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The Local Politics of Global Sustainability
Abstract
The most difficult questions of sustainability are not about technology; they are about values. Answers to such questions cannot be found by asking the "experts," but can only be resolved in the political arena. In The Local Politics of Global Sustainability, author Thomas Prugh, with Robert Costanza and Herman Daly, two ofthe leading thinkers in the field of ecological economics, explore the kind of politics that can help enable us to achieve a sustainable world of our choice, rather than one imposed by external forces.The authors begin by considering the biophysical and economic dimensions of the environmental crisis, and tracing the crisis in political discourse and our public lives to its roots. They then offer an in-depth examination of the elements of a re-energized political system that could lead to the development of more sustainable communities. Based on a type of self-governance that political scientist Benjamin Barber calls "strong democracy," the politics is one of engagement rather than consignment, empowering citizens by directly involving them in community decisionmaking. After describing how it should work, the authors provide examples of communities that are experimenting with various features of strong democratic systems.The Local Politics of Global Sustainability explains in engaging, accessible prose the crucial biophysical, economic, and social issues involved with achieving sustainability. It offers a readable exploration of the political implications of ecological economics and will be an essential work for anyone involved in that field, as well as for students and scholars in environmental politics and policy, and anyone concerned with the theory and practical applications of the concept of sustainable development.
... Government also has a major role to play in facilitating societal development of a shared vision of what a sustainable and desirable future would look like. As Tom Prugh and colleagues [34] have argued, a strong democracy, based on developing a shared vision, is an essential prerequisite to building a sustainable and desirable future. ...
... The systems involved are complex and interconnected in ways that make their behavior inherently unpredictable. "As a result, the politics of communities' and nations' efforts to address their sustainability problems is much more important than any technical expertise they can muster" [34]. There are experts aplenty, but we cannot simply consult them for the "best" solutions, because nobody can know what those solutions are in any complete or final sense. ...
... In fact, the process itself helps to satisfy myriad human needs, such as enhancing the citizenry's understanding of relevant issues, affirming their sense of belonging and commitment to the community, offering opportunity for expression and cooperation, strengthening the sense of rights and responsibilities, and so on. Historical examples include the town meetings of New England or the system of the ancient Athenians (with the exception that all citizens must be represented, not simply the elite) [34,83]. ...
The world has changed dramatically. We no longer live in a world relatively empty of humans and their artifacts. We now live in the “Anthropocene,” era in a full world where humans are dramatically altering our ecological life-support system. Our traditional economic concepts and models were developed in an empty world. If we are to create sustainable prosperity, if we seek “improved human well-being and social equity, while significantly reducing environmental risks and ecological scarcities,” we are going to need a new vision of the economy and its relationship to the rest of the world that is better adapted to the new conditions we face. We are going to need an economics that respects planetary boundaries, that recognizes the dependence of human well-being on social relations and fairness, and that recognizes that the ultimate goal is real, sustainable human well-being, not merely growth of material consumption. This new economics recognizes that the economy is embedded in a society and culture that are themselves embedded in an ecological life-support system, and that the economy cannot grow forever on this finite planet. In this report, we discuss the need to focus more directly on the goal of sustainable human well-being rather than merely GDP growth. This includes protecting and restoring nature, achieving social and intergenerational fairness (including poverty alleviation), stabilizing population, and recognizing the significant nonmarket contributions to human well-being from natural and social capital. To do this, we need to develop better measures of progress that go well beyond GDP and begin to measure human well-being and its sustainability more directly.
... Government also has a major role to play in facilitating societal development of a shared vision of what a sustainable and desirable future would look like. As Tom Prugh and colleagues [34] have argued, a strong democracy, based on developing a shared vision, is an essential prerequisite to building a sustainable and desirable future. ...
... The systems involved are complex and interconnected in ways that make their behavior inherently unpredictable. "As a result, the politics of communities' and nations' efforts to address their sustainability problems is much more important than any technical expertise they can muster" [34]. There are experts aplenty, but we cannot simply consult them for the "best" solutions, because nobody can know what those solutions are in any complete or final sense. ...
... In fact, the process itself helps to satisfy myriad human needs, such as enhancing the citizenry's understanding of relevant issues, affirming their sense of belonging and commitment to the community, offering opportunity for expression and cooperation, strengthening the sense of rights and responsibilities, and so on. Historical examples include the town meetings of New England or the system of the ancient Athenians (with the exception that all citizens must be represented, not simply the elite) [34,83]. ...
... We propose that such spaces have multiple benefits for academia, researchers, and communities beyond the university, besides a moral component of embodying a science and university for the people, rather than simply for reproducing privilege. For those of us concerned with change towards social justice and sustainability, we should remember not only the power of narratives to shape social change (e.g., Jones and McBeth, 2010), also the importance of relationships, and the knowledge engendered by simply listening (Prugh et al., 2000). For example, at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (my former organization), the "Rural Climate Dialogues" have literally seen participants beginning with the attitude of "What is this liberal kumbayaa," and ending with gratitude and excitement for the process: "I came out of it a total winner as far as believing in global warming" (Ostrander, 2017) and "It's not been perfect, and it will not be perfect, but we can always make it better, and things like this are a start. ...
... As the second participant noted, deliberative processes are imperfect and rarely lead to universal agreement. But when done well and with respect, listening, and equality, they can lead to consent for action, even in the face of disagreement (Prugh et al., 2000). ...
We are arguably at a unique juncture in human history, meaning that multiple possible trajectories—in terms of social welfare, governance, and relationship with and conservation of non-human nature—stretch out before us. Achieving a more equitable, sustainable, and just future will require continued advancements in scientific thought from both social and natural scientists. It will also need new institutions to reflect and strengthen the possibilities of cooperation, caring, redistribution, and living within our ecologies. The career, research, and mentorship of John Vandermeer shows how both he and his many students over the years have oscillated between focusing on shared passions for contact with the natural world and developing better ecological theory, and the moral compass guiding many of us towards socio-political analysis and political activism. John, his partner in life and in research, Ivette Perfecto, and their many students and colleagues have oscillated through this “strange” space where science, activism, and passion interact. As a group, we have chosen our places and spread throughout the “moral compass/ passion phase space,”... because of John’s advice or, equally as often, against it. Perhaps such a diversity of oscillating trajectories may be just what is needed to help push us towards positive changes for a more sustainable and just future, within the realm of the academy and beyond.
... Underlying these there will be an ethical view of humankind, its environment (in the broadest sense) and their interaction. Movement towards the sustainability of human society also implies changes in the way we govern ourselves or allow ourselves to be governed, a topic further explored in [23]. ...
... Fair allocation methods, as the name implies, deal with the allocation of resources in order to satisfy some measure of equity; they may be applied, for instance, to the calculation of the contributions from central government to provincial budgets. (See Chapter 7 in [23] for more details). Game theory may be applied in all situations involving conflict. ...
The paper begins with a discussion of the concepts "operations research" and "development." An overview is next given of the RDP (Reconstruction and Development Programme), which still embodies the vision of development in South Africa associated with the political transition in 1994. The efforts of ORSSA (the Operations Research Society of South Africa) to help with the implementation of the RDP are described. The international OR (Operations Research) community has been involved in various ways with the promotion of development, especially through IFORS (the International Federation of Operational Research Societies), and these are reviewed. Sustainable development, which deals specifically with a long-term view of development, is mentioned briefly. Lastly some suggestions are made as to how ORSSA and its members could help to promote development in South Africa. In the Appendix a summary is given of a paper by Gerhard Geldenhuys in which he analyzes the needs identified by the RDP as well as relevant OR methods.
... 135 Resilience theory has long emphasized the importance of allowing for experimentation and learning, and science can learn from policy "experiments" that can inform the next round of policies in an adaptive cycle. 31,136,137 Agriculture is at the root of many significant environmental and social problems, threatening the achievement of many globally agreedupon goals, but this means that agriculture is also integral to their solution. Ensuring that agricultural landscapes provide multiple benefits to people, sustainably and equitably, is the start of that solution. ...
There has been a seismic shift in the center of gravity of scientific writing and thinking about agriculture over the past decades, from a prevailing focus on maximizing yields toward a goal of balancing trade-offs and ensuring the delivery of multiple ecosystem services. Maximizing crop yields often results in a system where most benefits accrue to very few (in the form of profits), alongside irreparable environmental harm to agricultural ecosystems, landscapes, and people. Here, we present evidence that an un-yielding, which we define as de-emphasizing the importance of yields alone, is necessary to achieve the goal of a more Food secure, Agrobiodiverse, Regenerative, Equitable and just (FARE) agriculture. Focusing on yields places the emphasis on one particular outcome of agriculture, which is only an intermediate means to the true endpoint of human well-being. Using yields as a placeholder for this outcome ignores the many other benefits of agriculture that people also care about, like health, livelihoods, and a sense of place. Shifting the emphasis to these multiple benefits rather than merely yields, and to their equitable delivery to all people, we find clear scientific evidence of win-wins for people and nature through four strategies that foster FARE agriculture: reduced disturbance, systems reintegration, diversity, and justice (in the form of securing rights to land and other resources). Through a broad review of the current state of agriculture, desired futures, and the possible pathways to reach them, we argue that while trade-offs between some ecosystem services in agriculture are unavoidable, the same need not be true of the end benefits we desire from them.
... The character and challenges of natural environments make environmental governance distinctive from other forms of governance. Therefore, contemporary environmental challenges in both urban and rural areas according to Prugh, Costanza and Daly (2002), have centred on making our everyday practices sustainable, balancing our production and consumption, and material and energy use in line with the earth"s productive potential (Lane, 1997). This ensures that the ecosystem services are protected and maintained for future human generations and also maintaining ecosystem integrity through considering ethical, economic and scientific (ecological) variables (Pahl-Wost, 2007). ...
ABSTRCT The rationale for this study is its implications for environmental protection of oil and gas exploration activities in Nigeria. Resource Curse Theory was considered most suitable for the theoretical framework since the blessing of oil and gas production was seen not worthy to be compared with the curse it wrought to the nation. Secondary data were sourced and utilized to x-ray the activities of oil and gas production in the Niger Delta Region. It was found that every aspect of oil operations, though in varying degrees, has significant negative effect on the environment. These manifest through land degradation, water and air pollutions, mostly induced by oil spills and gas flares. In most cases, all of the facets of what constitute the environment are affected in one single operational line and the environmental consequences impose economic, health and social implications on the people of the region. This paper recommends among others, the enactment of law incorporating environmental justice concerns into environmental governance in the Nigerian oil and gas management, as well as greater participation of the indigenous communities in the management of their environment.
... Environmentalists in particular have been concerned to show what democracy really means, and to work out what institutions are required to recover democracy. These range from those on the anarchist side of the movement such as Robin Hahnel, Takis Fotopoulos and Cornelius Castoriadis, to those who could be characterized as social liberals, such as Thomas Prugh, Robert Costanza and Herman Daly (2000), although on basics, they come to similar conclusions. Eleanor Ostrom gained a Nobel Prize for her work, published in Governing for the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (1990), showing the conditions for communities to have the means to ensure that markets serve their communities. ...
Karl Polanyi in The Great Transformation diagnosed what had happened in the Nineteenth Century that led to poverty, increasingly wild economic fluctuations, increasingly severe depressions, and social dislocation and oppression on a massive scale-the market had been disembedded from communities which were then subjected to the imperatives of a supposedly autonomous market. In fact, such disembedding and imposition of these imperatives was a deliberate strategy developed as a means to impose exploitative relations on people, in opposition to ideas of republican democracy. Recognizing this, after such disembedding had engendered a major global depression in the 1890s and an even more severe depression in the 1930s, along with two world wars, reformers largely succeeded in re-embedding markets. This achievement was fought by neoliberals, and their triumph in the 1970s was a really a project of reversion to the Nineteenth Century economic and political order, now upheld by much more powerful forces, including immensely powerful transnational corporations and financial institutions, corrupt politicians, and much more effective mind control industries. As in the Nineteenth Century, it has concentrated wealth and income, destabilized economies, and threatens a new Great Depression and, as a by-product of the tensions generated by global ecological destruction, possibly a new world war. As opposed to Marxist analyses, Polanyi's analysis provided a much clearer goal to aim at that has not been discredited by the failures of supposedly communist countries. However, there are still huge problems to be overcome if we are to re-embed the market in communities, including the problem of grappling with the immense power of transnational corporations and financial institutions and those who serve them and the success they have had in corrupting the institutions and culture of democracy. This includes not only undermining the power of nations to control their economies and their subversion of democratic processes, but also in promoting passivity in the population to render them inert and powerless. In this paper I will examine proposals, such as those promoted by Arild Vatn in his book Institutions and the Environment, to develop institutions able to achieve this re-embedding.
... Rather than empowering citizens to help resolve such "wicked problems", India, the largest democracy in the world, like many other democratic countries, is critiqued for being a "weak democracy", i.e., individualist, conflicted, and with elected governments that diminish the role of citizens [6,7]. This is in contrast with "strong democracy", wherein the citizenship is empowered as much as possible as a way of living [6][7][8][9]. ...
India faces extensive challenges of rapid urbanization and deficits in human well-being and environmental sustainability. Democratic governance is expected to strengthen public policies and efforts towards sustainability. This article presents a study in Pune, India, which aimed at exploring perceptions about public participation in urban governance and the potential of high-quality public deliberation to meet deficits. The research reveals disaffection of the public with government decision-making and government-led participation. Further, it shows that people are interested in participating in community life and seek to be partners in civic decision-making, but find themselves unable to do so. The study illustrates that high-quality public deliberations facilitated by an independent third party can provide a satisfactory space of participation, learning, and developing balanced outcomes. Citizens expressed readiness for partnership, third-party facilitation, and support from civic advocacy groups. Challenges with regard to government commitment to deliberative democracy will need to be overcome for a purposeful shift from conventional weak to empowered participation of ordinary citizens in civic decision-making. We anticipate that while institutionalization of high-quality public deliberations may take time, civil society-led public deliberations may help raise community expectations and demand for induced deliberative democracy.
... Consistent with Freeman's (1984, p. 31) definition of stakeholders as "those groups and individuals who can affect or be affected" by an issue, ecological economics has long aspired to be more bottom up, pluralistic, and participatory in its stakeholder orientation. For example, the field has incorporated and advanced approaches to strong democracy (Prugh et al., 2000), value pluralism (Gowdy and Erickson, 2005), and deliberation (Zografos and Howarth, 2008). In practice, a focus on stakeholder inclusion in ecological economics has contributed to "bottom-up" approaches to environmental cost-benefit analysis (Carolus et al., 2018), deliberative monetary valuation (Spash, 2007), social multi-criteria evaluation (Munda, 2008), mediated modeling (van den Belt, 2004), and other participatory research methodologies. ...
Given the context and definition of ecological economics, stakeholder engagement is an important aspect of both its dissemination and traction. Herein, however, lies a significant challenge. Though stakeholder engagement has been a subject of business and management operations, and is widely discussed across academic disciplines, there has been little guidance on key principles for ecological economics. In this chapter, we provide a review of selected literature across disciplines and applications in order to elucidate principles of stakeholder engagement that align to the goals and attributes of ecological economics. Following a review of selected literature, we present a framework relevant to the research to action agenda developed by the contributors to this book. The discussion surfaces the significance of the context of a goal and the need for a continuous improvement mindset as part of the stakeholder engagement process and relative to its overall intent.
... The latter reminds of Swyngedouw's (2010; warning of a "rosy" global de-politicized "environmental consensus". Politics, policies and conflict are inherent in any societal transformational shaping, so their dismissal can inhibit any shift towards sustainability (Prugh et al., 2000;Avelino and Rotmans, 2009;O'Riordan, 2014). ...
Community-based initiatives (CBIs) are an embodiment and potential catalyst of societal change towards sustainability. In Portugal, they remain a largely untapped resource. This paper examines different nuances of CBIs’ societal change agency by proposing an innovative inquiry framework focused on substance, processes and outcomes via an actor, politics and governance-centered approach. Through an inward- versus outward-looking dialectical reflection on CBIs’ politicization dynamics, we analyze Portugal’s CBI landscape drawing upon previous research, databases and semi-structured interviews. We conclude that a politicization gap and the absence of both socio-political visibility and of favorable institutional and policy frameworks are crucial contextual premises hindering CBIs’ change agency. Notwithstanding, CBI’s transformative potential is undeniable. We find them perfectly positioned to mediate co-shaping processes between social innovators and incumbent institutions, contesting the latter’s unsustainable development logic. If CBIs and governments acknowledge the complementarity of their scope of societal change agency, CBIs’ transformational time may have arrived.
... Definition wise, there is no accepted definition of SD and there is no common guidelines to decision makers yielded from stablished definitions (Schmandt & Ward, 2000). Saeed and Abdeldayem, (2019), Faur et al. (2017);Isabel, and Jose, (2013) ;Schmandt, and Ward, (2000); and Prugh et al. (2000) have defined sustainable development by stressing many pillars. (1) In efficient usage pillar, SD is the efficient way of using country's resources to meet the needs of both present and future generation. ...
The current research focuses on competitiveness’s status of each Arabic country, as indicated at the GCI (Global Competitive Index) report. Its 12-main indicators and 98 sub-indicators have deployed for that mission. Via longitudinal study, the performance of each Arabic country, as indicated on GCI at 2016 and 2018, was carefully analyzed. The analysis revealed that four countries were improved and the rest were not. In addition, the analysis revealed 13 success stories. More specifically, the analysis revealed that Kingdom of Bahrain, KSA, UAE, and Lebanon have two, four, six, and one success stories respectively. For mutual benefits, these success stories ought to be shared with all Arabic countries. Kingdom of Bahrain success stories were in labor market, and innovation capacity indicators. KSA success stories were in macro-stability, skills, market size, and business dynamism indicators. UAE has six success stories in institutions, infrastructures, ICT adoption, macro-economic stability, product market, and financial system indicators. Lebanon has one success story in health indicator. Finally, conclusions and recommendation were suggested to help assist decision markets in this perspective.
... Planning and management strategies that apply to the special characteristics of regional landscapes are also needed [2,55,56]. In particular, a high priority should be placed on the establishment of local land-use management policies in lower-income countries, where a vast majority of the world's biodiversity hotspots can be found [22,57]. ...
An effective strategy to resolve conservation conflicts on lands outside of nature reserves is to consider the spatial arrangement of agricultural and native vegetation parcels such that the ecological value of the landscape is improved without reducing the amount of land used for agricultural production. Global optimization methods have been used to identify the best spatial arrangement of land parcels for a given project goal, but these methods are not designed to provide pathways to reach the optimum from the initial landscape. Here we describe how local search algorithms can be used to develop land parcel rearrangement pathways to obtain a landscape that sustains greater species richness than the initial landscape without changing the amount of land used for agricultural production. To demonstrate how the local optimization framework can be applied, an ecological setting based on a forest-grassland mosaic ecosystem in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil was constructed. Plant samples collected from this region were used to construct species area curves. Multiple locally optimal solutions that improved the modeled species richness of the landscape almost to globally optimal levels were identified. To support the results, the algorithm was also applied to a 306,250 ha forest-grassland region of Rio Grande do Sul. The case study results suggested that conservation polices solely based on landowners satisfying a legal reserve percentage on their property should be revised to consider landscape-level connectivity. Providing multiple possible solutions for landscape configurations using local optimization methods may improve managerial flexibility for decision-makers, compared to global optimization approaches providing a single solution. Furthermore, the algorithm details the parcel exchange pathways that are required to reach the optimal land state. We conclude that local and global optimization approaches can be used in combination to improve land use decision-making for conservation, in mosaic ecosystems as well as other terrestrial ecosystems.
... The main feature of this system is the interaction between and within the bio-geophysical and human environments including the social outcomes of their activities. Thus, the given study determines sustainability gaps through the entire food supply chain from an advanced scientific background of ecological economics (Prugh et al. 2000), with respect to climate change. ...
Regional impact scenarios of climate change show a high risk of supply deadlocks in respect to food security. Moreover, the impact of climate system on food security is induced by consumption systems due to shifting demand patterns within fast urbanization processes. Therefore, the transformational management of food supply chains shows an urgent demand for “integrated” and system-related solutions, considering related effects of resource scarcity (e.g., mineral fertilizers, water, constraints on energy use, and land use) as well as demographic change and interlinked resource consumption. Thus, the development of strategies for human wellbeing, national income generation, ecological stability, and social integrity have to be also considered while developing various scenarios for future food systems. Sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) could fertilize the trendsetting concept of the sustainable and innovative food supply chains by analyzing climate change impacts, adjustments in operational action fields, proactive countermeasures, as well as policy improvements being focused on the resilience of the food supply chains, meanwhile allocating the resources efficiently and meeting population demands.
With respect to food security, an integration beyond the primary/agricultural sectors
should be carried out especially for water and/or energy intensive parts of the
supply chain. The concept of the resource nexus combined with eco-innovations for
supply chains within various scenarios is discussed in the given chapter. Based on
scenario development and evaluation, new integrated methodological strategies for
supply and value chain alternatives with higher climate change resilience are developed
and suggested for efficient policy recommendations. Thus, the main aim of the given chapter is to discuss transition pathways for resilience-oriented natural resource
use in food supply chains. Moreover, innovative strategies for making the food supply
chains sustainable toward future climate change impacts as well as the influences of
changing consumer behaviors are discussed. For this, all the relevant factors influencing
food supply chains are combined into future possible scenarios. Such integrated
scenarios determine transformational socioeconomic frameworks, while favoring the
establishment of innovative business and value chains in terms of infrastructure
development, business models, operations, cooperation, and service management.
... Referring to Swyngedouw (2010;, we can identify a similar risk for sustainability transition as he attributed to sustainability: namely, to turn it into a "rosy" global de-politicized "environmental consensus". Yet, politics, policies and conflict are inherent to any social transformation shaping the extent to which any shift towards sustainability will ultimately be reached (Prugh et al., 2000;Avelino and Rotmans, 2009;O'Riordan, 2014). ...
Working Paper
Portuguese CBIs remain an untapped resource for socio-ecological transitions and institutional innovation in Portugal. We scrutinize why the latter falter to engage head-on with the public and political spheres and identify key contextual changes and premises that determine CBIs social innovation potential in Portugal: a) CBIs need to engage the existent institutional landscape and become politicized change actors in order to sit at key decisionmaking processes, and b) CBIs’ full potential is unlikely to bloom without favourable institutional frameworks and policy environments. This paper applies a value-based lens onto social transformation frameworks and engages in a wider theoretical debate on the role of niche actors, thereby adding to the existing literature on socio-ecological transitions. Based on an actor-, politics- and governance-centered approach, we ultimately inquire into Portugal’s CBI’s agency and how it can bring about wider structural change in a socio-ecological transitions.
... Elsewhere (Mourato et al. forthcoming a), we already engaged in describing how multiple barriers can hinder transformative processes and how these could be overcome in theory (see Moore et al. 2014;Fazey et al. 2016). It has been repeatedly argued that politics and policies play an important role in determining whether a shift toward sustainability will ultimately be triggered and to what extent the latter will happen (Prugh et al. 2000). ...
With the arrival of the xxi century the relationship between humans and nature is reaching a critical stage. At stake stand the planetary liveability patterns of both human and most non-human life forms. Despite the sometimes conflicting data on the urgency of the need to rethink this relationship, there is a growing consensus that we face an unsustainable
status quo (Capra 2004; Ehrlich and Ehrlich 2013). As a result of this socio-ecological crisis and overall public inability to address it glocally, there has been a substantial increase, over the past decades, in the number and variety of social movements favouring sustainability,
commonly self-referred to as alternatives (Barry and Quilley 2009; Alexander and Rutherford 2014). In this chapter we propose a framework of inquiry into these emergent alternatives.
... Sustainable concepts have been introduced and considered in various sectors, including the private, government and education sectors (Prugh et al., 2000). The concept of sustainable higher education institutions is not new to higher education institutions abroad, which have long histories of implementation, but it is a major transformation for local institutions of higher learning. ...
... Crossan, et al., 2016). Prugh, Costanza and Daly (2000) argue that community is central to sustainability, providing opportunities for social empowerment at the local scale of everyday life. Our evidence supports the pertinence of a community of scale: ...
This paper investigates how consumers interested in sustainability are affected by conflicts in caring and scale. Contrasting previous emphasis relating scale to production, the paper illustrates how scale influences consumption and social reproduction, including consumers’ more concrete preoccupations with caring about and for themselves, significant others and, not least, the planet. The paper makes three contributions to the nascent management literature in this field. First, it illustrates how scalar logics at urban through to global levels influence seemingly micro‐social routine consumption decisions. Second, it develops an approach that emphasizes the scale‐sensitivity of consumer decision‐making around sustainability and the conflicts inherent in caring. Third, it addresses critiques of current studies preoccupied with processes of production rather than social reproduction and illustrates the critical role that consumption plays in the social construction of scales. Based on these findings, we argue that policy promoting sustainability may be misplaced in that it does not sufficiently acknowledge how people's consumption and caring decisions are nested in relational and spatial contexts.
... Crossan, et al., 2016). Prugh, Costanza and Daly (2000) argue that community is central to sustainability, providing opportunities for social empowerment at the local scale of everyday life. Our evidence supports the pertinence of a community of scale: ...
Tackling climate change requires a set of deeply intertwined geographical responsibilities whereby actors at and across different geographical scales are intimately connected. Creating effective strategies requires far more than an invocation for individual behavioural change in thinking globally and acting locally, but attention to the multi‐scalar conflicts, tensions and also opportunities to develop the most appropriate collective responses. In this paper, we use the example of community gardening initiatives in a large UK city to critically interrogate the problems facing groups at the local neighbourhood level in pursuing sustainability agendas. We focus on the organizational imperative to create a multi‐scalar food policy partnership at the city level as a way of confronting dominant global neoliberal urban competitiveness agendas. Our results emphasize the critical importance of scalar politics in enabling effective climate change strategies.
... This lets planners accomplish multiple objectives that satisfy a range of stakeholder needs at the most appropriate spatial and temporal scales for the project (Crossman et al., 2017). Prugh et al. (2000) noted that society must base its decisions on the best evidence available, and must obtain that data and negotiate the resulting decisions based on discussions among all stakeholders about the available choices, without forgetting that uncertainty is inherent in managing any complex system. Uncertainty arises from having insufficient data combined with our limited understanding of the real world's complexity (which requires certain simplifying assumptions); as a result, our description of the world is necessarily incomplete at any scale (Longley et al., 2005). ...
Ecological services were initially used to quantify the benefits used in valuation of environmental protection, as they helped stakeholders to understand the benefits that ecosystems bring to people. As a result, they increased support for ecological engineering, including ecosystem restoration. However, by failing to account for costs, and particularly for indirect costs such as the tradeoffs among ecosystem services under different land uses, the analyses were incomplete and often provided poor support for policy development and land management to promote environmental conservation. In this paper, we provide a framework for assessing the net value of the benefits provided by ecosystem services (i.e., the benefit that remains after subtracting key costs), taking the Beijing Plains afforestation project as an example. Furthermore, we analyzed the importance of scale effects and marginal changes in ecosystem services assessment, and highlighted the uncertainty of evaluation results caused by basing some of the analysis on market prices, which can change unpredictably. To better support conservation activities and maximize the ecological benefits obtained from an environmental strategy, it's necessary to obtain accurate estimates of the net value of ecosystem services by accounting for an increasing range of direct and indirect costs, calculated at the same scale as the project implementation and accounting for marginal changes, thereby providing better support for policy development and implementation.
... She asserts that, since the discussion over the sustainability of food and agriculture systems is deadlocked in conflicts over values and in uncertainty as to outcomes of the different approaches, democratising the agro-food system appears as a pragmatic choice to further its transformation. Hassanein quotes Prugh et al. (2000, in Hassanein 2003) who in turn draw on Benjamin Barber's strong democracy theory to argue that "because the conflict is about values, sustainability must be socially and politically defined". Food democracy means "people can and should be actively participating in shaping the food system, rather than remaining passive spectators on the sidelines" (Ibid.). ...
Modern food production may be considered an epitome of the paradoxes that humanity is facing as we edge on into the twenty-first century. It is as much the source of problems that plague modern societies as it can be its solution. While more food than ever is produced, more people than ever suffer from some form of malnutrition. Even though agribusiness is overtaking energy as the biggest money maker, small-scale farmers and rural populations are still the poorest people in the world. Although food appears cheap, calories are largely outweighing nutrients, creating food deserts in otherwise wealthy countries. Finally, agriculture is potentially as damaging to ecosystems and human health, as it is part of the solution for major social and ecological challenges: biodiversity loss, systemic pollution, gross social and economic inequities, and climate change. The politics of food are a mirror of geopolitics, touching on all the big questions: Grow or degrow? Heed the precautionary principle as heralded in international agreements or continue to "manage" risk? Industrialise and scale up further or switch to a holistic farming practice that places people and the Earth at centre, such as agroecology? Continue to allow the commodification and privatisation of natural resources or protect them as a commons? Allow countries in the Global South to defend their food self-sufficiency or pressure them to produce for global markets? Give consumers a real choice or deny them the right to know? Underlying all these questions are issues of power and conflicts of interest, with some people part of the “haves” and many others of the “have-nots”, some scientists embracing ecology whereas others hold on to classical economics, some calling for reform while others prefer a revolution, in other words: with many shades of “green” occupying the wide spectrum of food politics. In my thesis, I contend that a food system that is simultaneously healthy and fair can only be realised in conditions of “substantive” democracy, understood as a polity where social and ecological concerns take precedence over other interests, where common resources are under social control, and all those people affected by decision-making are also the decision-makers. My thesis analyses the democratic and ecological quality of modern food politics to improve understanding of the leveraging factors for achieving such a substantive or food democracy.
... Watershed councils are made up of local citizens with diverse interests that use collaborative partnerships between public and private sectors to restore their local stream. Watershed councils are an example of what(Prugh et al. 2000) refer to as "strong democratic" institutions. They could be the basis for a grassroots campaign to change the current approach to salmon management. ...
... Some theorists combine the localist impulse with the democratic one, resulting in anarchist/green politics that emphasize decentralization towards an ideal of bioregional human organization (Biehl, 1997;Davidson, 2009). Prugh et al. (2000) agreed with such theorists that indeed, a localized 'strong' democracy is needed to achieve global sustainability. ...
This paper analyzes 'food sovereignty' and the movements that work for it at local, national, and supranational levels and at the intersection of markets, governments, and civil society. The goal is to illuminate potential aspects of post-growth socio-ecological systems management regimes. These aspects include: (a) socially and ecologically embedded and politically engaged market activity, as evidenced by 'peasant' modes of food production and distribution; (b) deliberative and 'agonistic' democratic models for policy construction, as evidenced by internal organizational processes within the transnational food sovereignty network La Vía Campesina; and (c) multi-sited 'relational' forms of understanding and institutionalizing sovereignty, as evidenced by the complex of institutions engaged by food sovereignty movements and the ways that 'power over' aspects of classical sovereignty are combined with more 'power with' and 'power to' conceptions emergent in food sovereignty. Although this case relates fundamentally to issues of food and farming, the resulting aspects may be applicable to other realms of post-growth economic regimes. Fundamentally, it is argued that politically engaged movements of producers, whose productive surpluses are invested into non-growth ends with support of governments, will construct post-growth economies.
... At present, environmental sustainability is the way forward by various parties to make life better without polluting the environment. The sustainability concept has been introduced widely in various sectors such as government, private sector and also in education (Prugh, Costanza, & Daly, 2000). One of the sustainability concept that can be well incorporated to reduce the use of electricity is 'The Green Building' which focuses on increasing the efficiency of using resources such as energy, water and materials (Chua & Oh, 2011). ...
... The oil industry is the only sector in Libya that is in a position to provide large returns to the economy, but that alone does not guarantee sustainability. Prugh, Costanza, and Daly (2000) demonstrate that it is difficult to determine a minimum requirement for sustainability, because it depends on different factors such as available resources and consumption requirements. Further, the amount of oil consumed increases as population increases, which makes the implementation of specific policies designed to enhance sustainability difficult to achieve. ...
There is a strong need to study sustainability and depletion accounting of oil in the Libyan economy because oil production and export is the single largest source of national income in the country. This study covers the time period from 1990 to 2009. Throughout this period, the Libyan national economy used its oil and petroleum industries to increase national income. Development sustainability can be defined as investment divided by GDP. This measure provides an indication of the low level of sustainable development in Libya over the period of analysis, which is 0.38 on average. It is important that the Libyan government develop and implement plans and strategies for achieving sustainability and the maintenance of oil resources.Carbon dioxide emissions provide another indication of the presence or absence of sustainability. The ratio of carbon dioxide ranged from a minimum of 8.50 metric tons per capita in 1990 to 10.00 metric tons per capita in 2009 and average 9.07 metric tons per capita over the course of the study period. CO2 emissions were also much higher than other countries in the Middle East and North Africa. This suggests there was relatively little interest in the sustainable development of the Libyan economy during this period. The Environment Domestic Product (EDP) increased sharply from the beginning of the study at $24.23 billion in 1991 to $45.87 billion in 2009 in constant dollars. Again, one can infer that policy makers did not consider the depletion of oil resources and the environment in their planning process, or at least did not place a high level of concern on this issue.
تعد الاستدامة من اكثر المفاهيم حداثة وشيوعا في الوقت الحالي , منذ ظهور اتجاهات التنمية المستدامة وتطبيقاتها في التنمية الحضرية حاولت بعض دول العالم تحقيق نتائج جيدة في هذا المجال بينما بقيت دولاً اخرى دون تحقيق نتائج ملموسة نظرا لوجود تحديات ومعوقات خاصة بتلك الدول في هذا البحث نحاول ان نبين اهم التحديات والمعوقات التي تواجه هذه الدول في هذا الشأن كما تسعى هذه الورقة البحثية الى تحديد مجموعة من الحلول والاجراءات التي من شانها ان تحقق الاستدامة في المدن النامية وجاءت مشكلة البحث في ان هناك فجوة كبيرة بين دول العالم في تحقيق الاستدامة وخاصة في الدول النامية وجاءت فرضية البحث الى تبني منهجية خاصة باختيار وتقييم مجموعة من المؤشرات تمكين الاستدامة لمدن الدول النامية مسألة جوهرية للانتقال من الفكر النظري نحو الفعل التطبيقي وهدف البحث الى تحديد اهم المعوقات والتحديات التي تعيق الدول النامية من الوصول الى الاستدامة كما يهدف البحث الى صياغة مجموعة من الاطر العامة التي تمكن الدول النامية من التغلب على هذه التحديات التي تواجهها وتحقيق الاستدامة في المدن وتبنى البحث منهجين هما المنهج الوصفي يتم من خلاله اجراء مسح مكتبي حول مجموعة من المراجع العلمية والتقارير والدراسات الخاصة وغيرها من المفاهيم والمصطلحات الاساسية المرتبطة بهذا الموضوع ,وتبنى البحث ايضا المنهج التحليلي من خلال تحليل كافة البيانات والمعلومات المتاحة وتقييم الحالة الراهنة لمدن الدول النامية في ضوء اساسيات واستراتيجيات وصياغة مجموعة من الحلول والاجراءات التي تمكن الدول من الوصول الى الاستدامة واستنتج البحث الى ان هذه الدول تعاني من سبعة تحديات تعيقها من الوصول الى الاستدامة وهي تحديات الوعي والمعرفة والثقافة والتحديات البيئية والتحديات الاقتصادية والمالية والتحديات الاجتماعية والتحديات العمرانية والتحديات التكنولوجية والتحديات الادارية والسياسية .
تعد الاستدامة من اكثر المفاهيم حداثة وشيوعا في الوقت الحالي , منذ ظهور اتجاهات التنمية المستدامة وتطبيقاتها في التنمية الحضرية حاولت بعض دول العالم تحقيق نتائج جيدة في هذا المجال بينما بقيت دولاً اخرى دون تحقيق نتائج ملموسة نظرا لوجود تحديات ومعوقات خاصة بتلك الدول في هذا البحث نحاول ان نبين اهم التحديات والمعوقات التي تواجه هذه الدول في هذا الشأن كما تسعى هذه الورقة البحثية الى تحديد مجموعة من الحلول والاجراءات التي من شانها ان تحقق الاستدامة في المدن النامية وجاءت مشكلة البحث في ان هناك فجوة كبيرة بين دول العالم في تحقيق الاستدامة وخاصة في الدول النامية وجاءت فرضية البحث الى تبني منهجية خاصة باختيار وتقييم مجموعة من المؤشرات تمكين الاستدامة لمدن الدول النامية مسألة جوهرية للانتقال من الفكر النظري نحو الفعل التطبيقي وهدف البحث الى تحديد اهم المعوقات والتحديات التي تعيق الدول النامية من الوصول الى الاستدامة كما يهدف البحث الى صياغة مجموعة من الاطر العامة التي تمكن الدول النامية من التغلب على هذه التحديات التي تواجهها وتحقيق الاستدامة في المدن وتبنى البحث منهجين هما المنهج الوصفي يتم من خلاله اجراء مسح مكتبي حول مجموعة من المراجع العلمية والتقارير والدراسات الخاصة وغيرها من المفاهيم والمصطلحات الاساسية المرتبطة بهذا الموضوع ,وتبنى البحث ايضا المنهج التحليلي من خلال تحليل كافة البيانات والمعلومات المتاحة وتقييم الحالة الراهنة لمدن الدول النامية في ضوء اساسيات واستراتيجيات وصياغة مجموعة من الحلول والاجراءات التي تمكن الدول من الوصول الى الاستدامة واستنتج البحث الى ان هذه الدول تعاني من سبعة تحديات تعيقها من الوصول الى الاستدامة وهي تحديات الوعي والمعرفة والثقافة والتحديات البيئية والتحديات الاقتصادية والمالية والتحديات الاجتماعية والتحديات العمرانية والتحديات التكنولوجية والتحديات الادارية والسياسية .
Public space is an essential element of human wellbeing and the overall development of the city and society. This paper presents a brief outlook of the past and present situations related to the planning and use of public spaces in urban environments. In doing so, this paper addresses the finding that public spaces gradually lose the focus of quality in them, and as time goes by, these spaces are reshaping even in human-unfriendly places. The purpose of this presented research is to find out what are the key elements that create a quality public space. To achieve it, it is used a comparative–descriptive method comparing two relevant pieces of literature or authorial approaches, Henaff and Strong's “Public Space and Democracy” and Pérez-Gómez's “Attunement”. These two examples fulfill the criteria of having different interdisciplinary approaches toward public space, explained through different periods and backgrounds. It is found that the crucial elements these authors suggest for building qualitative space are well-grounded. As such, they can be implemented in an integrated physical form because they base on the human factor or the physical presence and experience in space. In the conclusion part, a suggestion was made to include these elements in the process of planning and designing public spaces in the context of the challenges of modern living culture.
This chapter describes what an “ecological economy” embedded in an “ecological civilization” could look like and how we could get there. We believe that this future can provide full employment and a high quality of life for everyone into the indefinite future while staying within the safe environmental operating space for humanity on earth. This is consistent with the new UN Sustainable Development Goals. To get there, we need to stabilize population more equitably share resources, income, and work invest in the natural and social capital commons reform the financial system to better reflect real assets and liabilities create better measures of progress reform tax systems to tax “bads” rather than goods promote technological innovations that support well-being rather than material growth, and create a culture of well-being rather than consumption. Several lines of evidence show that these policies are mutually supportive and the resulting system is feasible. The substantial challenge is making the transition to this better world in a peaceful and positive way. There is no way to predict the exact path this transition might take, but painting this picture of a possible end-point and some milestones along the way will help make this choice and this journey a more viable option.
One of the most influential recent developments in supposedly radical philosophy is ‘posthumanism’. This can be seen as the successor to ‘deconstructive postmodernism’. In each case, the claim of its proponents has been that cultures are oppressive by virtue of their elitism, and this elitism, fostered by the humanities, is being challenged. In each case, however, these philosophical ideas have served ruling elites by crippling opposition to their efforts to impose markets, concentrate wealth and power and treat everyone and everything as mere instruments in a way that is not only undermining democracy and threatening economic, social and political stability through growing inequality, but is crippling efforts to deal with the global ecological crisis. Philosophers, Nietzsche claimed, are physicians of culture. Why should people claiming to be philosophers, or at least aligned with philosophers, subvert their own calling? In this paper I will suggest that with the expansion of education and the rise of neoliberalism, those involved in education and research, particularly in the humanities and social sciences, have been proletarianized, and most have accepted this proletarianization. They have been reduced to a fraction of the proletariat - wage-slaves without economic security and therefore dependent on the will of others on whom they are dependent. They are not ordinary wage-slaves, however, but wage-house-slaves, having salaries rather than wages. If, as Marx argued, social being determines consciousness, posthumanism can be understood as the expression of ressentiment of these house-slaves at their condition while simultaneously serving to affirm their superiority to field-slaves while serving their masters. Their work is supported because it provides ideological cover for their masters, the new transnational managerial class or corporatocracy as they expand their power through information technology, while absolving this corporatocracy from responsibility for the consequences of their growing power. In making this claim I will argue that the real target of deconstructionists and posthumanists, although this is now seldom appreciated, has been the humanism of the New Left, a revival of the Radical Enlightenment inspired by Renaissance civic humanism and the German Renaissance.
The purpose of this research is to study if there is sustainable development from remittances sent to families in Puebla and Guerrero, Mexico; since remittances represent a fundamental income for families in places with high migratory intensity, hence the importance of carrying out this research. In this research, income from remittances received by families from Puebla and Guerrero was studied, as well as the difference with respect to gender and place of origin. It is an exploratory, descriptive, explanatory and transversal research. The sample was not probabilistic by 50 people in each state, so the sample is a total of 100 people. To collect the data, an instrument was applied to measure the impact of the news received, its use and benefit. The results showed that 33% of relatives of migrants based in the United States of America managed to start a business based on remittances received in Puebla and Guerrero, and there was a greater entrepreneurial spirit on the part of women. Therefore, it can be said that for Mexican migrants and their families, a route to sustainability is the sending of remittances through investment. Sustainability, Migration, Entrepreneurship Resumen Esta investigación tuvo como propósito estudiar si existe sostenibilidad a partir de las remesas enviadas a familias de Puebla y Guerrero, México; toda vez que las remesas representan un ingreso fundamental para las familias en localidades de alta intensidad migratoria, de ahí la importancia de llevar a cabo esta investigación. En el estudio se consideraron como ingreso las remesas percibidas por familias poblanas y guerrerenses, así como también se analizan las diferencias respecto al género y lugar de origen. Es una investigación de tipo exploratoria, descriptiva, explicativa y transversal. La muestra fue no probabilística por cuotas de 50 personas en cada estado, por lo que la muestra es un total de 100 personas. Para la recolección de los datos se aplicó una encuesta para medir el impacto de las remesas recibidas, su uso y beneficio. Los resultados mostraron que, el 33% de los familiares de migrantes radicados en Estados Unidos de América logró emprender un negocio a partir de las remesas recibidas en Puebla y Guerrero, existiendo mayor emprendimiento por parte de las mujeres. Por lo que se puede decir que para los migrantes mexicanos y sus familiares, una ruta hacia la sostenibilidad es el envío de remesas vía inversión.
Contemporary research exploring the Fair Trade movement does not provide a clear answer whether the overall impact of Fair Trade is positive or negative and what are the real motives of Fair Trade consumers. In the paper we investigate whether the assumptions of selected heterodox schools (feminist, ecological and humanist) fit better to the reality of the Fair Trade movement than those of the neoclassical theory. Although ‘better fitness’ does not necessarily mean ‘better explanation’, the mismatch with reality may constitute an obstacle in identifying a crucial aspect of the researched phenomenon (i.e. Fair Trade), harming explanation of its existence and development.
Educated people everywhere now acknowledge that ecological destruction is threatening the future of civilization. While philosophers have concerned themselves with environmental problems, they appear to offer little to deal with this crisis. Despite this, I will argue that philosophy, and ethics, are absolutely crucial to overcoming this crisis. Philosophy has to recover its grand ambitions to achieve a comprehensive understanding of nature and the place of humanity within it, and ethics needs to be centrally concerned with the virtues required to create and then sustain economic, social and political formations that augment the life of ecological communities. Achieving this will involve reviving speculative philosophy and its quest to forge a synthesis of natural philosophy, history and art to enable humanity to redefine its place in the world in a practical way. Such a synthesis is required to oppose the corrosion of democracy and revive citizenship and the sense of responsibility this entails, but more fundamentally and intimately related to this, to oppose managerialism and the proletarianization of the workforce and to revive workmanship and professionalism as the foundation of not only economic life, but social and political life.
The global trend toward adopting environmental rights within national constitutions has been largely regarded as a positive development for both human rights and the natural environment. The impact of constitutional environmental rights, however, has yet to be systematically assessed using empirical data. In particular, expanding procedural environmental rights—legal provisions relating to access to information, participation, and justice in environmental matters—provides fertile ground for analyzing how environmental rights directly interface with conditions necessary for a functioning democracy. To understand the extent to which these provisions deliver on their lofty aspirations, we conducted a quantitative analysis to assess the relationship between procedural environmental rights and environmental justice, while also controlling for the extent of democracy within a country. The results suggest that states with procedural environmental rights are more likely than nonadopting states to facilitate attaining environmental justice, especially as it relates to access to information.
The central place accorded the notion of 'sustainable development' among those attempting to overcome ecological problems could be one of the main reasons for their failure. It frames debates in a way that entrenches current priorities and marginalizes environmental issues. 'Ecological civilization' is proposed and defended as an alternative. 'Ecological civilization' has behind it a significant proportion of the leadership of China who would be empowered if this notion were taken up in the West. It carries with it the potential to fundamentally rethink the basic goals of life and to provide an alternative image of the future. It could both inspire people and provide the cultural foundations for the cultural, social and economic transformations necessary to create a new world order, a world order in which humans augment rather than undermine the ecosystems of which they are part. This paper explicates these implications.
Although planning scholars often argue that public participation improves implementation outcomes, this relationship is rarely empirically tested. This study investigates how public engagement, during planning and after plan adoption, impacts on the speed of local government sustainability plan implementation. It includes a correlation analysis of quantized in-depth interviews with sustainability planners in 36 American cities. The study finds that individual characteristics of public engagement, both during planning and after plan adoption, had statistically significant relationships to implementation speed, but in some cases this relationship was negative. The correlations imply that sustainability planners can make strategic choices to improve implementation speed through public participation in plan creation and after plan adoption. Alternatively, planners also make choices during participatory planning that slow implementation, a problematic outcome when the ultimate goal of a planning process is on-the-ground change.
The increase of energy consumption in the Malaysian Universities has raised national concerns due to the fact that its consumption increase government fiscal budget and at the same time contributes negative impacts towards the environment. The purpose of this research is to focus on the process of energy audit conducted in the Malaysian universities and to identify the significant practice that can improve energy consumption of the selected universities. The significant criteria in energy audit may be found by comparing the energy implementation process of selected Malaysian universities through the investigation of energy consumption behavior and the number of electrical appliances, equipment, machinery and buildings activities that have an impact on energy consumption that can improve energy-efficiency in building. The Energy Efficiency Index (EEI) will be used as an indicator and combined with the suggested application of HOMER software to obtain solution and possible improvement of energy consumption during energy audit implementation. A document analysis approach will also be obtained in order to identify the best practice through the selected energy documentations. The result of this research may be used as a guideline for other universities that consume high energy in order to help improving the implementation of energy audit process in their universities.
As discussions about sustainability management in local government evolve, public managers lack clear frameworks prescribing how sustainability should be integrated into the practice of management. Studies in public administration tend to emphasize the policy tools managers use for sustainable outcomes, rather than the management processes that can enhance sustainability through organizational change. Drawing on Laszlo and Zhexebayeva’s definition of ‘embedded sustainability,’ this essay suggests local government managers should focus on integrating sustainability into strategic planning processes in order to advance sustainability as a reform in local government. Public management scholars and local government professionals are urged to develop partnerships to support evidence-based decision-making in local government in order to investigate propositions about sustainability management.
This chapter explores the role and nature of networks as vehicles for cities and regions to go international in their attempt to participate in, and influence, emerging global governance. As discussed in Chaps. 2 and 3, networks and their diverse motivations and functions vary when it comes to their role in serving as connectors between sub-national actors and the international arena. Those networks claiming a stake in the international realm may reflect local or regional economic drivers (and Chap. 5 will focus in depth on examples), or may have wider motivations and a broader range of thematic purpose, such as environmental issues for example.
The economic value of meditation based services is clearly demonstrated by a growing number of companies using such services. In the USA one quarter of the companies offer in-house meditation training to their employees. On the other hand, the number of those who think that the western consumption paradigm in its present form is unsustainable is also increasing. In addition to its business value, meditation and its most popular western form mindfulness is a practical tool that can catalyze a change in our world view and value system. A basic precondition for learning meditation techniques is to have an open, receptive, feminine attitude. As it is revealed in the present research, tourists poses a significantly elevated level of openness to new experience. This increased openness together with an upward trend for spiritual experiences can create a synergy for certain destinations, accommodation types, tourism locations to expand their service portfolio with meditation based services. While favourable physical and psychological effects of traditional tourism services fade within a few weeks, meditation is a portable tourism product which can be taken home and practiced regularly in a virtually cost-free way. By learning and practicing meditation the extremely poor physical and psychological condition of the Hungarian population could be improved in a preventive and cost-effective way. As the level of mindfulness is positively correlated with sustainable behaviour by offering meditation services tourism might take on a new level of significance in the battle for sustainability.
The global ecological crisis is the greatest challenge humanity has ever had to confront, and humanity is failing. The triumph of the neo-liberal agenda, together with a debauched ‘scientism’, has reduced nature and people to nothing but raw materials, instruments and consumers to be efficiently managed in a global market dominated by corporate managers, media moguls and technocrats. The arts and the humanities have been devalued, genuine science has been crippled, and the quest for autonomy and democracy undermined. The resultant trajectory towards global ecological destruction appears inexorable, and neither governments nor environmental movements have significantly altered this, or indeed, seem able to. The Philosophical Foundations of Ecological Civilization is a wide-ranging and scholarly analysis of this failure. This book reframes the dynamics of the debate beyond the discourses of economics, politics and techno-science. Reviving natural philosophy to align science with the humanities, it offers the categories required to reform our modes of existence and our institutions so that we augment, rather than undermine, the life of the ecosystems of which we are part. From this philosophical foundation, the author puts forth a manifesto for transforming our culture into one which could provide an effective global environmental movement and provide the foundations for a global ecological civilization.
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