Economics for Rebels

We welcome Doughnut economics legend Kate Raworth onto the show. Kate talks us through the successes and challenges facing the adoption of doughnut economics over the last seven years, gives advice on how to better communicate the ideas of ecological economics, and gives her take on the key public policies for getting us closer to a life within the doughnut. Hosted by Sophus zu Ermgassen. Edited by Aidan Knox.

It is often argued that it was market-based capitalism that made agriculture so efficient that it enabled the eradication of hunger globally. This claim is shadowed by the incredible environmental degradation that was caused by industrial agriculture in the last centuries. Hence, due demand arises that we should keep the world fed through sustainable means. Our guest today, Pablo Tittonell claims that this is possible through agroecology where we combine agricultural and ecological knowledge to create food while taking care of nature’s amazingly creative and generous provisioning and regenerative systems. Hosted by Alexandra Köves. Edited by Aidan Knox.

Ecological economists need to pull all sorts of leverage points to enable a just future in which the economy flourishes within planetary boundaries. One of the leverage points that is receiving increasing attention is climate and nature litigation. But what do we as community need to know about climate litigation, historical responsibility for climate change, and how litigation works in practice? We welcome Dr Benjamin Franta onto the show to discuss all things related to climate litigation. Ben is the founder and director of the climate litigation lab at the Smith School for Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford. Hosted by Sophus zu Ermgassen. Edited by Aidan Knox.

Today’s guest, Robert Costanza is hardly unknown to anyone who is vaguely familiar with ecological economics. While we could fill entire seasons discussing the topics he has covered in his works, in this episode we are discussing his latest book: Addicted to Growth: Societal Therapy for a Sustainable Wellbeing Future where he applies the analogy of addiction to our contemporary problems. Humanity is addicted to economic growth and like true addicts, even if we accept that it is ruining us by fuelling climate change, mass extinction and a wide range of social crises, we don’t want to quit. With today’s guest, we discuss if and how we can find the appropriate therapy to collectively come off the substance. Hosted by Alexandra Köves. Edited by Aidan Knox.

Some key mainstream critiques of postgrowth economics revolve around labour, and what the labour market would look like in a postgrowth economy, with the common perception being that economic contraction tends to be associated with unemployment, and therefore that a postgrowth economy is socially unsustainable. But, if we are to transition to a postgrowth world for ecological reasons or because of secular stagnation, ecological economics needs to present a compelling story about what people’s jobs and lives could look like in this world. This episode’s guest Dr Ben Gallant is an expert in understanding and modelling postgrowth futures for the labour force, here to guide us through what employment in a postgrowth economy could look like. Hosted by Sophus zu Ermgassen. Edited by Aidan Knox.

Over the last decades, burning wood for energy has expanded in the EU, as have proposals for implementing Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS). The origins of this questionable boom can be found in accounting loopholes, which allow burning woody biomass to be classed as carbon neutral and BECCS as carbon negative. Based on these loopholes and large lobby power, (woody) biomass has received generous subsidies and been counted towards renewable energy targets in the EU. A large international supply chain has developed, with wood pellets being shipped all the way from forests in the U.S. Southeast to generate energy in the EU. In this episode, we discuss all these issues with ecologist Dr. Mary Booth, founder and director of the Partnership for Policy Integrity (PFPI). PFPI is a small non-profit organisation in the US working on forest biomass, energy, and climate issues. Hosted by Matilda Susan Gettins. Edited by Aidan Knox.

When it comes to environmental issues, it is crucial that policymakers rely on scientific evidence, while scientists become conscious of how important it is to provide relevant and comprehensive information on their work to policymakers. In our ambiguous post-truth world, this is no trivial challenge. Today’s guest, Eszter Kelemen tells us about the current state of affairs in science-policy interface and the challenges that this encumbered liaison poses not just to both sides but to environmental policy-making in general. Hosted by Alexandra Köves. Edited by Aidan Knox.

Ecological economics has a long tradition of disputing the mainstream economic view that people’s concern for the environment scales with income, and that it’s a luxury good. The main counterargument is the widespread evidence on environmental justice conflicts, encapsulated by what Joan Martinez-Alier called the ‘environmentalism of the poor’. Today, we focus on the role and importance of people working on the front lines of environmental degradation – biosphere defenders. Our guest today is Dr Claudia Ituarte-Lima. Hosted by Sophus zu Ermgassen. Edited by Aidan Knox.

When we say, “Money cannot buy conscience”, in today’s economy, we could not be further from the truth. Our current economy can turn absolutely anything into financial assets. Even irresponsible behaviour. A company that is incapable of reducing its carbon emission can just buy carbon credits and continue business-as-usual. Another that is about to ruin a habitat can offset its wrongdoing by paying money to someone else to save another habitat somewhere else. While these solutions may make bad behaviour slightly more costly, they do not stop them. Moreover, they contribute significantly to neocolonialism. Today’s guest, Frederic Hache explains us how these nature markets work and how they turn environmental policies into gambling casinos.

There are huge inequalities in the world when it comes to releasing carbon into the atmosphere. Some countries have disproportionately contributed to the climate crisis and keep aggravating their climate debt. In the language of climate coloniality, these countries could owe reparation payments to low-emitting nations. But can we calculate who owes whom how much? And should we calculate it? Today’s guest, Andrew Fanning together with Jason Hickel recently published a paper aiming to answer these questions. Hosted by Alexandra Köves. Edited by Aidan Knox.

The myth of green growth surrounds us wherever we look. Eco-modernisation’s promise that technological fixes will provide us with the efficiency we need to decouple environmental burdens from economic growth suggests that business-as-usual can continue. Today’s guest Timothée Parrique is the best to explain why this is not happening and why relying solely on technological solutions is like betting on green zero in roulette. Hosted by Alexandra Köves. Edited by Aidan Knox.

There’s a long history of states solving major social challenges through ambitious and mission-driven public policy, such as getting a person on the moon, or the foundation of the UK’s national health service. But the last few decades have seen declines in the ambition and entrepreneurship of the state, at a time when global sustainability challenges have called for more and better leadership. How did this happen, why is this a problem for implementing policies consistent with the goals of ecological economics, and what can we do about it? In this episode we discuss these themes with Rosie Collington, the author alongside Prof Mariana Mazzucato of The Big Con: How the Consulting Industry Weakens our Businesses, Infantilizes our Governments and Warps our Economies. Rosie is a political economist at the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose at UCL, studying how governments can develop the ability to govern socio-economic transformations. Hosted by Sophus zu Ermgassen. Edited by Aidan Knox.

The world as we know it now is built on a history of colonisation and even today massive parts of the world are being economically and culturally colonised. Our guest today, Roland Nkwain Ngam believes that hegemonic capitalism is both the creator and consequence of the brutal exploitation of black, brown and white bodies, women’s backs, nature and all the commons that we were all meant to enjoy equally. As the ecological crisis we are witnessing today is a direct consequence of hegemonic capitalism, we need ways to overcome it in a manner that it repairs rather than deepens these injustices. But can it be done? And if yes, how? Hosted by Alexandra Köves. Edited by Aidan Knox.

Currently markets determine most of what happens around us. But markets have no morals: everything is up for grabs. If you have the money, you can turn wetlands, forests, or any other biodiversity rich areas into mono-cultural agricultural lands, human habitats, or mines in the name of development. But can we and should we compensate this by making the developers pay for biodiversity conservation somewhere else? This is the central question around biodiversity offsetting and in his research, Sophus zu Ermgassen has been keen to understand if it is possible to design nature markets in a way that satisfies both ecological and financial objectives, and if not, what the alternative is. Sophus co-hosted Season 2 of Economics for Rebels and has asked his guests many exciting questions. In this opening episode to Season 3 we get to hear Sophus also as a guest. Edited by Aidan Knox.

Today’s show is one for the ecological economics lecturers out there – it’s about the joy of teaching ecological economics, the ‘aha’ moments when your students see the world in a new way, and how to teach really really well. We welcome Corinne Baulcomb onto the show, Director of one of Europe’s largest EE programmes at SRUC/University of Edinburgh, sharing her experiences over the last decade of teaching EE’s beautiful ideas to the next generation of thinkers.

Various global initiatives have emerged to try to address the degradation of the living world, but despite decades of implementation we’ve had limited success at changing that trajectory. Why? Dr Niak Koh is a sustainability scientist based at the Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University. In some of her recent work, Niak has focused on what biodiversity agreements can learn from the implementation of international human rights agreements, which have historically been more successful. So, what are the secrets behind better international agreements? Hosted by Sophus zu Ermgassen. Edited by Aidan Knox.

It is now well-established that contemporary society has finite ecological constraints, and massive inequality in wealth, wellbeing and carbon consumption. But how is the consumption of our shared ecological space distributed across society, and what’s the ecological efficiency through which today’s economy generates improvements in wellbeing? In this episode host, Sophus zu Ermgassen welcomes Dr Marta Baltruszewicz, who has led some fascinating research empirically exploring interlinkages between energy consumption, inequality and wellbeing in the UK.

The fundamental purpose of ecological economics is to deliver an economy that achieves high living standards for all within the constraints of the Earth system. There is arguably no economic sector which is more consequential for this vision than the food system, and perhaps the greatest sustainability challenge of the coming decades is the question of how to deliver quality nutrition for all, whilst minimising the biodiversity and carbon impacts of one of the most ecologically impactful sectors. Join today's host, Sophus zu Ermgassen and guest Mike Clark guiding us through the ecological economics of food. Edited by Aidan Knox.

Ecological economics is all about staying within planetary boundaries while providing prosperity for all. This, however, means that we desperately need to transcend both our growth-centred worldview and our fully growth-dependent economic and social systems. The solutions proposed by ecological economics cover messages of true political nature. While bottom-up initiatives are incredibly important in this transition, drastic top-down policy changes would make a massive difference. Our guest today, Tim Jackson is most certainly among those top ecological economists who are in constant liaison with policymakers trying to influence their decisions to move towards beyond growth institutions. In today’s podcast host Alexandra Köves is asking him, just how far is this concept beyond the political rationale for today’s decision-makers? Edited by Aidan Knox.

Talking about ecological economics often invokes the mentioning of limits. Ecological and social limits to growth are often brought up in the context where we need to respect these external boundaries and restrain ourselves accordingly. Today’s guest, Giorgos Kallis in his book Limits puts forward an unusual but compelling argument that instead of seeing a world where human wants are unlimited and the environment limits them, we should start seeing a world where human desires are limited, and the ecological environment is abundant. While his line of thought is unorthodox in so many ways, understanding it should be essential to all those who are concerned about our growth-frantic world. Hosted by Alexandra Köves. Edited by Aidan Knox.