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Lecture notes pt. 1, Sustainability politics - paradigms & debates (2021/2022)
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Detailed lecture notes from sustainability politics, paradigms & debates elective. Year 2022
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1Sustainability politics lecture notes
Lecture #1
Conceptualising sustainability & development
Core of sustainable development - multiple dimensions:
Eg. satisfying basic need, promoting welfare, environmental protection, future
generations, equity, participation…
→ Key from short term fixes to long-term solutions to maintain and ensure welfare for future.
Development (Giddens) - a process of wealth accumulation may mean different things in
different contexts:
1. For developing countries - development is imperative fullfill primary life needs for
population, GDO growth to take people out of poverty
2. For developed countries - no development imperative for GDP growth to fullfill life
needs of population.
→ 2 tracks for sustainable development through contraction and convergence.
= reducing overall emissions globally of greenhouse gases to a safe level (contraction)
resulting from every country bringing its emissions per capita to a level which is equal for all
countries (convergence).
Development → Poverty alleviation or perpetual GDP growth?
Economic growth = growth in GDP for promoting increased consumption
BUT also requires proper distribution.
Does GDP growth = growth in wellbeing?
a. Shifting perspective of contemporaries focus on life needs
b. Perspective of the 1850 agenda - improving economic growth and consumption power
and average incomes
c. Post 1970s perspective of valuing nature and environment more highly (natural
capital declining since start of industrialisation).
Welfare has increased but natural capital is depleting → future generations cannot rely on
natural capital to sustain development.
, 2
+ Since 1960s use of fossil fuels, minerals, greenhouse gases & biotic resource increase:
use of resources is faster then GDP growth.
(Air pollution peaks in 1970s but decrases to pre inustrial levels after regulation).
Generally:
- Until 1960 - GDP increase linearly with population & income, energy resources grew
linearly with GDP & wellbeing satisfied.
- After 1960 - use of energy & resources faster than GDP, pollution is policy-dependent
+ change in lifestyle focus on non-primary life needs.
- Since 200 (Fortuijn) - GDP ≠ wellbeing, growing discontent - WELFARE PARADOX
If wellbeing ≠ GDP then → What is welfare?
• Giddens - develop other indicators for welfare eg. Genuine progress indicator, index of
sustainable economic welfare, sustainable society indicators.
• Sarkozy asked Stiglitz & Sen to develop benchmarks for wellbeing & sustainability taking
into account:
- Broadening scope of traditional indicators used to measure
OECD Model
+ Netherlands measure for wellbeing beyond GDP since 2016 in practice since 2018
Sustainability politics - whose sustainability?
• Variety of objectives → different priorities
• Different levels of development → different development imperatives
• Different relations welfare/GDP – wellbeing – ecological side- effects → different
perspectives may yield different appreciations of trade-offs
Siutating sustainability in modernity
Modernity = the ways of life and of organising society as they emerged in EU around
1700, spread to attain global influence.
• Central ideas = empiricism, control through knowledge, progress, autonomy, tolerance…
• Institutions = nation-state, science, mass media, industrial markets, democracy…
• Spread through = diffusion, appropriation, migration, colonialism and globalisation.
, 3
Increasing predictability of the effects of an intervention - ability to control a system more
accurately through knowledge → At the basis of modernity.
Technical project Social project
Knowledge: Thinking about political systems:
– empirically grounded... – nation state and state
– universal laws... system to promote stability
– enabling predictions
Development of instituions enabling:
Progress: – development of knowledge
– through interventions, informed by – knowledge-based progress
universal laws
– ... with predictable effects
– ... enabling control of nature (and society)
“Modernization” theory - Sørensen & Christiansen (Beck):
1. First modernity / early modernisation
Central problem: how to realise socio-economic progress, hand in hand with industrialisation
Through knowledge and science based technology to achieve social progress.
* BUT First modernity challenged by factors which resulted from it’s success
& unintended side effects (eg. pollution, depletion of resources…) + emergence of
new social movements (increased education) critiquing side-effects of modernity.
2. Second modernity
Central problem: how to maintain wellbeing while avoiding / eliminating / mitigating
side-effects? Dis-associated from insutralisation
Drive for sustainability is a feature of second modernity
Modernization in NL:
- After 1850:
Dominant problem definition:
• poverty and low quality of life: ‘social question’
• desire for economic growth, overcoming stagnation
, 4
- After 1900:
• From civil society initiatives to corporatist welfare state, managing natural resources
• Emergent supply chains
• Maturing knowledge infrastructure
+ Societal modernization:
• industrialization
• Political social initiatives (housing, health, ...)
• driven by civil society and novel caste of experts
- After 1960 (silent revolution):
primary life needs met, emergence mass consumption
• individualization & education > more autonomous and critical people
• side effects of first modernity (pollution & resources) > end-of-pipe policies
Challenges
• Emergence new social movements
• politicization of side effects by
- After 1987:
Problem definition is gradually shifting towards ensuring well-being while mitigating
side-effects
→ Re-orientation - second or reflexive modernity
Eg. NL grain for meat chain 1850-1970
1. First modernity 1850-1970:
Society as nation-state society, collective life patterns / pragmatic individualisation.
Modernisation of agriculture with machinery and science (pesticides, fertilizer)
→ Increase productivity & output.
Corporatists agricultural system - state promoted knowledge development
& state regulates food quality.
Post 1945 → agriculture less labor intensive → mass consumption, flow increases.
+ Specilisation breaks circularity (functional differentiation, through control of animal
& plants) to maximise economic benefits.
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