Imagining Europe in the Postgrowth Era: Towards a Sustainable Welfare Deal - Journal of Common Market Studies Annual Lecture,

Description

Given the lack of empirical evidence for sufficient absolute decoupling of GDP growth from environmental resource use to stay within planetary limits and meet the Paris climate goals, the lecture invites attendants to imagine Europe in the postgrowth era. The point of departure are critical issues of the European Green Deal such as the EU’s continuingly ungeneralisable ecological footprint,
accompanied by unprecedented socio-economic inequality. With focus on degrowth the lecture then zooms in on approaches that substitute GDP growth as overall policy target with environmental and social goals, operationalised as planetary boundaries and social floors. Subsequently, it discusses selected eco-social policies from the sustainable welfare literature. These policies target both the currently poor and the rich and are designed to move European consumption and production patterns towards a safe space where human needs are met, and planetary boundaries not transgressed. The discussion addresses structural barriers to this transformation and indicates some ways to tackle
these.

Keynote: Max Koch (speaker) is professor of social policy and sustainability at Lund University, Sweden. He currently leads the interdisciplinary projects Postgrowth Welfare Systems and Economic Elites in the Climate Change Transformation: Practices, justifications and regulations of unsustainable lifestyles in Sweden. He has published widely on degrowth and sustainable welfare, mainly with focus on European societies.

Chair: Gabriel Siles-Brügge is Professor in Global Governance & Public Policy at the University of Bristol, UK. He is one of the Editors-in-Chief of JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies. His research interests sit at the intersection of EU Studies, International Political Economy and Public Policy, where
he has published extensively on the politics of trade and investment agreements.

Period	2024 Jul 3
Event title	30th International Conference of Europeanists: "Radical Europe: Violence, Emancipation, Reaction"
Event type	Conference
Location	Lyon, FranceShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International