Mapping the social risks of environmental transitions: Interview with Matteo Mandelli. Postdoctoral researcher at LIEPP

Until now, most of the literature on climate policies and climate mitigation has really focused on the environmental aspect of these policies, but we are witnessing more and more that climate change and climate policies will create new social risks. New inequalities will arise as well as a new kind of injustice: people that are least responsible for environmental degradation and carbon emissions are expected to be most affected not only by environmental degradation but also by the policies created to cope with environmental degradation.

This becomes more evident when we consider some recent climate policies such as the Carbon Tax, which produces unequal outcomes. As these phenomena become more and more apparent, there is a need to introduce a Welfare State perspective of the green transition, which is what the study of Sustainable Welfare revolves around.

Eco-social risks represent a third wave of social risks within the Welfare State. The first ones were related to industrialization, the second ones to the shift to a post-industrial economy and a change in family structures in the 90s. Today, climate change is creating a new type of risks that the Welfare State is not yet designed to face.

We still have little knowledge about what these eco-social risks will be, and who will be most impacted. There are some hypotheses, but these risks are not yet defined and we do not have clear indicators that would allow us to evaluate their potential incidence.

We expect that they will create new forms of poverty, material deprivation and exclusion for marginalised communities. They will come directly from climate change and indirectly from the State’s responses to climate change through climate policies. It hence appears crucial to understand these risks to question the changing role of the Welfare State, but also to design efficient climate policies that can be socially just and, as a consequences, socially accepted and legitimate. 

We expect that these eco-social risks will exacerbate existing disparities (making disadvantaged people more disadvantaged), especially when it comes to direct risks such as natural disasters. People who are most affected by environmental hazards are people who normally have access to infrastructure in poor condition and less financial means to deal with these disasters.

The indirect risks of climate change, which arise from regressive climate policies that generate a higher financial burden for lower and lower-middle income households if compared to richer ones, are expected to be distributed in a less obvious way, especially impacting people who are dependent on a carbon intensive lifestyle. For example, if a fuel tax is implemented, it will also impact some middle-class people who would not have been particularly vulnerable prior to the introduction of the carbon tax, but who depend on their car to work, to take part in social activities…

Identifying eco-social risks demands to look at pre-existing vulnerabilities, but also exposure to direct risks (naturel disasters) and dependence on a carbon intensive lifestyle. Other than exacerbating existing vulnerabilities, these new risks could change the distribution of vulnerabilities in the population, by making people who were not necessarily vulnerable before, vulnerable now. 

We are starting to witness the emergence of policy responses to eco-social risks at the European level. A good example is the European Green Deal, which promotes a just transition to a less carbon dependent economy, with the objective to “leave no one behind”.

The addition of a clear social objective to a European policy that organises the climate transition indicates that these risks are taken seriously. To reach this objective, new instruments have been created, such as the Just Transition Fund (which aims to support European regions that depend on carbon intensive industries) and the Social Climate Fund (created to address new vulnerabilities especially when it comes to energy and transport poverty.)

When it comes to responses at the National level, they will depend on national Welfare model. Different kinds of policies could be implemented to tackle energy poverty specifically, for example monetary transfers to compensate for raising bills, investing in the isolation of private buildings... 

The network was created as the result of a fusion between two pre-existing networks of researchers, one that focused on European social policies, and one that focused on ecological economics. In September 2022 we combined these two networks to gather all scholars interested in socio-ecological questions and the role of the Welfare State in the climate crisis era. The network promotes different kinds of initiatives (research colloquiums, a mailing list and a Newsletter, a stakeholder roundtable where academics meet with civil society organizations, policy makers and bureaucrats to discuss topics related to sustainable welfare…). The aim is to promote activities and build a network between people interested in Eco-social Policies. On the 25th of April, an event co-organised with the Sustainable Welfare and Eco-social Policy Network will take place at Sciences Po, focusing on the Socio-Ecological dimension of the European Green Deal.

Interdisciplinarity is inherent to the topic but it is interesting to see that the silos that we critically investigate in policymaking, namely the separation between the management of social policies and environmental policies, can also be found in the study of policies in academia. Environmental scholars and social policies scholars have different networks, publish in different journals and sometimes seem to speak different languages.

It is critical, and one of the aims of the Sustainable Welfare and Eco-social Policy Network, to build a bridge between the scholars of both disciplines. We need to find a common language to discuss eco-social risks that works within the traditions of both disciplines and to learn from the very rich traditions of both Welfare State researchers and Environmental policies researchers. They may have different analytical or theoretical frameworks but they need to learn from one another to better analyse policies and discuss environmental issues. Ultimately it is a great opportunity for each discipline to enrich itself and to break the silos that isolates researchers from each tradition. 

SET was launched through the initiative of Bruno Palier, Anne-Laure Beaussier, Eloi Laurent, and myself. It is conceived as a collaboration between different laboratories of Sciences Po (CSO, CEE, OFCE, LIEPP, the AIRE programme and the Institute for environmental transformations) and aims to gather scholars who are interested in social issues and policies and environmental issues and policies to create a common research agenda and to stimulate the debate about these issues (through the organisation of seminars, events, informal dialogue..). On April 24th at LIEPP, SET will co-organise a seminar during which different research projects funded by MIRE will be presented.