Introduction
The green transition proposed by the European Union and formalized in the European Green Deal, will have a disruptive impact on labour markets and employment; also, the abandonment of fossil fuels and regressive climate policies will foster new forms of poverty, such as energy poverty.
We expect that those trends will have an impact on the welfare systems. First, occupation schemes will be put under pressure: social exclusion (and therefore the anti-poverty schemes); passive labour market policies, such as unemployment benefits; pensions. Moreover, assistance schemes and social services will be key in addressing the new social risks and needs arising from the transition.
The green transition will have uneven impacts: the educated urban population will typically benefit from the process, while this will negatively affect industrial blue-collar workers employed in primary and secondary industries and, more in general, energy-intensive activities. Those social groups would be the first to which the welfare state should address. Overall, the green transition could represent a further step in the process of decay of “full employment” industrial economies, which could reinforce the already-ongoing trend of social exclusion and poverty. So: how can XX-century social protection adapt to XXI-century labour markets? The arising studies on eco-social policies and eco-welfare states are indicative of a movement toward a new conceptualization of the relationship between the social and the environmental spheres, largely neglected in the “half-century compromise” as defined by Colin Crouch. As explicated by Schoyen et al (2021), in the introduction of the volume “Towards Sustainable Welfare States in Europe: Social Policy and Climate Change”, the idea of the new eco-social research agenda is to bring together welfare studies and climate policy studies, “to improve our understanding of how ecological threats and particularly climate change and policies to address it might affect the sustainability of advanced welfare states”. Also, other than the relations between the social and ecological spheres, it is particularly relevant discussing the economy. Accordingly, different conceptualizations are given of the economic objectives: sustainable development (SD) and green growth approaches are particularly popular. About that: how to reframe economic growth in relation to eco-social welfare states?
Questions
Against this background, we ask:
- How will the green transition impact European welfare systems?
- Which will be the more exposed social groups?
- How can welfare regimes and social policies develop into eco-welfare systems and eco-social policies?
- Which relationship between social and environmental spheres? How should we build a bridge between social and environmental policy objectives?
- How to reframe economic growth in relation to eco-social welfare states?
- How could one frame a “new politics” of eco-social welfare states? Which could be the most relevant actors? Which alliances? And which conflicts?
Participants
- Sebastiano Sabato, Osservatorio Sociale Europeo
- Mi Ah Schoyen, NOVA Norwegian Social Research
- Giulia Valenti, Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia
- David Natali, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna
- Halliki Kreinin, University of Munster
- Stefano Ronchi, Università degli Studi di Milano
- Anna Kyriazi, Università degli Studi di Milano
- Benedetta Cotta, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna
- Tiziano Distefano, Università degli studi di Firenze
- Katharina Zimmermann, Universitat Hamburg
Discussion
Opening intervention
The keynote speech was by Sebastiano Sabato, senior researcher at the European Social Observatory, which mainly dealt with the EU-level approach to just transition, asking how the welfare state should relate to the socio-ecological transition.
First, an assessment of the European Green Deal was proposed, considered as a ‘new growth strategy’ with two main objectives: zero net emission of greenhouse gases by 2050 and to protect, conserve and enhance the EU’s natural capital. The idea is that economic, social and environmental objectives should be pursued in synergy, through win-win solutions. However, possible trade-offs are already arising, and the idea of a green transition is often related to an attention to its social dimension, i.e. to a “just transition”. In this regard, just transition is considered to have four aspects: political, territorial/sectoral, functional, and relatable to the different welfare mix.
In particular, the welfare state could be expected to play 4 functions in the green transition: i) as a benchmark, providing principles and rights that should be reflected in designing and implementing of the policies for the green transition; ii) as an enabler of the green transition; iii) as a buffer, to mitigate and diffuse the negative social effect of the green transition; iv) as a consensus-builder or conflict-management tool of the green transition, through social and civic dialogue.
In this context, the EU has designed a series of instruments and policy strategies aimed at ensuring that the EU and its Member States can exploit opportunities and face the risks deriving from the green transition. The most notable financial initiatives in this respect are the Just Transition Fund; the national NRRPs; and the Social Climate Fund.
So, starting from this, an “EU framework” for a just transition is gradually emerging, even though such framework still is fragmented, and unbalanced towards a benchmarking and enabling approach, which seems to be insufficient to comprehensively address the targeted population.
Then, other limitations and issues are at stake. It is in fact not clear whether the premises on which the EU action is based are realistic, as the current economic model is rooted in fossil fuel availability and natural source exploitation: accordingly, the feasibility of green growth, ecological modernisation and their result in decoupling might not be possible.
Also, it is worth asking i) if the policies proposed are innovative enough, ii) which are the budgetary margins for manoeuvre, and iii) how a just transition framework can be integrated in the in EU socio-economic governance. Lastly, the EU financial resources are not sufficient for the foreseen objectives.
Discussant
Mi Ah Schoyen, from the Metropolitan University of Oslo, took the stage by emphasising that the concept of sustainability should be broadened. Thus, the focus of welfare state research should shift from addressing only fiscal sustainability, to the consideration of environmental sustainability. Then, the content of the book “Towards Sustainable Welfare States in Europe: Social Policy and Climate Change” edited by herself, Hvinden and Dotterud Leiren in 2022, was presented. In this publication, the importance of the eco-social-growth trilemma is underlined. In fact, the idea is that the concept of a “sustainable welfare state” is at the crossroad between economic, ecological and social necessities, and could be a way to face the climate crisis. Also, three political economy approaches are outlined: i) economic modernisation/green growth; ii) just transition, green new deal, sustainable development; and iii) post-/de-growth. These three approaches differently conceptualise the interconnections between the environmental, social and economic sphere, from the more “productivist” sight of economic modernisation, to the neo-Keynesianism of the green new deal, to the radical proposals of post-growth, which is constitutively in contrast with the idea itself of capital accumulation and capitalistic development.
Then, Giulia Valenti and David Natali’s intervention took place. Their speech was centred on the relationship between pension systems and the green transition. First, the main challenges were identified, both the “classic” long-period challenges, such as population ageing and increasing expenditure, and the “new” ones, related to the green transition. An heuristic distinction was made in differentiating the two words of pension in Europe, following Jessoula and Hinrich: integrating systems (universal coverage through different schemes) and disintegrating systems (uneven protection for different socio-occupational groups). Then a possible source of inequalities was identified, considering the winner of the green transition (the green sectors workers) and its losers (the brown sector, that are expected to bear the bulk of the cost of such transition). Against this background, the main question is: how to manage this through welfare and especially pensions? Accordingly, three strategies are considered: i) A defensive strategy, i.e. the adoption of encompassing early retirement schemes; 2) An encompassing strategy: i.e. the increasing of minimum pension and top up benefit for the same workers who risk having a more fragmented career due to green transition; 3) A proactive strategy, i.e. the adoption of stricter guidelines on pension funds investment in the green economy.
Discussion
More critical insights were proposed by Halliki Kreinin, from the University of Munster. She sketched a radical view of economic growth and of the development of the welfare state during the “golden age of welfare capitalism”, which was rooted in the exploitation of the Global South and in a massive consumption of fossil fuels. Thus, the key proposal is to take the financial resources needed to sustain welfare systems from where they are present in abundance. Given increasing inequalities, therefore, the proposal is mainly to increase the taxation on the capital accumulation, especially financial capital. Parallelly, a reflection was raised for a reconceptualization of the “good life”: in this view, the “imperial” mode of living should be abandoned, to adopt the “buen vivir” perspective, which does not exploit the non-human, and ultimately, does not compromise the biosphere at the local and planetary levels.
In response to that, Tiziano Distefano, from the University of Florence, made his intervention on ecological macroeconomics. He sketched a data-driven scenario on the possible economic paramount that would emerge if Western societies stopped to pollute, as economic growth is rooted in material footprint. The other objective considered is the reduction of inequalities, since the vast majority of global emissions (about 70%) are mostly produced by the richest 10% of the global population, which is endowed with 76% of the global wealth. Three scenarios are foreseen: green growth, policies for social equity and de-growth. The most efficient in ecological term is the degrowth scenario, which also guarantees a more efficient wealth re-distribution through the implementation of a wealth tax.
The intervention of Benedetta Cotta, from the University Sant’Anna di Pisa, is instead focused on the possible feature of an eco-social welfare state that considered eco-social policies as: “public policies explicitly pursuing both environmental and social policy goals in an integrated way”. Adopting this framework, an analysis of two European level documents is carried out: the European Green Deal (EGD) and the Farm 2 Fork strategy (F2F). Both of them, as reported in the slides presented during the workshop, showed the “presence of all aspects of the eco-social essence and provide concrete indications on European actions and instruments.”. Moreover, “the EGD and the F2F provide details on how to successfully integrate environmental and social aspects, achieve successful policies by actively engaging citizens and stakeholders and suggesting a green growth economic model and a collective approach to policymaking.”
Anna Kyriazi, from the University of Milan, and involved in the project SOLID, stressed instead the political dimension of the Just Transition Fund (JTF) and the Social Climate Fund (SCF), investigating which alliances and political coalitions led to the approval of both policies. Two premises were made. The first, on public opinion, is that European citizens are very much in favour of the EU’s involvement in climate policies. Second, the European Union Member States are heterogeneous, considered their institutional arrangement (Welfare Mix), their economic structures, their energy mixes, and the industrial sectors on which they relied most. Relevant ideological differences are at stake, and only few countries can be defined as climate sceptic. About the JTF, it was born as an instrument for the regions in transition that aim at fostering economic diversification in those areas. It came from a demand by the Polish government, as well as the initiative of various supranational entrepreneurs, and it basically works as an instrument of self-compensation for the climate laggard countries. The Social Climate Fund was instead proposed in Summer 2021, and it is worth 72.2 billon euro. abuilding on ideological lines of conflict, the greens and socialists voted against in the EU parliamentary sessions, as they were favourable to a broader envelope of resources.
Stefano Ronchi, from University of Milan, focused on the public opinion level. In a nutshell he checked for the existence of a possible “eco-social” constituency, that is aware of the “third generation of social risks”related to green issues. The main evidence that emerged from the data collected in the project SOLID in partnership with YouGov, is the fact that a polarisation is occurring between those who support eco-social policies, typically the richer and higher educated, and those who are in favour of “classic” welfare state, i.e. typically lower income workers likely to be affected from the job displacement produced by green transition in industry and primary sectors.
Katharina Zimmermann, from Universität Hamburg, talked about social risks with relation to climate change and the Net Zero Transition policies. First, her attempt was to systematise the possible “eco-social risks”. Those risks are basically: the loss of private social protection due to extreme weather; health risks, such as pandemics, cardiac diseases, allergies, workplace risks; the need for work-related social protection in case of job loss, or in case of devaluation of educational qualification; lastly, pension gaps or mobility requirements in the context of economic transformation. Also, importantly, the climate crisis and climate policies are expected to produce increasing energy poverty because of increasing prices and environmental damages. Energy/mobility/agriculture transitions will increase people exposure to poverty and job losses. Lastly, due to the macro-economic transformation, the general welfare financing is likely to pass through a generalised crisis. Against this backdrop, two policy instruments have been adopted by EU: the JTF and the SCF. The JTF focuses on work-related social protection while the SCF mainly addresses poverty. If work-related social protection is widely addressed, especially with active labour market policies, the range of EU anti-poverty policies is instead smaller. However, the SCF is important because the EU rarely provides social protection on an individual basis. The other possible “green social risks” are instead not addressed by the EU level: here, national welfare states should be encouraged in addressing those risks, and the EU can have a role in easing this adaptation.
Conclusions
Building on this discussion, three main topics seem to be at stake with reference to eco-social policies and sustainable welfare states: the overarching approach to the green transition (or socio-ecological transition); the role of public policies in steering (or not) this transition; and the politico-institutional dimension.
First, different approaches should be considered with reference to how the transition is governed. Basically, two positions are possible: green growth and post-growth perspectives. The green growth approach, based on ecological modernisation and embraced by the the EU Commission, risks not to be ambitious enough to address the socio-ecological crisis, which is increasing in its magnitude and the results of which are still largely unpredictable. Post-growth instead is aimed at “squaring the circle” and to propose a change of paradigm, discussing the production- and consumption-level economic status quo. Against this background, Just Transition is a concept that tries to point out the necessity of having a transition that respects the planetary boundaries, but at the same time is aware of the negative social implications that this transition can entail. The concept of “third wave eco-social risks” is particularly fitting to describe these implications, as it considers new kinds of risks that are expected to arise from both the climate crisis and those policies aimed at contrasting it.
Second, Welfare States have historically been contributing to climate change through their ecological footprint, but they also could act to cushion the negative effect that climate change and climate policies could bring about. As previously said, Welfare States can play different roles in the green transition. What is needed is to overcome the silos-based mentality that dominates policy making, in order to put forward integrated eco-social policies. Importantly, eco-social policies are not all the same, and their design matters a lot, in particular considering the difference between investment/enabling policies and buffering/protecting ones.
Third, it is important to underline the politico-institutional implications of eco-social policies, asking which is the political feasibility of eco-social policies and of this paradigm shift toward a sustainable way of life? Social constituencies and political actors that support the status quo are stronger than those who advocate for an encompassing socio-ecologic transition, even when the unsustainability of such status quo is acknowledged. In this sense, the EU could work as an ideational leader to push for a just transition, trying to find a synthesis between the different issues at stake.