The Future of Welfare is Ecosocial: Making it Happen

Abstract

This short article addresses the process of creating an ecosocial welfare future and is organised as nine key steps to a future welfare settlement, outlined in the visual of the Spiders Web below, and proceeds by exploring the problem, the solution and the politics of mobilisation for transformation. This version of an ecosocial welfare future is offered not as a concrete solution or definitive answer but to prompt social and institutional imagination and encourage discussion and debate. This article identifies the dual challenge of environmental destruction and inequality, and proposes an ecosocial solution as part of a broader transformative agenda to a post-growth world. It situates a political strategy for making it happen through a deepening and widening of democratic institutions and processes and through coalition-building. The conclusion underscores the urgency of now and the need to be Ready Now .