Sustainable welfare in the EU: Promoting synergies between climate and social policies

Abstract

The commentary addresses the scope for synergy between climate change policy and social policy in the European Union (EU) from a ‘sustainable welfare’ perspective. The emerging sustainable welfare approach is oriented to the satisfaction of human needs within ecological limits, in an intergenerational and global perspective. While the overall goals of EU climate policy and EU welfare policies largely reflect this orientation, there are significant differences in policy priorities. A ‘policy auditing’ approach towards sustainable welfare defines critical thresholds for matter and energy throughput to identify how much room there is for economic and societal development. However, the EU refrains from prioritizing environmental over other, especially economic, goals and displays a remarkable degree of optimism in relation to the extent to which one can make these different policy goals compatible.

The United Kingdom: a merging climate and sustainability agenda

“…In line with sustainable welfare theory (Gough, 2017;Koch et al, 2016;Schoyen and Hvinden, 2017), we distinguish between the environmental, eco-nomic and social dimensions of sustainable development and analyse how they are interlinked. Our point of departure is that these three dimensions of sustainability are traditionally linked with different policy domains (Gough, 2017) and associated with different government departments.…”

Attitudes towards climate change and economic inequality: a cross-national comparative study

“…There is an increasingly strong recognition that the threat posed by climate change is formidable and that it has potentially disruptive impact on the living conditions of people in regionally and socially differentiated ways across the globe (Gough, 2017;Gough et al, 2008;Koch et al, 2016;Kvaloy et al, 2012;Swim et al, 2011). However, there is a general lack of knowledge on the (potential) interconnection between perceptions of economic and social policy, on the one hand, and attitudes towards environmental issues and climate change, on the other.…”

Digital welfare for children in China: Human needs and sustainability

“…They tend, however, to generate tensions and contradictions in how they change the landscape of welfare in various national and local contexts. This article juxtaposes sustainable welfare, which “is oriented to the satisfaction of human needs within ecological limits, in an intergenerational and global perspective” (Koch et al, 2016: 704) with digital welfare, which is the digitalisation of health care and social care. In examining the case of children in China, this article deliberates on whether digital welfare could be a more viable tool to meet the basic needs of children in China than is currently the case; and what’s more, in ways that are environmentally sustainable.…”