Wales and the Wider World: Sustainable Economic Development in the Celtic Archipelago and Beyond

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Wales and the Wider World Sustainable Economic
Development in the Celtic Archipelago and Beyond

• Dr. John Barry
• Institute for a Sustainable World and
• School of Politics, International Studies and
  Philosophy
• Queens University Belfast
• E j.barry_at_qub.ac.uk

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Context

• Economic recession how to not let a crisis go
  to waste
• Key to link sustainability to jobs, income and
  food security
• BUTthat the rules of the game have changed and
  whatever emerges represents a new reconfiguration
  of state, market and civil society relations
• Where are all the economists who predicted the
  crisis?
• Poverty and dominance of the neo-classical
  economic model
• Danger of repeating the same actions/policy and
  expecting a different outcome autism and
  ideology
• Danger of business as usual and viewing current
  crisis as temporary blip before normal service
  is resumed
• Business as usual - Rowing backwards into the
  future
• Debates about economics as ideological and value
  based
• Return of political economy and the
  re-politicisation of society?
• How do we prepare ourselves for the passing of
  large sections of a familiar way of life?

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Sustainability SWOT Analysis for Wales

• Life in Wales in a carbon constrained, climate
  changed world
• We need to find a new way of making our way in
  the world and re-making the world
• Risk assessment in relation to peak oil and oil
  price fluctuation and oil dependency of the Welsh
  economy
• What would be the effects on energy/electricity,
  food, transport of oil increasing to 75 - 100 -
  150 a barrel?
• Full spectrum climate change risk assessment for
  Wales?
• An energy descent plan and planned retreat from
  fossil fuels for Wales?
• Modelling the Welsh economy in terms of being
  fit for purpose for economic security and
  self-reliance rather than export-orientated,
  FDI-chasing growth?

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Source HMG (2005), Securing our Future
Trojan Horse of UK Sustainable Development
Strategy?
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Sustainable Economic Development Official Vision
of One Planet Wales

• One Planet Wales (Nov 18th 2008, Sustainable
  Development Scheme)
• Wales has become the first nation of the UK to
  use its ecological footprint to influence policy
  and measure progress.
• Reduce reliance on carbon based energy by 80
  90.
• Move towards becoming a zero waste nation

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What would a Sustainable Welsh Economy look like?

• Need to change the grammar (rules/frames) not
  just language of economics and governance
• Paradigm shift but opposition from vested
  interests (within the state/policy community
  market/economic actors/interests) and civil
  society/citizens
• Branding /communicating this vision
  indigenising the vision co-creating the policy
  agenda,
• Mobilising Welsh (civic) nationalism ?
• Storying sustainability in Wales by those who
  live here
• Making the inevitable attractive and an integral
  part of the narrative of the people and place
• Downsides of language of descent down
  constrained or simply telling it like it is
  based on sound science?

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Inevitability of the Transition to Sustainability

• Renewable energy economy is a more localised and
  distributed/decentralised economy
• More local is slow
• Re-localisation of production and consumption
• Enhancing economic self-reliance (food and energy
  especially)
• Ecological and carbon foot-printing of how Wales
  as a nation is to make its way in the world
• Issue is planning and preparation for the
  transition

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Beyond Competitive Regionalism

• Celtic Archipelago- links within and between
  these islands, nations, regions, city-regions and
  localities
• Act locally, buy regionally and trade and think
  globally?
• Relationship between (fair) trade internationally
  and re-localisation of production and consumption
  
• Renewable energy transition with hyper-localism
  potential to create new inequalities between and
  within regions

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Sustainability and the Celtic Archipelago

• Immense flows and connections that already exits
  within and between these islands people,
  cultures, ideas, complicated histories
• Positive potential of a Green New Deal within
  and across these islands
• Sustainable development different in Bangor
  Wales than Bangor, Northern Ireland
• Greening existing N-S and E-W political
  institutions and civil society/community links
  within and between these islands
• Learning between the regions/parts

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Balancing Regional Self-Reliance and Trade

• Regionalism and self-reliance against deregulated
  corporate FDI chasing globalisation
• Dangers/Issues e.g. of ferocious tribalism
  (Somma, 2008) and Sinn Feinism (Ourselves Alone)
  and very real negative side of nationalism
• Balance between local, regionalism, nationalism
  and cosmopolitanism?
• Regional self-reliance in energy, food coupled
  with fair (not free) international trade
• Re-connecting production and consumption, economy
  and ecology
• Links between the Celtic archipelago
• 1. Energy- renewable wind, wave and tidal energy
  (e.g. all Ireland electricity market)
• 2. Education and knowledge - universities and
  transition, skills and public information -
  public service /duty of knowledge producers
• 3. Public Health sharing of services and
  facilities to reduce duplication
• 4. Public procurement greening public
  procurement across these islands would
  immediately create local markets

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A Green New Deal for the Academy?

• Reclaiming of the mission of science (including
  social science) to improve the human condition
  NOT only by producing commercially exploitable
  knowledge
• Publicly funded research can and ought to be
  seen as service for the community which funds it,
  NOT as an incubator for marketable innovations
• Asking citizens what they want? How can research
  help improve their lives?
• Why should democracy end at the university gates?
  
• Sustainability research as action research
  engaged research
• Proposal for a network of sustainability
  researchers throughout these islands?

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New Thinking and Creativity needed

• The thinking which got us into the problem cannot
  be the same we need to solve it.
• Albert Einstein

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Regional Sustainability and Innovation

• Sustainable development as comprising the triple
  bottom line of environmental, economic and
  social objectives NOT the same as
  undifferentiated economic growth, GDP increases
  or Gross Value Added (GVA) measures
• Economic bottom line regional sustainable
  development, through the identification and
  creation of markets, innovations in technology,
  production, distribution and marketing, new
  employment and investment opportunities in the
  public, private and social economies.
• Social bottom line advancing social inclusion,
  reducing social injustice and more participative
  citizen involvement in sustainable development
  policy-making and implementation.
• Environmental bottom line reconciling quality
  of life for all citizens with long-term
  sustainability, dematerialisation, decoupling
  energy and materials from economic development
  and decreasing regional ecological footprints.

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Governance for a Just Transition

• Decarbonising resilient regionalism (with a dose
  of civic republicanism)
• Need for new visions and imaginative, creative
  policy options and institutional arrangements
• Inclusive sustainability leadership - civil
  society, community-based, citizen-focused
  sustainability
• Emergence of city-regions as part of a
  sustainability/green response to the current
  triple crunch of energy insecurity, climate
  change and credit/liquidity crises
• Need for economic planning, coordination and
  political leadership with democratic
  accountability and inclusion

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Triples all round

• Regions as self-conscious sustainability
  pioneers, in responses to the triple crunch
• The triple bottom line of sustainable development
  as the answer to the triple crunch
• Re-configuration of the relationship between
  state, market and community
• Re-embedding of the economy in society and both
  within the local and global environment

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Never deny the power of a small group of
committed individuals to change the world. Indeed
that is the only thing that ever has. Margaret
Mead
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• Thank you

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Example from Northern Ireland

• Northern Visions 2008 report Carbon and
  eco-footprint analysis of Northern Ireland
• Designing a sustainable economy based on science
  (and ethics) not neo-classical economics alone
• Findings The baseline assessment revealed that
  approximately 80 of the Ecological and Carbon
  Footprint related to three policy areas housing
  (retrofitting insulation, improving building
  regs), transport (public) and food (stop wasting
  food)
• Resource Accounting Need for measurement and
  reporting systems which enable us to budget and
  account for materials and carbon/energy and
  develop indicators of performance and progress
  which can sit alongside current economic
  indicators such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP),
  Gross Value Added (GVA) or the Retail Price Index
  (RPI).