Operationalizing sustainable welfare and co-developing eco-social policies by prioritizing human needs

Abstract

The need to develop synergetic policy frameworks, ideas, and instruments to tackle the double challenge of climate emergency and social inequality has increasingly gained momentum over the past few years and is reflected in the increasing number of academic contributions. The iconic model of a ‘safe and just space for humanity’ (Raworth, 2017) considers both planetary and social boundaries. Economy and society develop within a doughnut-shaped space, where resource use is below the level of critical planetary boundaries but above the sufficiency level required to meet people’s basic needs. Building on this, Fanning et al. (2020) discuss the complex processes through which patterns of material and resource extraction within this space result in different ecological and social outcomes. The concept of ‘sustainable welfare’ (Koch and Mont, 2016) addresses the intersection of environmental and social policies. This concept has resulted in critical assessments of the environmental consequences of existing welfare systems and suggestions of concrete eco-social policies. If integrated into a holistic policy framework, these have the potential of initiating a virtuous policy cycle (Hirvilammi, 2020) necessary to re-embed Western production and consumption patterns within planetary limits. We argue that theoretical terms such as sustainable welfare need to be complemented by bottom-up measures of operationalization. This is not only necessary because the frames and concepts listed above leave plenty of leeway for concrete policy development and implementation at the local, regional, and national levels, but also because of the pressing need for citizen mobilization to achieve systematic changes of national states and multi-national governance structures (Koch, 2020a; Pirgmaier and Steinberger, 2019). In many cases, national states and multi-national governance structures have