Increasing evidence-synthesized in this paper-shows that economic growth contributes to biodiversity loss via greater resource consumption and higher emissions.Nonetheless, a review of international biodiversity and sustainability policies shows that the majority advocate economic growth. Since improvements in resource use efficiency have so far not allowed for absolute global reductions in resource use and pollution, we question the support for economic growth in these policies, where inadequate attention is paid to the question of how growth can be decoupled from biodiversity loss. Drawing on the literature about alternatives to economic growth, we explore this contradiction and suggest ways forward to halt global biodiversity decline. These include policy proposals to move beyond the growth paradigm while enhancing overall prosperity, which can be implemented by combining top-down and bottom-up governance across scales. Finally, we call the attention of researchers and policy makers to two immediate steps: acknowledge the conflict between economic growth and biodiversity conservation in future policies; and explore socioeconomic trajectories beyond economic growth in the next generation of biodiversity scenarios.
In their own battles and strategy meetings since the early 1980s, EJOs (environmental justice organizations) and their networks have introduced several concepts to political ecology that have also been taken up by academics and policy makers. In this paper, we explain the contexts in which such notions have arisen, providing definitions of a wide array of concepts and slogans related to environmental inequities and sustainability, and explore the connections and relations between them. These concepts include: environmental justice, ecological debt, popular epidemiology, environmental racism, climate justice, environmentalism of the poor, water justice, biopiracy, food sovereignty, "green deserts", "peasant agriculture cools downs the Earth", land grabbing, Ogonization and Yasunization, resource caps, corporate accountability, ecocide, and indigenous territorial rights, among others. We examine how activists have coined these notions and built demands around them, and how academic research has in turn further applied them and supplied other related concepts, working in a mutually reinforcing way with EJOs. We argue that these processes and dynamics build an activist-led and co-produced social sustainability science, furthering both academic scholarship and activism on environmental justice. Keywords: Political ecology, environmental justice organizations, environmentalism of the poor, ecological debt, activist knowledge RésuméDepuis le début des années 80, à travers leurs propres luttes et réunions stratégiques, les EJOS (Organisations de Justice Environnementale) et leurs réseaux ont introduit quelques concepts différents d'écologie politique qui ont été repris par le monde académique et par les décideurs politiques. Dans cet article, nous expliquons les contextes qui ont promu l'émergence de ces concepts, et offrons des définitions pour un large ensemble de concepts et de slogans lies aux inégalités environnementales et à la protection durable de l'environnement, et nous explorons les connections entre eux. Ces concepts incluent: La justice environnementale, la dette écologique, l'épidémiologie populaire, le racisme environnemental, la justice climatique, l'environnementalisme des pauvres, la justice hydrique, la bio-piraterie, la souveraineté alimentaire, «les déserts verts», «l'agriculture paysanne rafraichit la terre», la prise des terres (land grabbing), l'Ogonisation et la Yasunisation, les plafonds de ressources, la responsabilité des entreprises, l'écocide, les droits indigènes territoriaux, et quelques autres. Nous examinons comment les activistes ont inventé ces termes, construit des demandes autour d'eux, et comment la recherche académique les a appliqués, et ensuite comment elle a offert de nouveaux concepts, travaillant de manière symbiotique avec les EJOS. Nous argumentons que ces processus et dynamiques construisent une science du développement durable conduite et co-produite par les activistes, ce qui renforce ainsi la littérature académique et l'activisme sur la justice environnementale....
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