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".

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.

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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)