What do we mean with the term eco-welfare? Is it a new form and interpretation of what we traditionally known as welfare, or rather, is there something more to address?
The eco-welfare perspective looks at the social and the environmental crisis as interdependent areas. From an analytical point of view, it questions the relationship between the environmental crisis and the crisis of the welfare systems; inquiring about public policies, it seeks answers to the socio-ecological crisis by identifying ways in which environmental policies can be bent to solve social problems and social policies take into account their effects on the environment. Eco-welfare, therefore, criticizes the model of ecological modernization – centered only on growth and technological innovation as vectors for achieving the ecological transition – and raises the issue of insurmountable environmental limits and the irrepressible social threshold below which no human being must find herself/himself. It is in this space, between the environmental roof and the social floor, that eco-welfare is located. Staying in this space means questioning the self-increasing and dissipating “production-accumulation-redistribution” model, to promote pre-distributive ways of socializing wealth, capable of distributing before accumulating, in order to involve more and more people in the eco-social challenge.
Ongoing research activities on renewable energy communities.