The Social Challenge of 1.5°C Webinar: Melissa Leach and Susanne Moser
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Transformations to sustainability - pathways and politics Melissa Leach
Transcript of The Social Challenge of 1.5°C Webinar: Melissa Leach and Susanne Moser
Transformations to sustainability -pathways and politics
Melissa Leach
Source: Raworth 2012, based on Rockström et al 2009
‘Steering pathways within a safe and just space for humanity’ Scoones et al 2015
Source: Leach, Raworth and Rockström (WSSR 2013)
Multiple possible pathwaysPlural transformations
Politicising the directions of transformation
Whose boundaries? Whose
safety?
Whose goals?
Sustainability & resilience
of what for whom?
Which pathways?
Choosing and shaping
interlocked with power
Who gains, who loses? Planetary
boundaries as power grab, undermining
justice and democracy?
Drivers of transformation
• Technology-led
• Market-led
• State-led
• Citizen-led
• Transformative alliances, hybrid governance
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Citizen-led transformations – building from grassroots innovation, mobilisation and collective action, scaling up through networks
Slum and shack dwellers’ networks
Food sovereignty and agroecology
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Transformative alliances – novel relationships between state, market and societal actors that challenge and rework political, economic and social structures
Zero carbon energy
Ecological agriculture
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Emergent pathways – involving alignments in diverse bottom-up marginal interests; small changes can add up to big ones
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Transformational politics, engaged social science
Challenging unsustainable and unjust pathways, appreciating alternatives, facilitating transformational pathways
Bottom-up as well as top-downPlural – to respect and respond to diverse perspectives and contextsDeliberative – fostering inclusive, democratic debate around goals, and means to get thereNetworked and alliance-based – combining formal and informal processes, planning and mobilisation, leadership and distributed actionPolitically-engaged – challenging and shifting political-economic structures; influencing policy processes; mobilising Reflexive knowledge and political engagements - in which we take our positionality seriously, and encourage this in others
Social Transformations on the Path to 1.5⁰C
Susi Moser, Ph.D.
Susanne Moser Research & Consulting
Stanford University
% Nominations by expertise:
Physical
climate
Ethics & equity
Psychosocial underpinnings
Impacts
T. pathways
Policy
instruments
Mitigation/
adaptation
Between the Impossible and the Unthinkable
“That is where we are:
Stuck between the impossible and the unthinkable.
David Roberts, Ted talk (2012)
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pznsPkJy2x8
And so for the rest of your life,
your job is to make the impossible possible.”
It always seems impossible,
until it’s done.Nelson Mandela
Ph
oto
: M
an
de
la: T
he
Ma
n a
nd
His
Co
un
try
Holding the Tension
Photo: from ifcat.org
When an old culture is dying
the new culture is born from
a few people who are not
afraid to be insecure.Rudolf Bahro (German activist)
Bartel Thorvaldsen's Dying Lion
Shaping Our Response
Bottom-up
Top-down
GlobalLocal
Fast
Slow
Nonlinear,
Disruptive
Radical/deepAdaptive
Linked
GROWING CLIMATE DISRUPTION
Science for an epic challenge:science beyond the mainstream
• History
• Sociology
• Anthropology & paleo-sciences
• Psychology
• Philosophy
• …
Entering The Long Emergency
If you want to go fast
go alone.If you want to go far
go together.African proverb
And if you need to go far fast …
