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Sufficiency
(2023)
Environmental justice
(2023)
Which of Pope Francis' countless appearances will posterity consider truly iconic? Probably neither his journey to the shipwrecked in Lampedusa nor his encounter with the indigenous peoples of the Amazon, although both are characteristic of the pontificate - rather, it will be his appearance in the deserted St. Peter's Square during the coronavirus pandemic. A single figure in white, alone, laboriously climbing the steps to St. Peter's Basilica, then offering the Urbi et Orbi blessing with the monstrance - that image will be in the history books. This view undoubtedly thrives on contrast: the image of the Pope standing alone in the rain at nightfall in contrast to the image familiar to television viewers from all over the world where the Pope appears in St Peter's Square amidst the cheering of tens or hundreds of thousands under Bernini's colonnades. And then, in March 2020, a formidable showing of vulnerability that touched even non-believers.
Wolfgang Sachs wrote a seminal series of essays for the New Internationalist in 1992 called "Development: a guide to the ruins". The concept of development lives on - and takes on new shapes as it is reframed by the UN, reinterpreted by the Vatican or hijacked by authoritarian populists to serve their own nationalist agenda. But, he argues now, we need to move beyond its misguided assumptions into a new post-development era based on eco-solidarity.
Environment
(2019)
One world
(2019)
Comparing the Agenda 2030 of the United Nations and the Laudato si' by the Pope, both authored in 2015, one point stands out: the Development enthusiasm of the twentieth century is gone. In its place, we are now dealing with the demise of expansive modernity. The motto of the previous century (playing on words of the Lord's Prayer), "on Earth as in the West", now seems like a threat. The world is in crisis roundabout: the biosphere is being shattered and, in more ways than one, the gap between the rich and the poor is widening. While both publications agree that the global economic model can now be considered old iron, there are equally significant differences. While the Agenda 2030 seeks to repair the existing global economic model significantly, the encyclical calls for a pushing back of economic hegemony and for more ethical responsibility on all levels. While the Agenda 2030 envisions a green economy with social democratic hues, the encyclical foresees a post capitalist-era, based on a cultural shift towards eco-solidarity.
Limits
(2014)
Poverty
(2014)
Rethink rather than rebound : a sufficiency revolution must precede the efficiency revolution
(2014)
In this classic collection, some of the world's most eminent critics of development review the key concepts of the development discourse. Each essay examines one concept from a historical and anthropological point of view, highlights its particular bias, and exposes its historical obsolescence and intellectual sterility. The authors argue that a bidding farewell to the whole Euro-centric development idea is urgently needed, in order to liberate people’s minds - in both North and South - for bold responses to the environmental and ethical challenges now confronting humanity. The combined result forms a must-read invitation to experts, grassroots movements and students of development to recognize the tainted glasses they put on whenever they participate in the development discourse.
Dismantling development
(2010)
Oil crisis, water conflicts, declining food security - we hear one report after another about resource scarcity - while with growing populations and huge poverty, nations are demanding their right to development. In the age of globalisation this right cannot be disputed, yet the planet is already exhibiting signs of acute environmental stress. Indians want more roads and Chinese more oil: the struggle over nature will partly shape the crises of the twenty-first century. Clashes over resources, both major and minor, are often the unseen factor behind chaos and violence and it is vital to start thinking about how the distribution of resources can be made more just. This book provides an account of what is involved in the resource conflicts of today and tomorrow. It puts forward perspectives for resource justice and outlines a global economic and environmental policy equally committed to nature and to humanity.
National welfare is no longer an effective frame of reference for enlightened foreign policy. Policy consideration must encompass the common welfare of a world society. Environmental and resource crises are inextricably tied to security and justice. Sixty years after the founding of the United Nations there should be a new effort to establish a genuinely sustainable global order - a "San Francisco 2.0".
At the time of the Rio Conference, it had already become clear that climate change is far from being just an ecological issue; it is also an issue of equity. In particular, climate change was identified as an issue of intergenerational equity. It became ominously clear to observers that global warming, since it modifies important parameters of the ecology of the planet, such as sea levels or weather patterns, will affect the relations between present and future generations. Today's generation, by filling up the absorptive capacity of the atmosphere, lives at the expense of tomorrow's generation. At the same time, it came to the fore that the use of fossil fuels not only affects inter-generational equity, but also intra-generational equity, i.e., the relations between nations and social groups within a generation. Who will be allowed to reap the benefits from fossil fuel combustion? Who will have to carry the burden of emission abatement? Equity within a generation has at least two dimensions (Wuppertal Institute, 2005). First, it implies the fair distribution of burdens and benefits of fossil fuel use among nations. Secondly, however, it also implies the universal protection of human dignity by securing the fundamental rights of every human person to water, food, housing, and health. The article will focus on the latter dimension; it will explore the links between human rights and climate change, without, however, losing sight of the broader framework of equity in climate politics.
Limits
(2005)
Poverty
(2005)
Environment and human rights
(2004)
Wolfgang Sachs argues for environmental human rights as a fundamental prerequisite to end the violence of development. He outlines the numerous conflicts over natural resources in the struggle for livelihoods and argues for a transition to sustainability in the more affluent economies, in both the North and South, as a necessary condition for the safeguarding of the subsistence rights of those whose livelihood depends on direct access to nature.
Environment and human rights
(2003)
Environment and human rights
(2003)
Globalization has a credible future only if the borderless economy does not overstretch the resilience of the biosphere and frustrate demands for greater justice in the world. But what means environmental justice in a transnational context? In general, justice may have three different senses: justice as fairness, justice as equitable distribution, and justice as human dignity. In the first it is a question of organized procedures for the allocation of advantages and disadvantages that are fair to everyone involved; this is the procedural conception of justice. In the second it is a question of proportionate distribution of goods and rights among individuals or groups; this is the relational conception of justice. And in the third it is a question of the minimum goods or rights necessary for a dignified existence; this is the absolute or substantive conception of justice. This paper develops the theme of international environmental justice in the third sense, as a human rights issue. First, it outlines six typical situations in which patterns of resource use come into conflict with subsistence rights: namely, extraction of raw materials, alteration of ecosystems, reprogramming of organisms, destabilization as a result of climate change, pollution of urban living space, and effects of resource prices. It then introduces the debate on human rights and locates respect for subsistence rights as a component of economic, social and cultural human rights. Finally, it offers some markers for an environmental policy geared to human rights, the aim of which is to guarantee civil rights for all in a world with a finite biosphere. Neither power play between states nor economic competition, but the realization of human rights and respect for the biosphere, should be the defining feature of the emergent world society.
"Planet Dialectics" explores the ambivalences and ironies, the controversies and conflicts that pervade the terrain of global environmental politics. Most inquiries turn around one nagging suspicion: that the Western development model is at odds with both the quest for justice among the world's people and the aspiration to reconcile humanity and nature. By any stretch of imagination, it will not be possible that all citizens of the world will share in the fossil fuel-based, money-driven development model - with all its attendant paraphernalia - that has come to hold sway in the world today. The biosphere, as we know it, may give in. Against this background, the book probes Western-style development, examines its hidden assumptions, its glamour, its obsessions and the hopes it holds out for a better life. Moreover, it examines under various aspects if sustainability (truly conceived) - comprising both ecology and social fairness - is incompatible with the worldwide rule of economism. And finally, it suggests ways to leave conventional modernity behind by creating sophisticated but moderate-impact technologies, redirecting relentless accumulation, and appreciating ways of living that are simpler in means, but richer in ends.
While sustainability is in danger of being reduced to a meaningless platitude, the brutal fact remains that industrial countries make a disproportionately large and negative impact on the environment. A serious transition to sustainability will require changing people's mindsets and social institutions, in addition to public policies, technologies and business practices.
This book presents a path-breaking analysis as well as highly innovative proposals for managing this transition. Emanating from Europe's foremost environmental policy think-tank, it has already stirred up a major new debate in Germany on radical, but feasible, directions in which the governments of industrial societies ought to be moving. The concept of "environmental space" and its ingenious development of indicators for measuring an economy's national and global impact combine with its delineation of concrete policies to give this book its intellectual power and potential political impact.
Speed limits
(1998)
Why speed matters
(1997)
Sustainable development
(1997)
The party's over
(1993)