An Institutional Approach to Sustainability: Historical Interplay of Worldviews, Institutions and Technology (original) (raw)
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2012
This paper draws on institutional and evolutionary economics and contributes to an approach to environmental policy which diverges from mainstream prescriptions. The 'socio-technical system' is the core concept: this is a complex made of co-evolving institutions, technologies, markets and actors that fulfils an overall societal need (such as housing, production, mobility, etc.). A systemic and dynamic analysis of those structural changes which are needed to create more sustainable socio-technical systems is provided; actors – and their ability to influence politics and policy – are explicitly taken into consideration. Unsustainable socio-technical systems feature a relevant resistance to change, because they are embedded in the very structure of our society and because of the conservative action of dominant stakeholders; this is why no environmental policy will be effective unless it aims at 'unlocking' our societies from their dominance. But also a constructive ...
Towards a Sustainable Economy - Ideas, Ideology, Institutions and “letting go to move on”
The starting point of this paper is that the main cause of climate change and the intensifying global ecological crisis is economic growth, or more specifically orthodox, GDP measured, undifferentiated growth as a permanent objective of the economy. The Anthropocene, the shift from the climate stability of the past 10,000 years (the Holocene), can be explained as due to fossil-fuelled economic growth andthe associated ecological degradation since the postwar period of the twentieth century. And as inconvenient as it may be, there is growing scientific evidence for the idea—putting to one side some mythic and wishful thinking around a technological solution— that the only way to address climate change is to reduce economic growth in the "overdeveloped”minority world.
Journal of Environmental Monitoring, 2008
Traditional ideas of science as being separate and separable from ideology and politics have to be reconsidered. Each interpretation of sustainable development is not only scientific but at the same time ideological. For this reason our ideas about good science should also be related to normal imperatives of democracy. Mainstream neoclassical economics is specific in scientific and ideological terms. This paradigm is useful for some purposes and has played a role as a mental map in guiding us towards economic growth and other ideas about progress in society and the economy. Sustainable development, however, represents an ideological turn in our ideas about progress and it is no longer clear that neoclassical theory will be enough. Alternative perspectives in economics are being developed as part of a pluralistic strategy and the monopoly position of neoclassical economists at university departments of economics is thereby challenged. A 'political economic person' is suggested as alternative (complement) to Economic Man assumptions and a 'political economic organization' to be compared with the neoclassical profit maximizing firm. Alternative ways of understanding markets and international trade, efficiency, decision-making, monitoring and assessment are also needed. It is argued that such an alternative mental map is useful for actors who take the challenge of sustainable development seriously.
Global institutions and ecological crisis
World Development, 1991
Rapidly escalating environmental problems of the late 20th century have a common characteristic: their increasingly global nature. Damage to ecosystems, the atmosphere, oceans, forests, agricultural systems, and water supplies threatens both the stability of industrialized nations and the growth prospects of the developing world. The concepts of growth management and sustainable development have emerged as responses to the environmental crisis. If these concepts are to be applied on the scale necessary to avert ecological catastrophe, a transformation of existing national and international institutions is required. The future world economic system must be based on a kind of global ecological Keynesianism, with a significant social direction of capital flows, demand management, and technological choices, to promote ecological sustainability.