Social-Ecological State

= "its guiding principle is denaturalisation — or, put positively, socialisation. This entails transforming ecological uncertainty into social risk, by means of public guarantees and insurance, to make the social consequences of the environmental crises of the 21st century as fair as possible". [1]

Description

Eloi Laurent:

"The development of a social-ecological policy requires prior identification and analysis of the associated and sometimes inextricable character of the social and environmental dimensions: there is a need to recognise the ecological stakes within social issues, as well as to reveal the social stakes of ecological issues. Many if not all social-ecological trade-offs can then be transformed into social-ecological synergies: fuel poverty related to home heating results both in monetary poverty and energy over-consumption. Thermal insulation (home weatherisation) allows for a reduction in energy consumption (and thus lower related greenhouse-gas emissions, triggering environmental improvement), which translates into lower expenditure devoted to energy by fuel-poor households, allowing for social progress.

The social-ecological state also guarantees social-ecological protection for the most vulnerable (social groups as well as localities facing climate risk). It organises the development of jobs in the energy transition. It redraws urban spaces to make them sustainable and imagines their ecological co-operation with rural areas (vis-à-vis energy and food). ‘State’ should indeed be understood broadly: the social-ecological transition is polycentric, meaning that every locality and every community can and should participate.

Finally, the social-ecological state aims at human well-being—not growth or fiscal discipline—starting with health. It relies on a simple but hard truth: our societies will be more just if they are more sustainable and more sustainable if they are more just. In other words, it makes environmental sense to mitigate our social crisis and social sense to mitigate our environmental crises." (https://www.socialeurope.eu/the-social-ecological-state)

Typology

Éloi Laurent:

"An extension of the genius of the welfare state, its guiding principle is denaturalisation — or, put positively, socialisation. This entails transforming ecological uncertainty into social risk, by means of public guarantees and insurance, to make the social consequences of the environmental crises of the 21st century as fair as possible and therefore, in principle, mitigate their natural violence.

But, as with the welfare state, this principle varies widely from one country to another—indeed from one region to another—as regards the demand and capacity for socialisation. Different social-ecological state systems are thus emerging, according to at least three criteria: vulnerability (exposure to risks, state of health of the population and so on), protection (development of social protections, degree of social inequality, etcetera) and resilience (social cohesion, trust, quality of institutions). Using these three criteria, four different regimes appear on the planet—four ‘worlds’ of the social-ecological state seem to emerge.

..

The four worlds of the social-ecological state, as we can see them today, are still in their infancy. Far from being crystallised, their internal contradictions will make them evolve rapidly.

We are hence called to a double revolution: putting health back at the heart of our public policies, while putting the environment at the heart of our health policies."

Bio-techno power

Bio-techno power is the first such world. What Michel Foucault called half a century ago ‘the power over life’ is today combined with digital-control tools whose omnipotence he could not imagine. In the beginnings of the Covid-19 crisis, a mode of socialisation of environmental crises emerged which combines strong exposure to risk, authoritarian power, civil discipline and digital surveillance.

South Korea is the most emblematic country of this model but China has prefigured and applied it on a larger scale. The admiration for this social-ecological regime—palpable in European countries whose populations are considered less reliable and governments deemed too lax—disregards what ecological authoritarianism has cost the whole world: the initial alerts on what was then only a regional epidemic were fiercely repressed by the Chinese autocracy in the autumn of 2019. The ‘effectiveness’ of bio-techno power is thus doubly doubtful, from the factual and the ethical point of view.

Ecological neoliberalism

The second world is that of ecological neoliberalism. In Brazil, the United States and Australia, market fundamentalism takes the place of social-ecological policy. Environmental regulations as well as health protections are weakened in favor of a small minority who have captured political power and exploited it as a source of rents, to extract huge profits from health privatisation and environmental degradation. Yet, in these countries, exposure to environmental risks is high and collective protection is already weak and fragile, as the unfolding health tragedy in the US makes clear. The political development of Australia in the coming years will be a good indicator of the viability of ecological neoliberalism.

Economic naturalism

Economic naturalism appears as the third world of the social-ecological state and it is the prerogative of European countries. Unable to define together a new social-ecological regime calibrated for the 21st century, they have opted for a naturalisation of the economic system they have built in common since the 1950s—notions borrowed from the living world, such as growth and competition, ending up governing human societies and social systems. We can see today how secondary these superficial economic realities are, conditioned by human wealth and social co-operation.

The health crisis triggered by Covid-19 hit the French healthcare system, for instance, at the exact moment when political power—not ‘globalisation’ nor ‘demographic ageing’—was pushing it, knowingly, to its breaking point. The national madness of the budgetary ‘rationalisation’ of the social system is the reflection of European rules which seem to have as their objective collective ill-being.

Natural regulations

The fourth and last world of the social-ecological state is that of natural regulations. Even if the welfare state were to continue its global expansion, it still encompasses only 30 per cent of humanity. In most of Africa and Asia, human communities simultaneously face very high exposure to environmental risk while enjoying very little social protection. Take India, where annual health spending per capita is around $60 (70 times lower than that of OECD countries).

Humans there need to rely mostly if not solely on natural protections, such as the heat, varying with the seasons, with its power to destroy many viruses. More generally, the regulatory services provided by ecosystems protect humans: climate regulation, purification of air and water, tsunami mitigation, destruction of parasites and pathogens, and so on. These natural regulations, more or less degraded by humans since the industrial revolution, are in India both enemies and allies, with heat waves appearing when viruses are absent and mangroves protecting land submerged by human-induced climate change." (https://www.socialeurope.eu/the-four-worlds-of-the-social-ecological-state)