Socio-ecological Transformation Research Articles

A climate fit for capitalism: ordoliberalism’s political ecology and German environmental politics

ABSTRACT This article critically examines contemporary German environmental politics through its connections with ordoliberalism. Ordoliberalism is a branch of neoliberalism that prescribes a strong state to structure and optimize competition within a ‘social market economy.’ The article shows that ordoliberalism was built on a distinct political ecology that frames nature and the environment as potential sites of state intervention. It argues that ordoliberal political ecology can be made compatible with ostensibly opposed programs, including what we call ‘fossil ordoliberalism,’ ‘green ordoliberalism,’ and the potential for ‘ordoliberal geoengineering.’ Amidst the climate crisis, this ordoliberal malleability is exemplified by parties from the center-left Greens and center-right Liberals (FDP) to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). Yet even in its progressive guise of a ‘social-ecological market economy,’ ordoliberal approaches will hit the ‘glass ceiling’ to socio-ecological transformation due to their technocratic orientation, democratic antipathies, and foundational commitment to market competition.

Community Renewable Energy Ecologies (CREE): Rhizomatic renewable energy development and experimental–experiential emancipation

The embodied multispecies injustices of the so-called renewable energy development foreground the vital need for radically different forms of forming renewable energy. However, very few specific alternative approaches have been proposed in literature, in line with a deficit of post-critical or post-humanist research on ‘renewable energy’ within, and outside, human geography. This paper concerns, delves deeper in, expands and refines an approach for post-capitalist renewable energy development published, called Community Renewable Energy Ecologies (CREE). It advances an ontological reframing of ‘renewable energy’, arguing that renewable energies need to be rethought as affective spatiotemporal relations between humans and the rest of the web of life that affirm and enable difference, autonomy and more flourishing socio-natural assemblages. Also, inspired by Deleuze and Guattari, it sketches rhizomatic renewable energy development for CREE, focusing in more detail on, amongst other things, relationships, alliances, the state's role, learning, scaling out and politics. Rhizomatic renewable energy development consists in a rhizome-like form of forming renewable energies and new socio-ecological arrangements, facilitating deterritorialization in existing socio-natural assemblages and their reterritorialization in new forms. It is constituted by three key features: rhizomatic alliances, minoritarian becomings and emancipatory experimental ethico-politics and rhizomatic learning. Community Renewable Energy Ecologies are re-envisioned as nomadic multiplicities involved in open and immanent post-capitalist experiments of rhizomatic renewable energy development able to nourish emancipation and broader socio-ecological transformation. Finally, the paper invites discussion and debate for imagining alternative renewable energy development futures beyond capitalism and how to facilitate them, in the spirit of ‘staying with the trouble’.

Transformation Processes toward Low-Impact Pleasure

Taking Karen Blixen’s short story “Babette’s Feast” (1950) as the starting point of reflection, this article examines the role of culinary pleasure in relation to social and environmental transformations. Combining literary criticism and food studies, the article explores the transformative potential of culinary art both as it is represented in the literary text and as it might affect people in real life. While Blixen in her story makes the case for culinary pleasure as an experience of abundance and extravagance, the article argues that we need to rethink pleasure according to sustainability criteria, including frugal practices. By presenting a method that engages in processes of change by both examining a literary food text and reflecting on a cooking workshop as a speculative exercise on how to create low-impact pleasure, this contribution seeks to introduce an integrated approach to literary criticism, food studies, and socioecological transformation.

Clusters in industrial ecosystems – new innovative trends in the development of post-war Ukraine

The article discusses the importance of creating and developing clusters in the context of the digital economy and socio-ecological transformation. The main goal is to unite competencies and resources through common strategies and projects to increase the innovative potential of clusters and their participants. The article emphasizes the need to build and support industrial-technological partnerships worldwide as a key task for industrial clusters. The importance of developing the production sector and supporting one's own technological level for the development of the economy and ensuring national well-being, particularly in Ukraine, is also highlighted in the article.Different ways and motives are proposed for strategic partnerships between clusters, including cooperation in management training, identification of international innovations, exploration of new markets, and initiation of international scientific research projects.The need to create a professional management team of clusters was emphasized in times of digitalization, economic and socio-ecological transformation, as only clusters cover various areas of knowledge and will closely cooperate with other market participants. Moreover, increasing the innovation potential of clusters and their participants is becoming more and more important. This facilitates the pooling of competences and resources through joint strategies and joint projects.The importance of identifying structural gaps in industrial ecosystems to maximize the benefits of potential collaborations and promote innovative policies for upgrading business processes and equipment is considered. The geographical boundaries of the industrial ecosystem are determined by the interdependencies that connect organizations within its boundaries and new ties that strengthen beyond its boundaries. Industrial ecosystems are defined as multi-level production systems that include heterogeneous agents involved in value chains, as well as those who contribute to the realization of their potential and the country's productive capacity. The value chain can be divided into five main types of activities: inbound logistics, production, outbound logistics, marketing and sales, and after-sales services, and may also contain secondary or supporting activities that contribute to the effectiveness of the main activities. The article emphasizes that defining the real boundaries of industrial ecosystems is critical for governments interested in supporting them and transforming them into closed-loop innovation systems.

Intersectional perspectives on land relations of oil palm plantations: A decolonial feminist approach on Indonesia's bioeconomy

Indonesia's oil palm plantations, a critical sector for the country's bioeconomy, have attracted significant attention, especially due to the climate crisis. While the government sought to expand the national industry through boosting biodiesel policy, the European Union (EU) imposes a ban on imports of deforestation-linked commodities, including palm oil. Facing this development, this article seeks to analyse Indonesia's oil palm plantations from the perspective of land relations. Current research suggests that state incentives for a societal transformation towards a bioeconomy tend to exacerbate rather than reduce existing global social inequalities in the agricultural sector. While this critique is built mainly on studies that focus on land-labour relations in a broader way, the studies fall short of developing a more complex and sufficiently historicised perspective on the (re-)construction and (re-)configurations of intersecting categories of inequalities. Drawing on decolonial feminist approach on intersectionality, this article attempts to develop an analytical framework that considers the intersection of inequalities as historically mutually constructing social relations for the study of changing land relations in the context of the expansion of agro-industrial biomass production. The article shows how control over land access and use is reconfigured, perpetuating intersectional social inequalities. This paper argues that a just socio-ecological transformation must incorporate these complexities of social inequalities in order to change them. The aim of the paper is to urge the necessity of intersectional perspectives on social changes in the context of the bioeconomy.

The European Union’s roles in global atmospheric governance: evolving towards a ‘spacifier’?

ABSTRACTThis contribution examines how the roles of the European Union (EU) in the governance of the atmosphere – the global ozone and climate regimes – as a contested Global Space have evolved over time. To do so, it first combines theoretical considerations regarding foreign policy roles and global justice. It then traces EU role conceptions and role performance in these regimes from their inception until today. The article argues that, as the two regimes have matured, the EU has increasingly been adopting the role of a ‘spacifier’, pursuing a substantive justice position dedicated to fully protecting the atmosphere (‘leaving the space in peace’) while actively striving to reconcile other actors’ positions. This role embodies the EU’s simultaneous quest for embracing the European Green Deal’s socio-ecological transformation agenda while becoming a geopolitical actor. It can be interpreted as an expression of ‘principled pragmatism’ under the conditions of the Anthropocene.

Sustainability and the politics of the body in alternative food consumption: An embodied materialist perspective

Health is a key dimension of contemporary food consumption. This preoccupation is beginning to overlap with ecological concerns, as healthy diets are said to largely correspond with sustainable diets. Nevertheless, this link remains rather vague and under-researched in practice. This article adopts an ‘embodied materialist’ perspective to inquire into how the health–sustainability nexus is articulated in the everyday labour of people engaging in alternative food consumption. The interviews, carried out in Milan (Italy), suggest that focusing on health might not always be straightforwardly effective for the promotion of deep and systemic changes. The analysis finds three ways in which the health–sustainability nexus is articulated in daily life. If framed within the dominant articulation of labour and value, health is an individualistic preoccupation with limited potential for socio-ecological transformation. When food labour is guided by the very different logic of care, which emphasises relationality, fragility and the search for a shared wellbeing, more ecological practices emerge, but with some ambivalent implications especially with regards to social justice. Collective engagement in alternative food networks politicises the body more deeply, making it a concrete site of struggle against unsustainable food regimes.

Revisiting the Thoughts of José Manuel Naredo, a Pioneer of Ecological Economics in Spain. A Contribution to the Debates on the Need for a Radical Societal Change

In a time imbued with civilisation crisis, José Manuel Naredo's work is of particular relevance. Naredo, one of the most prestigious economists in Spain and a pioneer of ecological economics, first published his most popular book ( La economía en evolución. Historia y perspectivas de las categorías básicas del pensamiento económico) in 1987. This article reviews its most recent and updated version released in 2015. Beyond a brilliant criticism of neoclassical economics, he discusses the underlying ideology and implications of the notion of economic system uncritically endorsed by most schools of economic thought. Transcending the usual dichotomy between ‘orthodox’ and ‘heterodox’ economics, Naredo calls for an economic transition built on the integration of different kinds of scientific knowledge as well as other intuitive, metaphysical and ethical fields in favour of a truly inclusive economics. This is, he warns us, a sine qua non for a socioecological transformation to flourish.

Sustainable socio-ecological transformations in agriculture: cases from South Asia

ABSTRACT Climate change is becoming a defining factor for communities in South Asia. Forming one-fifth of the world population, the region increasingly faces climate-induced disasters such as floods, droughts, heatwaves, cyclones etc. This region also has one of the world’s poorest people who struggle to cope with the rapidly changing climatic conditions. Agriculture still employs many people in the region, one of the worst-hit sectors. Agriculture will become untenable in some parts of the region due to climate change. Monsoon patterns have changed, and agriculture does not guarantee sustainable income for the vast majority. Many climate change adaptations have been initiated in the region in response to the threat of climate change. Scholars and practitioners feel that these adaptations must be transformative to be effective. In this paper, we examine eight such adaptations from three South Asian Countries – Bangladesh, India, and Nepal, from the lens of transformative adaptation. We found that no single adaptation initiative meets all the criteria for sustainable socio-ecological transformations. However, there is a significant overlap between different typologies of transformation as envisaged in the paper and literature. We conclude that the concept of socio-ecological transformation is new for South Asia, so integrating it into the programmes and policies is the need of the hour.

Limits to the Anthropocene: geopolitical conflict or cooperative governance?

In the Anthropocene the world is facing an acceleration of human growth and its impact on nature. The expansionist world order which emerged from Europe since colonial times is reaching multiple limits (environmental, economic, social, political and scientific-technical), increasing marginal costs and risks which trigger multiple crises, conflicts and catastrophes that challenge this world order. Alternative futures range from a collapse of human civilization to geopolitical power competition and conflict between rivals to disruptive technical innovations and systemic transformation of the economy and society within natural boundaries. In response to geopolitical conflicts and their consequences, such as climate change and the Russia-Ukraine war, efforts of cooperative governance can help to mitigate, adapt to and manage complex crisis landscapes. Instead of an epochal turn (Zeitenwende) for arms race and war, more promising are sustainable climate protection and a peaceful energy transition within planetary boundaries. To further prevent escalating and mutually enforcing crisis dynamics and geopolitical conflicts in the Anthropocene, cooperative governance needs to adjust to the world's complexity and move from a negative nexus of problems to a positive nexus of solutions. The interaction between geopolitics and governance and the transition from risk cascades to synergies is discussed for the energy-security nexus and the climate-conflict-migration nexus. Energy conflicts can be contained by diminishing land competition and biodiversity loss, as well as risky dependencies on strategic raw materials and conflict minerals. Measures for a sustainable energy transition include energy efficiency and conservation, renewable energy and decarbonization, a circular economy and nature-based solutions. To prevent risk multiplication in the climate-conflict-migration nexus, synergies in climate, migration and security policy facilitate integrative solutions for a socio-ecological transformation based on mitigation and adaptation, conflict resolution and environmental peacebuilding, aiming for a mutual enforcement of sustainability and peace.

Energy, power, and greenhouse gas emissions for future transition scenarios

Under the pressure for new policy and socio-ecological transformation, this work evaluates the future (2020–2050) GHG emissions, considering a likely range of electric energy growth scenarios in the world’s current energy system. An integrated model accounts for different penetration strategies of renewable energies, technological advancements, and variations in the fuel/renewables mix. Data of actual renewable/fossil share, GHG emission factors, and technology indicators, as plant load factors, were assumed from the Italian scenario. The study reveals that regardless of the current electric energy demand for the future, the transition to a massive penetration share of renewables as unique GHG reduction strategy will only partially abate the level of GHGs, and the zero-emission targets are definitely not feasible. A relevant result is the evaluation of future green power capacity, to satisfy the worldwide electrical energy demand. The scenarios foresee an unprecedented rate of the installation of generation plants from renewable sources, accompanied by a steep year-by-year variation of the required power capacity in operation. This prediction, in the temporal front chosen for this survey, poses the problem of the technological readiness of many conversion technologies, which makes it difficult to guarantee that renewable penetration programs can be matched with their technical feasibility.

Time to care—Care for time—How spending more time for care than consumption helps to mitigate climate change

Mitigating climate change requires urgent reductions in emissions. Demand-side measures focus on footprints (direct and indirect emissions) of consumption. Analyzing time use brings a novel perspective to discuss the carbon implications of everyday life and the potentials and limitations for decarbonizing consumption. In this study, we show how time-use studies can serve as a bridging concept between sustainability studies and the analysis of human wellbeing for all. We introduce a functional time-use perspective differentiating personal, committed, contracted, and free time. We calculate the average carbon intensity of everyday activities in Austria in 2010 combining the Austrian Time-use Survey and Austrian Household Budget Survey with Eora-MRIO. We find that these activities differ widely in carbon intensity. Personal time is relatively low-carbon intense, while free time activities show large variation in terms of CO2e footprint/hour. The traditional gendered division of labor shapes the time-use patterns of women and men, with implications for their carbon footprints. Reassessing and sharing unpaid reproductive caring activities are the basis for solving some urgent ecological and social problems. The way household members use their time, the resource demand of households and infrastructure, and the services provided by communities entail each other. Time use, time prosperity, and especially time scarcity determine our quality of life. Caring activities as “time to care” play a crucial role in pathways toward socio-ecological transformation and gender equality. Further research in the field of time, care, and gender studies could be based on this framework and add new perspectives on research on sustainable development.

Organizing for transformation: post-growth in International Political Economy

The global political economy is organized around the pursuit of economic growth. Yet scholars of International Political Economy (IPE) have been surprisingly slow to address its wide-ranging implications and, thus, to advance debates about post-growth alternatives. The premise of the article is that for IPE to deepen its grasp of the escalation of contemporary socioecological crises both analytically and normatively, it needs to put the growth question front and center. To problematize the pursuit of economic growth from an IPE perspective, we bring together research on green growth, post-growth/degrowth, sustainability transitions and socioecological transformation. More specifically, we develop an analytical framework that revolves around four pathways of reorganization toward socioecological sustainability: (1) modification, (2) substitution, (3) conversion and (4) prefiguration. We use illustrative examples from the plastics and food sectors to show how the post-growth pathways of conversion and prefiguration could interact to trigger change for sustainability. Notably, our discussion reveals that conversion, which requires a strong state for developing post-growth institutions, is the least traveled pathway in both sectors. This insight points to a strategic priority for post-growth proponents and an urgent research agenda for IPE scholars.

Brazilian Corporate Sustainability Regulation in the Green Transition: Missing the Forest for the Trees

The article describes and analyses new regulatory and governance rules regarding corporate sustainability regulation in Brazil, including the new provisions by the capital markets, the financial authorities, and private frameworks. This is done through the theoretical lens of a critical approach to socio-ecological transformation, shedding light on the broader context in which the institutional innovations take place: the political project of relying on finance to guide the transformation and the current transformations (i.e., the dismantling) of the traditional apparatus for environmental protection. In so doing, the contributions are twofold: on an empirical level, the article presents an overview of new rules regarding corporate governance and climate change in Brazil, serving as a useful source for comparison with other jurisdictions and a critical analysis of trends and differences in Northern and Southern Countries. On the theoretical level, we argue in favour of the need for a holistic approach that considers the broader regulatory context including the political agenda boosting the reforms in internal corporate governance and the circumstances of external environmental regulation. As such, we stress the interplay between extra-corporate and intra corporate governance tools in fostering corporate sustainability.

The bioeconomy in Germany: A failing political project?

Almost two decades ago, the OECD and the EU kickstarted the development of bioeconomy strategies. In Germany, like in many other countries, policy development gained momentum in the 2010s, resulting in three consecutive policy strategies to date. And yet the bioeconomy concept remains largely unknown to a wider public and there are hardly any tangible outcomes in terms of transforming the economy towards sustainability as proposed in these strategies. Against this background, the German bioeconomy is characterized in this article as a political project aiming at a technological fix to problems like supply security and climate change in order to stabilize the social order of neoliberalized capitalism. Evaluating the different dimensions of the project's characteristics as well as its impacts, however, we find that the bioeconomy neither succeeds in universalizing its ideas and attracting a broader range of societal actors to them, nor in delivering the promised pathway to a socio-ecological transformation. Still, the analysis also reveals successes of certain actors in securing funds and advancing their agendas related to the bioeconomy. It can be argued that the bioeconomy succeeded in this way in stabilizing the existing unsustainable social order.

Invisible (bio)economies: a framework to assess the ‘blind spots’ of dominant bioeconomy models

Bioeconomy as a new promissory discourse neither challenges the paradigm of economic growth, nor questions its embeddedness in capitalist (neo-)colonial patriarchal power relations. However, the calls for a ‘genuine’ socio-ecological transformation and for alternative bioeconomy visions imply exactly a destabilization of these power relations. Drawing on the Bielefeld subsistence approach and on its colonialism–capitalism–patriarchy nexus, I argue that the latest bioeconomy strategy and policy papers of both the EU and Estonia each disregard certain spheres of the bioeconomy due to the three-dimensional power relations. As a seemingly neutral political discourse, the bioeconomy is shaped by cultural assumptions and narratives that determine and perpetuate what is deemed worthy of protection and what is pushed aside as merely ‘natural’. As such, the current bioeconomy papers promote a ‘biomass-based model of capital accumulation’ that is essentially built on the prerequisite of the subordination, devaluation, appropriation and/or exploitation of (1) different geographical regions, (2) ecological foundations, and (3) prevalent bioeconomy practices. As a widespread agricultural practice in Eastern Europe, Food Self-Provisioning (FSP) serves as a good example of how predominant bioeconomy models (1) simply operate as new forms of postcolonial development discourse, instead of embracing the plurality of decolonial ‘alternatives to development’; (2) deepen the human–nature dichotomy by regarding nature as a mere resource to be extracted more efficiently instead of cultivating mutually nourishing partnership-like relation(ship)s with nature; and (3) maintain the separation between monetized and maintenance economies, rather than fostering ethics of care to overcome the structural separation between the latter.

ПРОБЛЕМЫ И НЕОБХОДИМОСТЬ «ЗЕЛЕНОГО» ФИНАНСИРОВАНИЯ ЭКОНОМИКИ РОССИИ

The “green” economy is endowed with a huge potential for socio-ecological transformation, therefore, the creation and implementation of its effective financial mechanism is an existential task of our time. The promotion of the “green growth” Strategy in any direction and in any country requires solving the issue of financing all measures both from the state and from business. Therefore, the financial component in modern conditions is relevant along with environmental, social and economic. In the article, the authors reveal the features of “green” financing of the domestic economy. The main objectives of the article are to identify the main problems of “green” financing in Russia and identify ways to overcome them.

Recreational experientialism at ‘the abyss’: rethinking the sustainability crisis and experimental politics

In light of mounting complexity and uncertainty, and challenged by the ever-accelerating pace of societal change, politics and policy making have become increasingly experimental. This also applies to sustainability politics and the project of a socio-ecological transformation. But can late-modern societies experiment themselves out of their sustainability crisis? Prompted by this question and seeking to contribute to a more complex understanding of experimental politics, this article first rethinks the notion of the sustainability crisis and, on that basis, then reconsiders established understandings of experimental politics. It focuses on self-proclaimed advanced-modern societies in the global North and suggests that, reaching well beyond more established readings of the term, their much-debated sustainability crisis ought to be understood as a crisis of their ideal and self-understanding as liberal, democratic open societies. As regards experimental politics, the article focuses specifically on social movement-based experimental politics which is widely regarded as a promising pathway toward a socio-ecological transformation. Yet, the conceptualization of the sustainability crisis suggested here raises questions about this interpretation. Supplementing established readings of social movement politics as transformative experimentalism, it prompts a reinterpretation as recreational experientialism: helping to cope with the transition of late-modern societies toward a modernity beyond the ideal of the open society. The article takes a mainly conceptual, social theory-oriented approach.

Glyphosate affects the susceptibility of non-target native plant species according to their stage of development and degree of exposure in the landscape

Unsustainable agriculture is producing a great socio-ecological transformation in Latin America because it has expanded into areas occupied by native forests. Glyphosate is the most widely used herbicide, with severe ecotoxicological effects on non-target organisms. The aim of this study was to determine the effects of glyphosate on seedlings of 24 non-target herbaceous and non-herbaceous plant species present in forest relicts of Argentine Chaco. The effects of a gradient of glyphosate doses (525, 1050, 2100, 4200, and 8400 g ai/ha) were measured in seedlings of each species under greenhouse conditions. Seedlings were grown from seeds collected from native forest fragments of different sizes (assuming three different degrees of historical exposure to glyphosate in the landscape). Doses were applied at different stages of seedling development (five- and ten-weeks after emergence), and phytotoxicity, growth reduction, and sensitivity were measured. Glyphosate produced lethal or sublethal effects in all 24 species, some of which were very sensitive (>60 % of the species presented strong to severe growth reduction with ¼ of the dose used on crops). The greatest toxicological effects were related to early stage of development, herbaceous species, and low historical exposure to glyphosate. According to the species sensitivity distribution, the drift-dose to protect 95 % of the plant species that occur in larger forest fragments should not exceed 5 % of the dose commonly used on crops. These results suggest that the current weed management linked to glyphosate-resistant crops could lead to a gradual loss of biodiversity in the landscape. Concurrently, selection of glyphosate-tolerant biotypes in some non-target species could represent a very problematic cycle for the current model of industrial agriculture. Some alternatives for weed control are proposed.

Ethics of evaluation for socio-ecological transformation: Case-based critical systems analysis of motivation, power, expertise, and legitimacy

Evaluation that supports social, ecological, and governance systems change and transformation raises ethical questions about what and whose worldviews do and should ground evaluative processes. This article illustrates one approach to ethical analysis within a case study of the first phase of an initiative to co-create a monitoring, evaluation, and learning system. The case drew on the principles of Blue Marble Evaluation in partnership with local staff and Indigenous leaders of the Amazon Sacred Headwaters Initiative. The approach uses critical and relational systems thinking to examine the sources of motivation, power, knowledge, and legitimacy that influence and should influence an evaluation system. Results reframe typical early phase evaluation process work from a contractual agreement to a co-created ethical space that engenders the legitimacy of the evaluation process. Contributions include a conceptual framework and process for ethical analysis that could be adapted by others.