Sustainable Welfare : Background, objectives, outcomes MAX KOCH.

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

3. Sources: EUROSTAT, OECD, Worldbank, Global Footprint Network

BE95

DK95

DE95

IE95

EL95

ES95

FR95

IT95

LU95

NL95

AT95

PT95

FI95

SE95

UK95

CZ95

EE95

LV95

LT95HU95

PL95

RO95

SI95

SK95

NO95

CH95 TR95

BG95

BE10

DK10

DE10

IE10

EL10

ES10FR10IT10

LU10

NL10

AT10

PT10

FI10

SE10

UK10

CZ10 EE10

LV10

LT10

HU10

PL10

RO10

SI10

SK10

NO10CH10

TR10

BG10

0.5

0.5

λ1=0.148(41.6%)

λ2=0.077(21.5%)

ECOLOGY +

ECOLOGY -WELFARE -

WELFARE +

Correspondence analysis: Positional Changes of Countries in the Eco-social Field

Koch, M & Fritz, M, Building the Eco-Social State: Do Welfare Regimes Matter? Forthcoming in Journal of Social Policy 43 (4)

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 Social Inclusion Quality of LifeMaterial standard of living (GDP per

capita, constant $ per year, purchasing power parity (ppp))

CO2 emis-sions in tons per capita

Ecological footprint of produc-tion in global ha per capita

Ecological footprint of consump-tion in global ha per capita

Gini Index for income inequality

Homicide rates per 100,000 persons

Demo-cracy Index

Freedom House Index

Life Expec-tancy

Literacy Rates

Sub-jective Well-being

‘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

‘Developing’ (3200-11000$; n=33; e.g. Ghana, Nigeria, Bolivia, Ecuador)

1.7 1.8 1.8 41.6 13.2 5.1 3.1 68.6 84.8 5.1

‘Emerging’(11000-21500$; n=33; e.g. Argentina, China, Romania, Venezuela)

4.4 2.6 2.8 42.0 9.8 5.4 3.3 73.0 92.6 5.4

‘Rich’ (21500-

50000$; n=32; e.g. Australia, Denmark, Sweden, Japan, Germany)

9.8 5.6 5.3 32.2 2.8 7.8 5.5 79.0 98.8 6.5

‘Over-developed’

(+ 50000 $; n=8; e.g. Qatar, Kuwait, Norway, Switzerland)

18.2 6.7 7.1 37.2 1.4 5.5 3.2 78.8 95.5 7.0

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