This blog is based on an article in Social Policy and Society by Larissa Nenning, Paul Bridgen, Katharina Zimmermann, Milena Büchs and Merita Mesiäislehto. Click here to access the article.
The climate crisis poses a historic challenge to the economic and social relations underpinning existing social protection policies. Historical social inequalities from profit-oriented economic practices are being deepened, creating greater need for good social protection systems, while business-as-usual has itself been revealed as unsustainable within planetary boundaries. Thus, in academic and non-academic circles alike, many debates address the same question: how should social protection systems be transformed to support adaptation and rapid decarbonisation?
In our article, we reviewed contemporary literature on the climate crisis and its implications for social protection. We offer a critical analysis of different strands of eco-social scholarship, according to their conceptualisation of the links between the climate crisis and social protection, the scale of transformation required, their norms and policies proposed to address these challenges and their assumptions of how transformation should or could occur.
Our examination revealed at least five distinct policy approaches critical of the dominant economic model: (1) Adaptive Social Protection; (2) Just Transition; (3) Green New Deal; (4) Post-growth; and (5) Eco-feminism. We argue that these five strands exist along a continuum stretching from a green growth stance to a growth-sceptical anti-capitalist stance. Additionally, they vary in their approach to framing the climate crisis and hold diverse views regarding relevant actors, global regions, and particularly crucial to social welfare, their understanding of social protection. While proponents of green growth envision a sustainable capitalist system decoupled from resource use and emissions, anti-capitalist perspectives challenge the achievability of absolute decoupling and reject GDP growth as the primary economic goal.
Key perspectives on social protection and climate crisis
The differing perspectives on the causes of the climate crisis shape the proposed social protection strategies within each framework. On the green-growth end, Adaptive Social Protection approaches focus on mitigating climate change and poverty primarily in the Global South through small-scale, targeted interventions. Located ambivalently between pro-growth and anti-capitalist approaches, Just Transition advocates for coordinated decarbonization programmes and public investment to support affected formal workers in key sectors, predominantly focusing on the Global North. Green New Deal approaches are similarly ambivalent about economic growth, and tend to prioritize state-led large-scale public and private investment in eco-social infrastructure and services. On the anti-capitalist end of the spectrum, we locate post-growth and eco-feminist approaches, which call for needs- and rights-based provisioning systems. However, within these approaches there is often a lack of consensus on the politics of transformation, ranging from gradual reform to rapid radical change.
While each framework offers some accounts of how transformation could occur, they are often elusive regarding the institutions and actor coalitions which could steer required changes and the barriers that stand in the way. We identify this as an important area for further research, especially because vast social policy research on the last few decades of liberalisation points to the weakening of organised labour, intensified commodification of working-age people and fiscal austerity norms – trends which are in opposition to many eco-social policy demands for expansionary investment. The vast global inequalities in exposure to climate risks and state capacity to address them are also insufficiently examined in the social policy literature.
Our analysis also points to the importance of further critical analysis of different eco-social policy frameworks with regards to their underlying assumptions, power dynamics, and ideological influences. Rather than treating policy proposals as problem-solving attempts, we should critically examine their emergence and relationships to existing power relations.
In conclusion, the discourse on eco-social policy frameworks presents opportunities for informing transformative politics but is itself shaped by existing ideologies and power relations. Critical engagement with these frameworks is crucial for developing empirically grounded and inclusive policies that can address the intertwined crises of climate change and social inequality.
About the authors
Larissa Nenning is PhD Student at the University of Edinburgh.
Paul Bridgen is Associate Professor at University of Southampton.
Katharina Zimmermann is Assistant Professor at the University of Hamburg.
Milena Büchs is Professor at the University of Leeds.
Merita Mesiäislehto is Research Manager at the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare and Adjunct Professor at the University of Helsinki.
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