Introduction: Global eco-social policy: Contestation within an emerging policy era?

Abstract

Currently, we see in many ways how environmental and social problems and related demands for political responses are increasingly difficult to separate from one another. What used to be completely different policy fields are now merging. Not only do climate change and pollution have severe implications for the living conditions of people all over the globe, but political measures addressing environmental problems may have a tremendous social impact as well. This presents challenges to existing social policy arrangements and will require the development and adjustment of social policies to protect existing vulnerable groups. Furthermore, it will be necessary to ensure that new policies do not exacerbate pre-existing inequities. Examples include the impact of extreme weather events on already vulnerable parts of populations, and the potentially regressive impact of taxes introduced for protecting the environment. Be it out of a more extended and increasing awareness of the threat of climate change in a development context, the reflections on the appropriate path of recovery following the COVID-19 pandemic or any of the many other connections between environmental changes and global social problems and needs, making the link between environmental and social policies is increasingly gaining momentum at national and transnational policy levels. The key challenge is how to combine ideas of growth, demands of a possible universal social protection and environmentally sustainable human living. Despite obvious connections, the transnational governance of environmental and social policies has, so far, primarily been studied and discussed within the two separate fields. While necessary, combining them presents complications. On the one hand, the two policy fields share the aim of absorbing and compensating for externalized economic and market failures. Social policies act as safety nets with measures such as collective protection schemes and re-distributional mechanisms. Environmental policies serve the protection of the environment, for example, by preventing overexploitation. Furthermore, both fields may play a regulatory role and adjust incomes or property rights