| Abstract: |
The research project WWWforEurope undertakes to lie the theoretical and
empirical foundations for the embarkment on a new socio-ecological growth path
in Europe. The new path underlines the need to guarantee Welfare as a broad
universal principle for its population, assuring economic and social
prosperity. The new path stresses the value of achieving – what we call –
Wealth, a value in which material and immaterial resources are combined with
the goal to enrich people‘s lives and to preserve natural resources, nature
and bio-diversity. Both cannot be achieved without Work: Europe needs to
enable its population to achieve their life satisfaction at the highest level
possible and Work is one of the most – if not, the most – fundamental
precondition for this. In short, the overarching question the WWWforEurope
project attempts to answer is what kind of new European growth and development
strategy is necessary and feasible, enabling a socio-ecological transition to
high levels of employment, well-being of its citizens, social inclusion,
resilience of ecological systems and a significant contribution to the global
common goods like climate stability. Thus the project’s central goals are to
identify the forces and challenges necessitating deliberations on a new growth
path, to define socio-ecological transition, key actors and main obstacles,
and to find out how the process of a socio-ecological transition can be
initiated, monitored, and accelerated on an institutional level (EU, national
and regional level). A central prerequisite to successfully accomplish these
central goals is to establish a common understanding of the central questions
raised by this undertaking and to create awareness for the project’s systemic
and interdisciplinary approach. To this behalf, this paper presents
fundamental concepts, terms and definitions relevant for socio-ecological
transition. Hereby the paper focuses on the concepts of sustainability,
growth, innovation, welfare and well-being, wealth and work. We also look at
the various dimensions and definitions of transition/transformation which can
be found in the literature, trying to concretise the concept of a
socio-ecological transition forming the context and starting point of the
WWWforEurope project. The necessity to accomplish a socio-ecological
transition represents the starting point and the background against which the
concepts and terms addressed in this paper gain their relevance. Economic,
environmental and social sustainability and sustainable growth and
development, respectively, are the central and final aim of the envisaged
socio-ecological transition. Sustainability is an indispensable precondition
for societal and individual welfare/well-being. Socio-ecological transition to
achieve sustainability requires putting into question the prevailing view on
economic growth. While economic growth may help to reduce poverty or
unemployment and may thus be positively related with social sustainability,
this often implies negative external effects for the environment. Alternative
growth concepts are to be explored therefore, which do not consider the
economic dimension of sustainability only, but explicitly try to incorporate
social and environmental aspects in addition. Several more
sustainability-oriented growth concepts have been brought into the discussion
more recently. All of them are departing from the empirical fact that with
increasing levels of GDP per capita the relation between economic growth and
societal as well as individual well-being is weakening and that economic
growth on the contrary may even endanger environmental and social
sustainability (e.g. due to too little time for family and friends) and thus
negatively affect quality of life and well-being. A more sustainable
perspective on growth requires a more sustainable view on innovation, as a
central driver for growth. Within the context of a socio-ecological transition
based on sustainable growth, ecological and social innovation gain in
importance vis-à-vis purely profit-oriented innovation. Long-term growth is
based on wealth as the productive base of an economy. Sustainable growth and
development needs to rest on a comprehensive/inclusive wealth concept taking
into account, besides the conventional material assets, also natural capital.
Finally, socio-ecological transition will also affect the organisation of
work/labour. This paper tries to define and concretise these fundamental
concepts and terms. Thus it should provide some kind of lexicon, which serves
as starting point and background for the work on the central questions guiding
the WWWforEurope project. Wherever possible, the paper should facilitate the
agreement on common definitions. It is not the aim of the paper to elaborate
tradeoffs in depth and to offer solutions and answers already. It rather
strives to motivate all research groups involved in the WWWforEurope project
to use and discuss the existing concepts, may they be consistent or just offer
a variety of thought. It also attempts at drawing attention to the existence
of trade-offs and open questions relevant for the various research areas.
Moreover, the paper wants to inspire the search for best (or the
identification of not working) practices, and it wants to increase the
awareness for existing barriers to change. While the paper is not able to
elaborate in depth distributional and gender aspects as crucial cross-cutting
issues, it aims at directing attention at them and at inspiring research
undertaken in the WWWforEurope project to consider these cross-cutting issues.
Finally, the paper does not focus too much on policy issues. It is the aim of
the overall project to identify (potential) interlinkages, trade-offs and
synergies and to discuss policy options and instruments in details to support
a more dynamic, inclusive and ecological growth and development path for
Europe. |
| Keywords: |
Behavioural economics, beyond GDP, biophysical constraints, ecological innovation, economic growth path, gender, innovation, social innovation, socio-ecological transition, sustainable growth, synergies, wealth |