty of mapping out a progressive policy direction in the twenty-first century which meets both our environmental and social sensibilities. It is claimed that in the post-industrial world the fiscal sustainability of welfare capitalism is dependent upon public expenditure financed indirectly an environmentally unsustainable growth dynamic, but that ironically any conflagration of public welfare programmes is likely to be counter-productive as the welfare state is able to promote de-carbonisation strategies and notions of the public good as well as promoting monetarily and ecologically efficient public welfare services