Economic policies encourage careless exploitation of people and the planet. Building a caring economy is the answer

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change includes a Gender Action Plan adopted in 2017. The plan aims to “strengthen the gender responsiveness” of climate policy and action. It outlines concrete actions and strategies to advance gender equality and women’s participation in climate change mitigation.

This is consistent with mainstream approaches to gender and climate change, which focus on ‘including women’ in:

Sectors that are the focus of the transition to a carbon-neutral economy Finance (public and private) allocated to investments in transition decision-making bodies (public and private) that focus on the transition.

But feminist economists and social scientists have gone beyond this. They have long been interested in highlighting the importance of care in economic and social systems. This is primarily the work of women and girls, much of it unpaid.

I have spent much of my academic career researching why this broad approach is important and what the shortcomings of mainstream approaches are.

Climate scientists and feminist social scientists are all concerned with the forces that shape the care of our planet and its people.

This article explores some ideas about practices of care and carelessness for people and the planet. We are looking beyond adaptation and mitigation to the need to create a caring economy where money and markets serve, rather than undermine, the well-being of people and the planet.

value people

I believe that caring for people means providing support and support to carry out daily activities such as eating, dressing, bathing, learning, exercising and resting.

We all need such help and support at some point in our lives, especially at the beginning and end. But even if we are so-called able-bodied adults with paid jobs, we still need the help of family and friends to grow.

However, most of the care work is carried out by women and girls. This is a result of gender and other inequalities. Care can be provided unpaid in families and communities, as well as by paid staff in homes, businesses and public sector facilities. Those who provide care, whether paid or unpaid, are undervalued and their own care needs ignored.

take care of the earth

I understand caring for the planet as supporting environmental systems that interact with social and economic systems. It is an approach that respects the earth as a living system capable of regenerating itself.

Quality care for the earth protects animals, soil, water and air. It also limits climate risks. It can be materialized as follows.

Organic regenerative agriculture Land rewilding and wildlife protection Sustainable energy generation Recycling and reuse Sustainable public transport systems.

Depletion and decomposition vs. replenishment and regeneration

Currently, both humans and the planet are subject to depletion and degradation due to the way they are used in production. The livelihood of the majority of people depends directly or indirectly on large companies (private or state-owned). The pressure to generate profits and income influences how we treat people and the planet.

Too often people are treated as disposable, with little regard for their health and well-being. Most of the Earth is owned by large corporations, who use it as a means to extract profits and revenues, ignoring non-financial costs.

People’s abilities are depleted and diminished by backbreaking labor and deprivation of necessities such as food and shelter.

Similarly, environmental systems are degraded and depleted by over-extraction of resources, which depletes the earth’s resources and leaves behind waste. Our current economic system does not value the reproduction of the environment in which we make a living.

Care can help people and environmental systems replenish and regenerate themselves. But care work itself is also subject to forces that cause deterioration and depletion.

The current economic system is harming both people and the planet by focusing on minimizing short-term economic costs and generating maximum economic benefits, and placing no value on long-term care and reproduction. encourages careless use of.

Creating a caring economy

Underlying the degradation and depletion of humans and the planet is a finance-driven economic system that values ​​human capabilities and environmental systems primarily for the purpose of the money that comes from them. This can be money in the form of personal profits or national income.

To support replenishment and regeneration, humanity needs to create a caring economy that values ​​well-being over economic profit. In such a system, all companies, private and public, would have a duty of care.

If the economic system itself does not promote the well-being of people and the planet, attempts to mobilize finance for mitigation and adaptation will have limited success.

Feminist social scientists have developed ideas about what it means to create a caring economy. For example, the Women’s Budget Group, a British feminist think tank, has developed a plan for a caring green economy for the UK. Four necessary structural changes have been identified.

Reorient the economy: Prioritize well-being over profits and move away from energy-intensive and polluting industries to ones that care for people and the planet. Stop making GDP growth your main economic goal. Changing ownership models: Democratize ownership of natural resources and basic services, introduce new public renewable energy companies, roll back private care provision, and support alternative ownership models across the economy. Transforming the way government is financed and spent: Put public investment in the decarbonization of physical infrastructure and expansion of social infrastructure at the heart of UK fiscal policy, supported by progressive taxation. Supporting a green and caring global economy: Rebuilding the global economy around climate justice through debt relief, gender-sensitive climate finance, reforming international financial institutions, cracking down on tax havens, and abolishing exploitative treaties. Build efforts to order.

next step

The current economic system fosters careless exploitation of people and the planet. This leads to depletion and degradation of human capacity and environmental systems. In a caring economy, people and the environment are constantly replenished and regenerated.

Creating a caring economy requires going beyond gradual mitigation and adaptation attempts and introducing system-wide changes.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.