The Sufficiency Perspective on Climate Change Mitigation - Policy Measures towards Transformation in Germany

Project: Dissertation project

Project participants

Description

Climate crisis necessitates the decarbonization of our economy which is intensely discussed in science and society. The expanding use of terms such as transformation suggest that fundamental changes in the socio-economic foundations are necessary and about to come. However, the underlying mechanisms of the ways of life and modes of production in modern capitalism are discussed with less attention. Instead, public debates strongly focus on particular measures to decarbonize consumption and production, such as political instruments to support the introduction of new technologies. Following Norman Laws (2015), these two strands of debate can be transferred into two kinds of sustainability and climate change mitigation policies. First order policies include specific measures that directly or indirectly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Thus, first order policies contain many well-known instruments, such as subsidies for green technology or the rollout of renewable energy production. Second order policies on the other hand contain measures that address the social and economic driving forces and structures underlying climate change. The goal of this cumulative dissertation project is to analyze concrete measures of first and second order climate change mitigation policies and to empirically assess the status quo, potentials and challenges regarding implementation in Germany.

For this endeavor, sufficiency serves as a starting point. While an expanding body of literature discusses the importance of sufficiency for sustainability and climate change mitigation alike, conceptual vagueness continues and hinders effective implementation. My first article “Sufficiency as relations of enoughness”, published in Sustainable Development (https://doi.org/10.1002/sd.3090), wants to tackle this lack of conceptual precision by introducing the concept of relations of enoughness. Hence, diverse uses and understandings of sufficiency share a common structure: ‘Enough/ too little/ too much of X regarding Y’. Exemplarily, a widespread use of sufficiency articulates that currently for many persons in the global north, there is too much consumption regarding limited individual carbon budgets. By constructing relations of enoughness, scientists and practitioners can explicate underlying normativities, assumptions, and areas of interest, contributing to more accuracy in the sufficiency and sustainability debate.
StatusActive
Period01.10.23 → …

Research outputs

Recently viewed

Publications

  1. Fatigue crack propagation in AA5083 structures additively manufactured via multi-layer friction surfacing
  2. Kultur als Materialität oder Material – Diskurstheorie oder Diskursanalyse?
  3. Schulleistung in Diskussion
  4. Recognizing Guarantees and Assurances of Non-Repetition
  5. Die Bedeutung der Zeit
  6. University-linked programmes for sustainable entrepreneurship and regional development
  7. Mindsets and reflection in teacher education for inclusive language classrooms
  8. The influence of balanced and imbalanced resource supply on biodiversity-functioning relationship across ecosystems
  9. Nutzen – Nutzung - Nutzer_innen
  10. Uncertainty, Pluralism, and the Knowledge-based Theory of the Firm
  11. Lexical markers of common grounds
  12. Vorstellungen über null und Null
  13. Identitäten im Netz
  14. Formulating and solving integrated order batching and routing in multi-depot AGV-assisted mixed-shelves warehouses
  15. Performance pay sensitivity: Do top management incentives align with shareholder value creation?
  16. The Invisualities of Capture in Amazon’s Logistical Operations
  17. Learning spaces in multi-stakeholder initiatives
  18. Perceptions of science, science communication, and climate change attitudes in 68 countries - the TISP dataset
  19. Intellectual Property and Intra-Community Trade
  20. Handling Cytostatic Drugs
  21. Tree diversity and nectar composition affect arthropod visitors on extrafloral nectaries in a diversity experiment
  22. Introduction: Manufacturing as a challenge in Industry 4.0 process
  23. Determinants of mandatory goodwill disclosure
  24. Where there is no World and no Epoch
  25. The efficiency of German public theaters: a stochastic frontier analysis approach
  26. Variational Pragmatics
  27. Employing complementary multivariate methods for a designed nontarget LC-HRMS screening of a wastewater-influenced river
  28. Towards greener and sustainable ionic liquids using naturally occurring and nature-inspired pyridinium structures
  29. The challenges of gamifying CSR communication