PROCEEDINGS OF THE INTERNATIONAL SUMMER SCHOOL OF POLITICAL ECOLOGY
The Public, the Private and the Commons: Challenges of a Just Green Transition
STUDENT PROCEEDINGS OF THE INTERNATIONAL SUMMER SCHOOL OF POLITICAL ECOLOGY
The Public, the Private and the Commons: Challenges of a Just Green Transition
gareth dale
MONDAY, 1.7. 2024
What is the green transition, why's it so slow, who’s behind the backlash, and what on earth to do?
The lecture commences with a critical overview of mainstream accounts of the green transition: pluralist and technocratic stories of governments, businesses and individuals altering policies and practices that propel human society toward the goal of ‘net zero’ greenhouse gas emissions and environmental ameliorations. It next considers explanations of why the transition is proceeding so sluggishly (climate change as a ‘wicked problem', ‘collective action problems’ encountered in mitigating it, and so on). Through a critique of such accounts I delineate an alternative, one that foregrounds systemic relations of power. As case studies I look at the economic growth compulsion, and the fetishism of technology. From this vantage point I look at the question of anti-environmental backlashes from a new direction. In the concluding section I turn to questions of strategy, including degrowth and the Green New Deal.
maura benegiamo
MONDAY, 1.7. 2024
Just green transition and the politic of value: perspectives from the agrarian context
The agrarian sector plays a central role in the context of the global ecological crisis and green transition strategies. It is also a strategic terrain for the recomposition of capital-nature relationships. In this lecture, I present my research on three conflicting domains of green transition policies concerning agriculture: agrofuel politics and land grabbing; techno-scientific innovations and agro-ecological resistance; the role of labour in the digital agriculture paradigm. In commenting on them, I will discuss the peculiar value politics that these processes entail, underlying the extractive and speculative character of green capitalism, as well as the alternative and conflicting rationalities and alliances that confront it, and their role in the construction of a just green transition for all.
kai heron
MONDAY, 1.7. 2024
From Bullshit Abundance to Radical Abundance: Theorising Eco-Socialist Transition With Public-Common Partnerships
We live in a world of bullshit abundance. A world where we have too much of what we don’t need and too little of what we do. A bullshit abundance of microplastics, of greenhouse gasses, of shoddily produced commodities, and of private profits made through the exploitation of land, sea, and labour. Drawing on Istvan Meszaros’ theorisation of revolutionary transition and struggles to implement public-common partnerships in the UK, this lecture asks how we can leave this world of bullshit abundance behind once and for all.
DELAVNICA: GIUSTINA SELVELLI
MONDAY, 1.7. 2024
Mapping lost ecocultural landscapes: a minority perspective
Over the last century, countless environmental and cultural landscapes, many of which inhabited by indigenous communities and ethnic minorities, have been wiped off the face of the earth due to economic development pressures. What remains of those submerged histories in the narratives and consciousness of the majority population? In this workshop, participants will be guided to locate some of these lost places on the world atlas and reflect on the ongoing risks that the diverse eco-cultural heritage faces today despite the discourse on the green transition.
james meadway
TUESDAY, 2.7. 2024
It’s After the End of the World: economic justice in an age of open-ended crisis.
Climate change and the nature crisis are moving, inexorably, to the center of our lives: environmental instability is imposing itself on us all in a way without precedent in the history of modern humans. This ecological transition is mediated through structures of capitalism, forming a uniquely open-ended crisis: unlike those in the past, the crisis cannot even in principle stabilise itself. A new politics of economic and environmental justice is needed, founded on addressing instability.
mariano féliz
TUESDAY, 2.7. 2024
Dependency, “green” transition, and struggles for the commons. Argentina as experimental field for a new wave of looting.
Argentina has been going through a deep crisis for at least a decade. The dominant fractions of capital have attempted to transform and deepen the economy’s dependency by accelerating a process of transition into a green capitalism’s chains of value and super-exploitation. They tried green developmentalist strategies, and under Javier Milei’s paleo-libertarian government, they promote extreme forms of plundering of the territories, and common goods. As resistance abounds, the people defend their lives and livelihoods, creating new forms of social reproduction.
danijela dolenec
TUESDAY, 2.7. 2024
The Green Left in Power
I start from an overview of urban movements in Southeast Europe, addressing commonalities of context and strategies, and after that I delve into Možemo! and the problem of winning power from a left perspective. Možemo! in problem pridobivanja oblasti z leve perspektive.
Leaning into Foucault's thesis that the left has the ideology that rationalises its power, but lacks its own institutional practices to achieve its goals, we analyse our experience in power in Zagreb, focusing in particular on our policy change in waste management in the city and the role that municipalism plays in building up capacity for transformative change.
WEDNESDAY, 3.7. 2024
Energy commoning: opportunities & barriers for a just energy transition
This presentation critically examines the impact of energy market liberalisation in Europe. Using the framework of commons studies, it explores energy commons as a political hypothesis with the capacity of influencing and transforming the current energy system. Energy commons are understood as community-managed and/or citizens-oriented experiences that promote energy democracy, justice and sustainability. Case studies of Barcelona Energia and Catalan energy communities illustrate practical implementations. Finally, it assesses how energy commons can support a just energy transition and a more just energy system.
lavinia steinfort
WEDNESDAY, 3.7. 2024
Reclaiming and democratising public services from an ownership and governance perspective
The lecture will focus on TNI's trajectory on Energy Democracy, with a quick snapshot on reclaiming and democratising public services. We will explore municipal energy transitions across Europe and EU's push for liberalising and privatising member state's energy sectors.
As a survey of 15 "green" multinationals shows, the energy transition is being hijacked by corporate interests. What are the dominant energy transition myths that are threatening decarbonisations? And why should we aim for a Peoples' takeover of the energy system: converging struggles to deprivatise, decolonise and democratise energy.
chris vrettos
WEDNESDAY, 3.7. 2024
All the power to all the people: energy communities as radically realistic solutions
Is the 'greenlash' really that big, or do citizens just want a more fair distribution of economic benefits of the climate transition? Energy communities are a concrete tool to ensure a democratic, fair, green energy transition. They are local groups of citizens, SMEs and Municipalities that jointly develop renewable energy projects, thus ensuring strong economic benefits for the local community, while also cultivating acceptance for renewable energy. Over the past years the EU Commission has provided for clear legislative support, including through recent revisions in key Green Deal legislation. Member States are now encouraged to include energy communities in offshore wind parks, housing renovations, electric mobility, and in general across all activities of the energy sector. The energy and climate transitions will only succeed with greater democracy and fair distribution of benefits.
melissa garcia lamarca
THURSDAY, 4.7. 2024
Green cities for whom? Thinking public, private and commons in urban space & housing
Making cities greener and more sustainable is an increasing global priority, but who are these cities for? The lecture will outline some of the major tensions related to the public, private and commons in cities today, focusing on housing financialisation, green gentrification and green finance. It will also discuss what can be done to think and act the city as commons, from radical policy interventions to grassroots action, reflecting on questions of scale and politics in the just urban transition.
martin valinger
THURSDAY, 4.7. 2024
Transformative Urban Dynamics in Ljubljana: Between the Public, the Private, and the Commons
The lecture will closely examine the transformative dynamics shaping urban landscapes in post-socialist cities, with a particular focus on Slovenia's capital city, Ljubljana. It will explore the evolution of urban planning and governance paradigms, spanning from post-war "modernist" planning to the contemporary dominance of what is often termed as investor urbanism. Building on this analysis, it will illustrate how open public and community spaces today serve as a political terrain where various public, private, and communal interests and urban agendas collide in often peculiar ways, setting the stage for uncertain developmental trajectories.
vishwas satgar
FRIDAY, 5.7. 2024
Transitioning Beyond Planetary Eco-cide – Transformative Politics and the Commons Response
Capitalism’s accumulation through eco-cide (mass scale destruction of human and non-human life) has been unleashed on a planetary scale since the shift to industrial capitalism. Its roots lie deep in the colonial encounter and enclosures of the commons. Grounded in the binary of humans versus natural relations this logic has reached a point of even threatening to lock in a shift in a new state for the earth. Underpinning this is catastrophic impacts on human and non-human life forms, socio-ecological systems and processes. The current trajectory of accumulation through eco-cide threatens everything. In this context transformative politics has come to the fore offering a new imaginary and a new conception of the political while centering the importance of the commons (land, water, biodiversity, creative labour, energy, earth relations and the cybersphere) as crucial for deep just transitions at different scales. This lecture will explore the new transformative politics emerging from over three decades of resistance and will offer various examples, at different scales, that are transitioning the planetary beyond eco-cide.
Workshop: Maja Simoneti
FRIDAY, 5.7. 2024
Public participation in spatial planning: from right to need, from good practice to a participatory culture
We will explore the practice of public participation in spatial planning and try to define, through different examples, how participation influences spatial planning and management, solutions, individuals and communities. A brief introduction and presentation of examples will be the starting point for a discussion on how to move quickly and effectively from the right and need to participate to good practices and a culture of participation. More and more examples of good practice nowadays support the idea that the participation of the citizens, the public and other stakeholders works in favour of problem solving and communities. Moreover, many public policy measures and recommendations are based on the concepts of stakeholder integration and participation in spatial planning. Yet, at the same time, we are constantly seeing boundaries being tested and the exclusion of the public in planning and management processes is a classic maneuver to pursue objectives that are not necessarily in the public interest. Civic initiatives are a side-effect, not an essential component of public participation in spatial planning.
photo: Katja Cankar
Contact
- info@politicalecology-ljubljana.si
Links
LIFE IP CARE4CLIMATE (LIFE17 IPC/SI/000007) is an integrated project, financed by the European Comission's LIFE Programme, the Slovenian Climate Fund and partners' own contributions.
The opinions expressed in this document are those of the author(s) only and should not be considered as representative of the European Union's official position.
English (UK) 
Slovenščina