Sustainable Welfare, Green Social Work P h o and the Impacts of the Corona Crisis t o g r a p h Webinar – 9 June 2020, 16:00 – 18:00 (Italy tjme) : E m i l i o M o r e n a t t i / A P Su Sustai ainable able Welf lfar are an and d the cu current Corona a Crisis Matu tueo o Villa, , University of Pi Pisa matueo.villa@unipi.it htups://people.unipi.it/matueo_villa/ Powered by GNU/Linux (Free and Open Source Sofuware)
Presentation 1. Coronavirus: an ecological crisis? 2. The double bind of the ecological crisis 3. Towards a sustainable welfare 4. Conclusions F. Hundertwasser Powered by GNU/Linux (Free and Open Source Sofuware)
1. Coronavirus: an ecological crisis? F. Hundertwasser Powered by GNU/Linux (Free and Open Source Sofuware)
Coronavirus: an ecological crisis? With diffjculty and poor results, growing confmicts and ecological disasters, the ecological issues were beginning to come to the fore in a completely inadequate way ... And then Coronavirus came... Suddenly? Not really: “Experts warned of a pandemic decades ago. Why weren't we ready?” (Natjonal Geographic, and so many others….) Powered by GNU/Linux (Free and Open Source Sofuware)
Coronavirus: an ecological crisis? What kind of crisis is the coronavirus crisis? Part of the debate prefers talking about war, enemy, state of exceptjon, normality, etc…. waitjng for a defjnitjve solutjon The war ? The normality ? The exceptjon ? What about the ecological and socio-economic roots and dilemmas of Covid-19? Powered by GNU/Linux (Free and Open Source Sofuware)
Coronavirus: an ecological crisis? “There is a single species that is responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic – us”, The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) ● Biodiversity destructjon ● Forced proximity between animal and human species ● Food industry and markets ● Pollutjon and health efgects ● Urbanizatjon And political responses: Zone selvagge ● Health care systems and organizatjons rimanentj ● Fragmented policy (global / natjonal / local) ● Primate of economism Powered by GNU/Linux (Free and Open Source Sofuware)
Coronavirus: an ecological crisis? A need for a deeper understanding 1. Analyzing origins, spread and patuerns of care and contrast of such phenomena: ● how socio-economic and environmental factors interact? ● What difgerence do specifjc contexts and eco-systems make? ● What difgerence do specifjc welfare systems make? ● One example: the Lombardy-Region case Powered by GNU/Linux (Free and Open Source Sofuware)
Coronavirus: an ecological crisis? A need for a deeper understanding 2. Puttjng things into a wider perspectjve ● Difgerent spatjal scales (global and local) ● Difgerent tjme perspectjves How we make phenomena made more or less visible through viewpoints, modes of communicatjon and rhetoric One example : the case of TBC The example : climate change Powered by GNU/Linux (Free and Open Source Sofuware)
2. The double bind of the ecological crisis F. Hundertwasser Powered by GNU/Linux (Free and Open Source Sofuware)
2. The double bind of the ecological crisis How long have we been warned about climate change and its efgects? ‘ 50, ‘60, ‘70, ‘80, ‘90, …. ? Refmectjng some difgerence ● between the visibility of the coronovirus and the one of ecological crisis (climate change, etc.)? ● between our ways of understanding these phenomena? ● between our way/ability to react both them? Powered by GNU/Linux (Free and Open Source Sofuware)
The double bind of the ecological crisis That' t' a shame, , What kind of crisis is climate change? it t was such a Earth th is on the ve th verge of compe co peti titi tive disaster! planet There are strategies ● Doing nothing (wait and see) ● Adaptatjon ● Conservatjon ● Mitjgatjon ● Geo-engineering and technological innovatjon What about the ecological, socio-economic and politjcal dilemmas of climate change? Portorico 2017, Hurricane Maria. One year later Powered by GNU/Linux (Free and Open Source Sofuware)
The double bind of the ecological crisis 1. Political dilemmas ("Climate change is essentially political", Ruser 2018) ● Need for translatjon and understanding: ● Trade-ofgs and confmicts and approaches to deal with them. ● No purely technical and/or economistjc solutjons: ● Top-down and/or botuom-up strategies ● Democratjc or undemocratjc decision-making Powered by GNU/Linux (Free and Open Source Sofuware)
The double bind of the ecological crisis 2. Socio-economic dilemmas (ecological paradox of welfare systems) I. Critjcisms: depends on growth, fuels growth, does not reduce inequalitjes. ● Productjvism ● Natjonal and short-term vision ● Sometjmes brings exclusion / inequality ● Unsustainable ● Paradoxical efgects of care systems (inequality and medical nemesis / I. Illich) II. Positjve visions: essentjal to reconcile environmental and economic challenges ● Social justjce → environmental justjce. ● Reducing inequalitjes that hinder environmental policies. ● Containing efgects of environmental disasters. ● Developing skills for supportjng mitjgatjon strategies and eco-transitjons. Powered by GNU/Linux (Free and Open Source Sofuware)
The double bind of the ecological crisis 3. Ecological dilemma: Lewis Carroll's 'bread-and-butterfmy' The fanciful dilemma of in Lewis Carroll's bread-and-butuerfmy in the story of Alice in Wonderland was that it had wings made of thin slices of bread and butuer and a head made of a lump of sugar. When Alice asks what the creature lives on, the reply comes back: 'weak tea with cream in it/ Obviously if the creature ate its food, it would die; so an optjmistjc Alice asks what would happen if it cannot fjnd any food. She receives the same answer: 'it dies/ The point of Lewis Carroll's fable, Bateson repeated, was that bread-and-butuerfmies became extjnct, not for any material reason – because their heads were made of sugar, or because they could not fjnd food - but because of the impossibility of contradictory adaptatjon. 'The answer is that they became extjnct because they were caught in a dilemma, and the world is made up that way , and it is not made the linear single-purpose way [of materialist causality]. And so on ad infjnitum' (Gregory Bateson, I978c: 54; Sacred 1991: 211). (In P. Harries-Jones, 1995) Powered by GNU/Linux (Free and Open Source Sofuware)
3. Towards a sustainable welfare? (dealing with the double bind of ecological crisis) F. Hundertwasser Powered by GNU/Linux (Free and Open Source Sofuware)
3. Towards a sustainable welfare? What can we learn from the coronavirus crisis? ● “Discovering” values and needs kept on the margins ● Overturning the value of work and jobs ● Inequalities in the crisis, inequalities emerging from the crisis ● Environmental efgects of lockdown measures ● It is possible to do something extraordinary ● It is possible to do it in difgerent ways (imposition / trust / accompaniment …) ● It is possible to do things difgerently ● ... ● What about the welfare systems? Powered by GNU/Linux (Free and Open Source Sofuware)
Towards a sustainable welfare? Some points in the sustainable welfare debate We have to change We 1. Eco-social investments to combine climate & social policies: the he de develo lopment nt ● Social Investment welfare state? (e.g. Nordic countries) mode del ● Life course, fmexicurity, human capital development Ple lease, fil fill l out ● Productjvism risks and ecological paradoxes … the he fo forms 2. Retrenchment and/or post-growth strategies? ● Pros, cons, difgerences of retrenchment and de-growth ● Distjnguish between 'less' and 'difgerent’ (what is negentropic?) ● Methodological complexitjes (degrowth by design) 3. Local and botuom-up approaches? ● Social work - social policy nexus ● Combining difgerences and inequalitjes ● Botuom-up and Top-down, and difgerent scale strategies ● Methodological complexitjes and difgerent kinds of investments Powered by GNU/Linux (Free and Open Source Sofuware)
Towards a sustainable welfare? Meanings and implicatjons in terms of: - which social risks, needs, rights and goals - operatjon, organizatjon, partjcipatjon - scale and tjme - funding and resources Powered by GNU/Linux (Free and Open Source Sofuware)
Towards a sustainable welfare? Work and housing ● More or less work? More or less qualifjed? Distributed how? ● Which / how many households for whom? ● Compensatjon, preventjon and/or transformatjon? ● Which policy instruments for transitjon? Powered by GNU/Linux (Free and Open Source Sofuware)
Towards a sustainable welfare? Organization of production, reproduction, redistribution ● Environmental and social as well as economic indicators, interests and goals ● Integratjon between technological and eco-social innovatjon ● Theory and practjce of value Powered by GNU/Linux (Free and Open Source Sofuware)
Conclusions F. Hundertwasser Powered by GNU/Linux (Free and Open Source Sofuware)
Conclusions Dealing with our obsolete ideas and previous levels of consciousness and learning What is the nature of the problem we seek to address? “The major problems in the world are the result of the difgerence between how nature works and the way people think” (Gregory Bateson) Powered by GNU/Linux (Free and Open Source Sofuware)
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