for SSCP KAN's Workshop in Annapolis, 2017

1. SSCP KAN Ecological
Macroeconomics WG
Some Initial Thoughts

2. Social
Outcomes
Politico-economic system
Consumption and Production System
 Ecological
overshoot
 Planetary
boundaries
transgressed
 Unmet basic
needs
 Inequality
 Overworking/ove
rspending
 Precarious
livelihoods
 Eroded trust and
social capital
 Social atomism
and isolationism
Social
Outcomes
Politico-economic system
 Absolute
reduction
 Safe
ecological
space
 Equitable
well-being
 [Enhanced
“marginal
social utility”]
 Secure
livelihoods
 Solidarity
CURRENT
FUTURE
Systems Change for Equitable Well-being
Physical
Resource
Input
Waste
and
pollution
Physical
Resource
Input
Waste
and
pollution
Consumption and Production System

3. What could the KAN do?
• identifying alternatives ways of provisioning (sharing and increasing the
circularity of goods and increasing the consumption of services)
• further developing and better applying financial instruments and price incentives
• reflecting upon and approaching wellbeing from an economic angle (the marginal
utility of consumption) but also a sociological angle (how much and in which ways
well-being can be achieved without market activities and commodities). This
could be revealed in the promotion of better ways how to measure it.
• exploring/the practical potential of concepts already out there
• engaging with relevant stakeholders
• developing (innovative) policies
• Alternative narratives

4. Questions for further thinking/discussion
1. What needs to be changed? What do we need to know about it and how? In
particular, what are the social relations of power and practice behind what
needs to be changed? This will give us a measure of the challenge.
2. Who has agency to influence the structures/systems we are focusing on?
3. Who could be potential champions for the envisaged reforms?
4. How can/should the various ‘tools’ for change - tools not ever being just
‘tools’- be arrayed and articulated to achieve what it is we want to achieve?
What kinds of research?
A. Empirical research: Case studies, “seeds of change”
B. Conceptual research: Describing and analysing new ideas on structural change
C. Modelling: Quantitative studies drawing from A and B

5. Overarching Research Questions
• What are the systems we want to change? Unpacking the systems box
(Slide 2).
• Interventions in specific provisioning systems
• What are the interests in relation to a transformation to SCP?
• Resisters
• Champions
• How could the concept of consumption corridors be made operational?
• Implications for natural resource management?
• How to use the 2030 Agenda as an opportunity?
• What changes in CP systems are needed for achieving the SDGs?
• What could be the supporting narrative of those changes?
• How are the SDGs really different from Brundtland and Agenda 21? What has
been learnt? Has the underlying narrative changed?