Conference May 7-8 Sustainable Welfare
This expert workshop addresses the question of what is required to make welfare societies ecologically sustainable. The purpose of the workshop is to join research on welfare and sustainability, which until now has been carried out separately and in isolation with little contact and cross-fertilization between the two currents.
While contemporary welfare literature circles around the crisis of the national welfare state and corresponding readjustments, ecological concerns – voiced as early as the 1970s– has been largely ignored. Meanwhile, the world is searching for pathways towards a sustainable welfare society, but there is yet ‘no credible, socially just, ecologically sustainable scenario of continually growing incomes for a world of nine billion people’ (Jackson 2009).
Emerging research in ecological economics, social policy, and philosophy has begun to conceptualize welfare, prosperity and happiness in alternative ways. There is thus a momentous, and largely unexplored, opportunity for merging welfare research with research on sustainability. The project Sustainable Welfare at the Pufendorf Institute, Lund University, brings together a multi-disciplinary group of researchers from five faculties to study these issues.
In this workshop acclaimed international scholars are invited to address the following questions:
• How can human well-being, social welfare and ecological sustainability concerns be reconciled?
• What are the most important practical steps in order to move towards sustainable welfare societies?
• How does the research agenda need to develop to respond to the challenges of sustainable welfare?
The workshop is now full, you are welcome to register and we will notify you in case we receive cancellations!
Venue: Pufendorf Institute, first floor. Biskopsgatan3
PROGRAM
Thursday, May 7
Moderator: Håkan Johansson (School of Social Work, Lund University)
12.00-13.00 Lunch and registration
13.00-13.30 Welcome and introduction
Max Koch (School of Social Work, Lund University)
13.30-14.00 ‘The concept of sustainable welfare’
Eric Brandstedt (Department of Philosophy, Lund University)
14.00-14-45 ‘Rethinking the politics of prosperity: presupposition and critique’ Kate Soper
(Pufendor IAS and Institute for the Study of European Transformations, London Metropolitan University)
14.45-15.15 Coffee break
15.15-16.00 'Climate change and sustainable wellbeing: An argument for the centrality of human needs'
Ian Gough (London School of Economics)
16.00-16.45 ‘Avoiding collapse – How should economic systems be changed?’
Inge Röpke (Center for Design Innovation and Sustainable Transitions, Aalborg University)
17.00-17.30 Wrap-up of Day 1
Eric Clark (Department of Human Geography, Lund University)
Friday, May 8
Moderator: Maria Emmelin (Department of Social Medicine and Global Health, Lund University)
8.30-9.00 Morning coffee
9.00-9.15 Welcome and introduction
Maria Emmelin (Department of Social Medicine and Global Health, Lund University)
9.15-9.45 ‘Diversifying degrowth and sustainable welfare’
Hubert Buch-Hansen (Department of Business and Politics, Copenhagen Business School)
9.45-10.30 ’Low carbon lifestyles by 2050’
Jörgen Larsson och John Holmberg (Energy and Environment, Chalmers University of Technology)
10.30-11.00 Coffee break
11.00-11.45 ‘Housing quality, environmental sustainability and social justice’
Petter Næss (Norwegian University of Life Sciences)
11.45-12.30 ‘Climate change as a challenge for European welfare states’
Mi Ah Schoyen & Bjørn Hvinden, (Health and Welfare Studies, Oslo and Akershus University College of
Applied Science)
12.30-13.00 Wrap-up
Oksana Mont (International Institute for Industrial Environmental Eeconomics, Lund University)
13.00-14.00 Lunch