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“Me muess d’Lüt neh wie si sy—Anderi gits e keini”. Decent Work and Sustainable Development for the 21st Century: The Case of Wyon AG in Switzerland
Abstract
Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Switzerland are the backbone of the Swiss economy and account for 2/3 of employers in the country. This paper examines decent work and sustainable economic growth as promoted by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 8. The author focuses on Small and Medium Enterprises and discusses business ethics and human-centred values as drivers of inclusive change. We argue that Swiss Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), in many cases, create a new paradigm of doing business, relying on tradition, innovation and a focus on essential human values. Traditional communitarian values, a vision for innovation, democratic flat decision-making structures and transparency, as well as financial independence, are crucial elements of the SME-strategy, offering decent work and a sustainable long-term prosperity. As an example of a Swiss SME, we examine Wyon AG a small high-end technology firm in the village of Steinegg, District of Rüte, in the Canton Appenzell Innerrhoden. This is a desk research.
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Developed to be interconnected by design, the 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) and their 169 targets have attracted a growing scientific community committed to exploring the systemic interactions inherent to the 2030 Agenda. Understanding which SDGs influence one another (positively or negatively) is critical to prioritize and implement policies that maximize synergies between goals while navigating trade‐offs. In this way, the need for informed decision‐making urgently requires knowledge of context‐specific SDG interactions. Drawing on an extensive literature review (including scientific reports and scholarly articles), we collected, synthesized, and analyzed data about negative and positive interactions among SDG goals and targets. Based on this unique dataset, our analysis focused on three key elements of the resulting network of SDG interactions: First, we identified the most dominant SDGs in the network. Second, we identified systemic multipliers, defined as nodes with higher weighted amounts of outgoing than incoming influence. Third, we identified critical sub‐networks of strongly interconnected SDG targets, highlighting possible virtuous cycles that could serve as concrete entry points to realize the 2030 Agenda. Building on our results, a collaborative effort to add and refine data on behalf of an open‐knowledge platform could provide a solid basis for further analysis and enhanced usability in concrete contexts.
In 2010 world governments agreed to eliminate, phase out or reform incentives that harm biodiversity by 2020. Yet few governments have even identified such incentives, never mind taking action on them. While some subsidies are well studied, such as in fisheries and fossil fuel production, there is an urgent need for the conservation community to study the potential effects a broader array of subsidies have on biodiversity. In addition, we need a better understanding of who benefits from these subsidies. We term this pursuit ‘subsidy accountability’, which is crucial but challenging work crossing disciplines and government ministries. It requires ecologists, forensic accountants, and policy wonks, calculating and forecasting the positive and negative effects of subsidies and their elimination on biodiversity and vulnerable human populations. The Intergovernmental Panel for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services recently concluded that action on biodiversity loss requires transformative economic change; true action on subsidies is one step towards such change.
The UN 2030 agenda of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) envisions a future of inclusive equity, justice and prosperity within environmental limits, and places an important emphasis on education as stated in Goal 4. Education is acknowledged as a means for achieving the remaining Goals, with sustainability as a goal for education in target 4.7. However, the interconnectedness of the SDGs and the complexity of sustainability as a concept make it difficult to relate the SDGs to educational learning outcomes, with what Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) aims to achieve, left in ambiguity. Using systems thinking, we developed a framework that redefines ESD as a tool that can deliver the transformation required for society to reach a sustainable state. Using the SDGs as end points for this state, and through a participatory approach, education stakeholders and learners work together to construct a common vision of sustainability, identify the competences needed, and develop appropriate pedagogies and learning strategies. The framework allows for the development of evaluation tools that can support educational institutions to monitor and manage their progress in transforming societies towards sustainability.
This article examines deficits in the current legal framework of posted workers in a global setting through a case study involving Chinese posted workers striking in Equatorial Guinea. Posting highlights the challenges that economic globalisation and transformation of the labour market pose to labour law. As a phenomenon whose normativity is deeply embedded in the cross-border setting where it occurs, posting should profoundly affect the transnational labour law agenda. The emergence of transnational labour law should be seen from the perspective of reconceptualising existing normative regimes in the light of an underpinning transnationality and sketching the architecture for the normative edifice of transnational labour protection. The transnational legal context under scrutiny calls for a wider normative framework where the intersections between labour law, international law and private international law are taken seriously. Global protection of posted workers should be a featured project on the transnational labour law agenda.
As women take on more leadership roles in the United States advancing social and political change, analysis of women’s contributions to the transformation occurring within the energy sector is critically important. Grassroots movements focused on energy justice and energy democracy focus on: (1) resisting the power of large multinational fossil fuel energy companies that exacerbate inequities and disparities in energy, (2) reclaiming the energy sector with more community and public control to redisitrbute benefits and risks, and (3) restructuring the energy sector to prioritize equity and justice with community ownership and distributed governance. This research analyzes women’s leadership by focusing on how two women-led, non-profit organizations are advancing the renewable energy transition, operationalizing the concept of energy democracy and contributing to the energy justice movement. The two organizations are Grid Alternatives, a solar installation and workforce training organization, and Mothers Out Front, an advocacy organization focused on addressing climate change by promoting a transition to renewable energy. These organizations differ in their mission and approaches, yet both intentionally link climate and energy action with other forms of social justice activism, by expanding community engagement, strengthening participation, and fundamentally redistributing power to promote a transition to more equitable, resilient and sustainable energy systems. This paper contributes to the theoretical understanding of gender in energy justice and energy democracy movements, and to the practical consideration of the role that women’s leadership is playing in accelerating energy system change and advancing the principles of energy justice and energy democracy.
The article highlights the challenge of coping with the current regulatory system on agricultural biotechnology in Europe. The author argues that if the current highly preventive process-based regulatory approach continues to be uphold, Europe will be unable to meet its own ambitions to contribute to the numerous Sustainable Development Goals through the creation of a sustainable bioeconomy
The notion of green growth has emerged as a dominant policy response to climate change and ecological breakdown. Green growth theory asserts that continued economic expansion is compatible with our planet’s ecology, as technological change and substitution will allow us to absolutely decouple GDP growth from resource use and carbon emissions. This claim is now assumed in national and international policy, including in the Sustainable Development Goals. But empirical evidence on resource use and carbon emissions does not support green growth theory. Examining relevant studies on historical trends and model-based projections, we find that: (1) there is no empirical evidence that absolute decoupling from resource use can be achieved on a global scale against a background of continued economic growth, and (2) absolute decoupling from carbon emissions is highly unlikely to be achieved at a rate rapid enough to prevent global warming over 1.5°C or 2°C, even under optimistic policy conditions. We conclude that green growth is likely to be a misguided objective, and that policymakers need to look toward alternative strategies.
The precautionary principle (PP) is an influential principle of risk management. It has been widely introduced into environmental legislation, and it plays an important role in most international environmental agreements. Yet, there is little consensus on precisely how to understand and formulate the principle. In this article I prove some impossibility results for two plausible formulations of the PP as a decision‐rule. These results illustrate the difficulty in making the PP consistent with the acceptance of any tradeoffs between catastrophic risks and more ordinary goods. How one interprets these results will, however, depend on one's views and commitments. For instance, those who are convinced that the conditions in the impossibility results are requirements of rationality may see these results as undermining the rationality of the PP. But others may simply take these results to identify a set of purported rationality conditions that defenders of the PP should not accept, or to illustrate types of situations in which the principle should not be applied.
Agroclimatic extremes can be seen as typical supply shifters that, on a par with economic and structural drivers, distort supply, demand, trade, and induce price variability. Economic simulation models typically operate under the assumption of ‘normal’ growing conditions, contain no explicit parameterization of climatic anomalies on the supply side, and confound multifarious sources of yield fluctuation in harvest-failure scenarios. In this article we follow a novel approach by augmenting a partial equilibrium model of global agriculture with a recently developed indicator of yield stress. We perform a multi-scenario analysis where the most extreme temperature and soil-moisture anomalies of the last decades, be it negative or positive, recur in the near future. Our results indicate that: (i) regional climate extremes may have significant economic impacts both at the domestic and international levels; (ii) the magnitude of the transmission effect depends on the attributes of the simulated extremes, the positioning of the impacted country in the trade arena, and the market status quo at the time of the shock; and (iii) crop prices generally display asymmetry to the direction of the agrometeorological shock with stronger responsiveness to negative anomalies (i.e., those leading to yield reduction) than to positive ones.
Seit 30 Jahren diskutieren wir die Wende zu einer nachhaltigen Entwicklung: als Energiewende, als Ernährungswende, als Mobilitätswende. Dahinter steht die Idee einer
»Großen Transformation«. Damit ist der umfassende Umbau von Technik, Ökonomie und Gesellschaft gemeint, um mit den sozialen und ökologischen Herausforderungen des 21. Jahrhunderts umzugehen. Die Blaupausen für die Wende liegen vor. Aber es tut sich wenig. Uwe Schneidewind zeigt mit den Erfahrungen des Wuppertal Instituts auf, wie die Kunst einer Zukunftsgestaltung aussieht, die Zukunftsvisionen mit einem aufgeklärten Innovations- und Transformationsverständnis verbindet.
SDG 8 calls for promoting ‘sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all’. Even as it highlights the importance of labour rights for all, it also makes visible some significant tensions. We note, for example, that despite many critiques of narrow economic measures of growth, the focus here remains on GDP and per capita growth. This is problematic, we argue, because the GDP productive boundary excludes much of social reproductive work. This puts SDG8 in tension with SDG 5 which calls for the recognition of the value of unpaid care and domestic work. There has been a significant increase in the rate of working women in the formal and informal sector. However, there has not been a subsequent gender shift in the doing of social reproductive work. In this paper we argue SDG 8’s focus on decent work and economic growth is inadequate; that productive employment and decent work for all men and women by 2030 needs to take into account the value and costs of social reproduction. We trace key historical debates on work to argue that both gender and labour rights have to underpin SDG 8 if its promise of inclusive, sustainable and decent work is to be realized.
This book examines the impact of multinational enterprises (MNEs) on local economies, and presents selected case studies of MNEs operating in low income countries. By balancing external social and environmental costs against its corresponding benefits, the book demonstrates that MNEs can have a positive net-impact on local development if they build up social capital by embedding themselves in local economies and engaging responsibly with local stakeholders. By doing so MNEs contribute to inclusive growth, a cental pillar of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. In this context, the book challenges popular narratives in civil society and academia that frame foreign direct investment (FDI) merely as a threat to human rights and sustainable development. Moreover, it offers practical guidance for globally operating businesses seeking to establish progressive Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) strategies of their own.
Research-based evidence on the adoption of climate-smart agricultural practices is vital to their effective uptake, continued use and wider diffusion. In addition, an enabling policy environment at the national and regional levels is necessary for this evidence to be used effectively. This chapter analyzes a 4-year period of continuous policy engagement in East Africa in an attempt to understand the role of multi-stakeholder platforms (MSPs) in facilitating an enabling policy environment for climate change adaptation and mitigation. The study shows how MSPs enhanced a sense of ownership, developed knowledge, created linkages between different governance levels and a wide variety of actors (including policymakers and scientists), and, most significantly, improved policy formulation.
A detailed survey of a growing scourge of the global economy—the smuggling of people, materials, and money.
Smuggling used to be a family business. Today it is big business.Illicit Trafficking: A Reference Handbookoffers a thorough introduction to the problems of illegal trafficking that have emerged from and been intensified by globalization. This title provides an examination of how criminal enterprises have exploited opportunities to enrich themselves and broadened their involvement in many areas of illegal trafficking while compromising or evading legal authorities.
The coverage includes a brief history of illicit trafficking, analyzes current problems, and examines local and global containment policies such as Presidential Decision Directive 42. It also explores key international agreements on money laundering, bank secrecy laws, extradition treaties, and technologies that have exploited legitimate business opportunities to enrich their profits while compromising or evading legal authorities.
Climate change has rapidly emerged as a grand challenge confronting humanity. While fossil fuels have over the last two centuries underpinned the rapid economic development of our global economy, this has also resulted in a fundamental disruption to our planet’s carbon cycle and now threatens the habitable climate upon which human civilization has relied. The consequences of the climate crisis are only now revealing themselves in terms of extreme weather events of growing ferocity and step-changes in basic ecological processes. In this chapter the authors outline how political and economic responses to the climate crisis can be understood as forms of social innovation. In contrast to the narrow contemporary understanding of social innovation as reliant upon market mechanisms and corporate self-regulation, they argue that social innovation must return to older conceptions of the central role for civil society and communities in defining solutions based on improved social justice, equality and human rights. The authors outline three key political-economic models of social innovation in response to climate change: business as usual, green economy and climate mobilization. They identify the ways in which each of these models propose different understandings of social innovation in responding to the climate crisis in terms of their underlying ideological narrative and the proposed roles of business, government and civil society. The chapter concludes by identifying areas for future research in terms of more critical understandings of social innovation, the role of social movements and bridging the discursive duality of humanity and nature.
Startups funded by the US Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy filed patents at twice the rate of similar cleantech firms. The high-risk high-reward funding model has succeeded in advancing energy technology, but more is needed to help these innovative firms cross the valley of death and bring new cleantech products to market. Federal R&D funding for cleantech startups should be expanded, as it can boost the rate of innovation. This is sorely needed given the underinvestment from the private sector.Observational studies cannot prove the effectiveness of any funding agency, but current evidence suggests maintaining or growing ARPA-E, given the large potential benefits from cleantech innovation.If ARPA-E is able to predict future patenting outcomes and fund companies with the greatest potential to produce new technologies, this could be a valuable contribution of ARPA-E in itself.ARPA-E alone cannot fully bridge the valley of death. Additional interventions, such as demonstration and procurement programmes, are still needed to help commercialize new clean energy technologies. Federal R&D funding for cleantech startups should be expanded, as it can boost the rate of innovation. This is sorely needed given the underinvestment from the private sector. Observational studies cannot prove the effectiveness of any funding agency, but current evidence suggests maintaining or growing ARPA-E, given the large potential benefits from cleantech innovation. If ARPA-E is able to predict future patenting outcomes and fund companies with the greatest potential to produce new technologies, this could be a valuable contribution of ARPA-E in itself. ARPA-E alone cannot fully bridge the valley of death. Additional interventions, such as demonstration and procurement programmes, are still needed to help commercialize new clean energy technologies.
Purpose
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a new trend that has swept the world of business by storm. With globalization proceeding unabated and CSR acquiring global interest and resonance, examining how companies can make adaptations to their CSR in an international context becomes a timely and important issue.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing on institutional theory, this study aims to identify three types of host country institutional complexity that accompany the internationalization process, namely, cultural, regulatory and economic, hence necessitating nuanced CSR adaptations in context and as illustrated in this paper requiring different tailoring and adaptation of CSR programs and interventions between developed and developing countries.
Findings
The authors propose a series of research propositions for exploration toward broadening and deepening the understanding of the above institutional complexities and the necessity of CSR tailoring and adaptation to accompany the internationalization process.
Originality/value
The paper is one of the first to highlight the necessity of CSR tailoring in the context of the internationalization process while considering host country institutional complexity highlighting nuanced differences between developed and developing country landscapes and implications for how multinational corporations should approach CSR in these differentiated environments.
Soziale Bewegungen versuchen auf unterschiedlichen Wegen, gesellschaftlichen Wandel herbeizuführen. Jana Bosse erfasst anhand der empirischen Untersuchung von vier Basisgruppen der Umweltbewegung den komplexen Prozess der Strategieentwicklung und zeigt: Anders als gedacht, sind Strategien nicht primär durch politische Möglichkeitsfenster oder vorhandene Ressourcen bestimmt. Vielmehr sind sie durch die Theories of Change, also die Vorstellungen der Aktiven, sowie die Machtstruktur und Aufgabenverteilung in der Gruppe geprägt.
The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) comprise an important policy achievement towards identifying shared goals for addressing global challenges such as climate change and biodiversity loss. Though policy coherence for sustainable development ultimately depends on coherence among the SDGs – as progress toward one goal should not hamper progress toward others – synergies and trade-offs are emerging among the metrics (indicators) used to measure progress towards the various targets of the SDGs. In this context, the choice of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita as an indicator for SDG 8 (“Decent Work and Economic Growth”) contradicts the evidence that limitless economic growth is not possible on a planet with finite resources. Here, we highlight how pursuing unconditional GDP growth risks failing to achieve the SDGs overall. We show how, in the European Union, GDP is unrelated to other measures of economic performance such as levels of employment, and relates inversely to indicators of environmental sustainability and broader measures of wellbeing. Pursuing SDG 8 through a continuous increase in GDP will therefore hinder the achievement of environmental goals and goals on reducing inequalities. We propose guidelines for selecting alternative indicators for SDG 8 with the aim of improving coherence among all of the SDGs, as well as between the SDGs and other policy initiatives for sustainability. This will inform a better monitoring of SDG 8 and the definition of post-2030 Agendas for sustainable development.
Migrant and migration policy (MMP) issues have often influenced important international business (IB) research questions, but the last 20 years have seen the emergence of new or “renewed” MMP issues tied to changes in migrant demographics, wealth, skills, home-country provenance, host-country attitudes, and international governance. Articles in the inaugural special issue of the Journal of International Business Policy address those issues, connect them to classic IB research questions, and then develop theory and evidence to inform current IB scholarly debates and guide IB executives, investors, and the public policy-makers overseeing those business activities. Our introductory article provides an overview of new and renewed MMP issues addressed in the special issue. It defines foundational MMP concepts and trends, compares classic IB and current MMP research questions, summarizes the eight articles included in the special issue, and offers suggestions for advancing research in both fields.
Status considerations have recently been linked to prosocial behaviors. This research shows that even everyday consumer behaviors such as favoring organic foods serve as prosocial status signaling. Key ideas from the continuum model of consumer impression formation and the theories of costly signaling and symbolic consumption are synthetized to make sense of this phenomenon. Two web-surveys (Ns = 187, 259) and a field study (N = 336) following experimental designs are conducted. This approach allows the analysis of both the more and less conscious reactions of consumers. Study 1 shows that the image of consumers favoring organic product versions is marked by characteristics consistent with prosocial status signaling. Study 2 replicates these findings with another sample and a wider range of products and demonstrate that observers' conservative values influence the image formed of organic food users. Study 3 establishes that similar image effects also emerge through a less conscious formation process and that they extend to how organic food users are socially treated. This research advances the current understanding concerning the interlinkages between organic food usage, prosocial status signaling, consumer impressions and reputation management. Substantively, the studies provide novel compelling empirical evidence for the ability of non-luxurious everyday consumer behaviors to qualify as prosocial status signaling. Conceptually, the integration of evolutionary and sociocultural perspectives represents a major contribution. More specifically, this research yields new understanding as regards the role of individual variation in sensing and interpreting status symbols.
Assessment of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has largely focused on formulating appropriate targets and indicators for each goal. Much less attention has been devoted to estimating possible tradeoffs and complementarities in attaining the various SDGs. Yet such tradeoffs and complementarities clearly exist. We develop an analytical model to estimate the welfare effects of progress in attaining one SDG while accounting for interactions in achieving other SDGs. We assess quantitatively progress in the SDGs over 2000–2016 at the global level and for low-income countries, using a representative indicator for each goal. We then estimate the welfare changes for improvements in No Poverty (SDG1) net of any welfare gains and losses in attaining each of the remaining 16 goals. For the world, we estimate the per capita welfare change of reductions in 2000–2016 poverty rates net of any gains or losses in attaining each of the remaining 16 goals is 5671 per person for poverty reduction alone from 2000 to 2016. However, once interactions with other SDGs are taken into account, the net welfare change for poverty reduction in poor economies from 2000 to 2016 is 299 per capita of poverty reduction on its own. Such an analysis helps policy makers prioritize improvements towards one goal or set of goals, and show explicitly the net gains and losses for achieving one goal while impacting others. For example, over 2000–2016 the world may have come closer to attaining the No Poverty goal, but at the expense of other critical SDGs, especially those associated with the environment. This research has important implications for achieving sustainability through pursuit of the SDGs.
Multinationale Unternehmen (MNU) sind exponiert. Regelmäßig sorgen sie für Schlagzeilen und werden zu Recht oder zu Unrecht für die Übel in dieser Welt – wie Kinderarbeit, Umweltverschmutzung, Verletzung der Menschenrechte – verantwortlich gemacht. Dabei wird von der Prämisse ausgegangen, dass Unternehmen nur auf den Profit für die Firma und dessen Besitzer (z. B. Aktionäre) aus sind, und dies auf Kosten der Umwelt und der Menschenrechte.
The renewable energy sector is already more gender diverse than the fossil fuel industry, and promises to provide an increasing number of jobs for women as well as men, particularly in high growth solar and wind industries. Yet while more women are currently employed in the renewables sector than in the carbon-based energy sector, their presence in renewable energy industries falls short of that in other areas of the economy that require commensurate levels of training and experience. This observation is particularly true for the world’s wealthiest nations. Where are the women in the U.S. and Canadian renewables sectors? How did they get there? Did concern for the natural environment or worries about climate change play any role in their education, training, and career choices? How did gender affect their education or training and career trajectories? In what ways have women’s networking organizations contributed to their success and advancement in the workplace? In response to these questions, we review the relationship between gender and the natural environment, especially energy conservation, discuss the role of women’s professional development via networking organizations, and present the results of interviews with women working in U.S. and Canadian renewable energy companies. We find that such women tend to be passionate about the environment and; well educated; employed in a range of occupations throughout the renewables sector; and intimately aware of gendered structures of power in her industry and workplace that might be remedied via connections with women, especially those who have achieved leadership roles.
In a 2014 issue of Nature, members of our research group called for abandoning the gross domestic product as the key indicator in economic policymaking. In this new article, we argue that a new post–gross domestic product economy focusing on wellbeing rather than material output is already emerging in the Anthropocene, thanks to the convergence of policy reforms and economic shifts. At the policy level, the Sustainable Development Goals require policymakers to protect ecosystems, promote greater equality, and focus on long-term equitable development. At the economy level, the provision of services has outpaced industrial production as the key driver of prosperity, with innovative business models optimizing the match between supply and demand and giving rise to a burgeoning “sharing economy”, which produces value to people while reducing output and costs. The economic transformation already underway is, however, delayed by an obsolete system of measurement of economic performance still dominated by the gross domestic product–based national accounts, which rewards the incumbent and disincentives the new. We show that a different approach to measuring wellbeing and prosperity is the “missing link” we need to connect recent evolutions in policy and the economy with a view to activating a sustainable development paradigm for a good Anthropocene.
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change call for deep transformations in every country that will require complementary actions by governments, civil society, science and business. Yet stakeholders lack a shared understanding of how the 17 SDGs can be operationalized. Drawing on earlier work by The World in 2050 initiative, we introduce six SDG Transformations as modular building-blocks of SDG achievement: (1) education, gender and inequality; (2) health, well-being and demography; (3) energy decarbonization and sustainable industry; (4) sustainable food, land, water and oceans; (5) sustainable cities and communities; and (6) digital revolution for sustainable development. Each Transformation identifies priority investments and regulatory challenges, calling for actions by well-defined parts of government working with business and civil society. Transformations may therefore be operationalized within the structures of government while respecting the strong interdependencies across the 17 SDGs. We also outline an action agenda for science to provide the knowledge required for designing, implementing and monitoring the SDG Transformations. The Sustainable Development Goals require profound national and societal changes. This Perspective introduces six Transformations as building blocks for achieving the SDGs and an agenda for science to provide the requisite knowledge.
This address explores the importance for agricultural sustainability of different types of capital assets, especially knowledge capital, drawing on recent research in New Zealand that has aimed to expand the contribution of the primary sector to sustainable wellbeing. I begin with an overview of the theory on what constitutes sustainability and wellbeing, focusing on connections between wellbeing, capabilities and different types of capital stocks, and highlighting the importance of knowledge capital for wellbeing. Recent trends in New Zealand and United Kingdom agriculture provide the applied context for analysis of some key knowledge issues facing agriculture, framed by the capability theory of the firm following David Teece. The paper finishes with a brief conclusion on the implications for the UK.
See text on the World Economic Forum website:
https://www.WEForum.org/agenda/2018/01/the-34-billion-dollar-question-is-microfinance-the-answer-to-poverty
The expert-driven and normative character of sustainability education aims to promote societal transformation and global change. While some authors underline the ethical claims of education, others have criticized that there is a problematic tendency to prescribe certain actions beyond ethical education. The article aims to provide an empirical contribution, including students’ and teachers’ perspectives, and geography textbooks, to the debate. Based on the results of an empirical study with 1001 secondary school students in Austria and Germany, we discuss the “ethical turn” and the moral code in sustainability education. The questionnaires are completed with students’ drawings, qualitative interviews with geography teachers and an analysis of geography textbooks. We argue that most students have a precise idea what sustainability and sustainable behavior means, but they harbor right-wrong binary perceptions of sustainable lifestyles. Many students lack knowledge of the interdependence of consumption and production networks, which impedes the understanding of complex sustainability patterns. Therefore, we recommend pluralistic and interconnected perspectives in sustainability, in the frame of school geography. A more democratic classroom contributes to develop an own moral compass. Additionally, passion and participatory approaches can help students reflect on their affective relationships with consumer goods and consider alternative consumption-production paradigms.
Critics have long questioned the feasibility (and desirability) of exponential growth on a finite planet. More recently, mainstream economists have begun to suggest some ‘secular’ limits to growth. Declining growth rates have in their turn been identified as instrumental in increased inequality and the rise of political populism. This paper explores these emerging arguments paying a particular attention to the dynamics of secular stagnation. It examines the underlying phenomenon of declining labour productivity growth and unpacks the close relationships between productivity growth, the wage rate and social inequality. It also points to the historical congruence (and potential causal links) between declining productivity growth and resource bottlenecks. Contrary to some mainstream views, this paper finds no inevitability in the rising inequality that has haunted advanced economies in recent decades, suggesting instead that it lies in the pursuit of growth at all costs, even in the face of challenging fundamentals. This strategy has hindered technological innovation, reinforced inequality and exacerbated financial instability. At the very least, this paper argues, it is now time for policy to consider seriously the possibility that low growth rates might be ‘the new normal’ and to address carefully the ‘post-growth challenge’ this poses.
