Editorial

Addressing the climate emergency is coming to be recognised as a top policy priority by more and more policy-makers. In order to rein human activity back within planetary limits our entire production and consumption model needs a fundamental, paradigmatic change. The welfare state that emerged in the context of a fossil fuel-based extractive economic model, based on a belief in sustained growth, cannot remain unaffected by the ongoing transition to a net-zero economy (Gough et al., 2008). Nevertheless, the different possible linkages between the welfare state and climate and environmental issues largely remain unexplored. This is what motivated this special issue.

It is important to bear in mind that, until very recently, discussion of social welfare systems in Europe was disconnected from ecological concerns and policies. The relevant objectives, instruments and actors were largely different. Environmental and climate science, on the one hand, and the analysis and theoretical foundations of welfare systems on the other, emerged and developed in disparate silos. While the welfare state was designed to reduce social risks and ensure (relative) stability of income and of societies, it was also created as an institution that favours economic growth and the maintenance of income and therefore consumption. Its aim was not to change behaviour but to maintain it, with a focus on redistribution. With environmental inequalities becoming more and more embedded in social ones, environmental policies are becoming social policies, and vice-versa.

This special issue of Transfer is devoted to a discussion that expands the just transition narrative to encompass the perspective of an ‘eco-social state’, which also assumes a new welfare policy framework. Besides the introductory article, four main articles and a contribution in the ‘News and Background’ section reflect on such issues as the following: do the principles of ‘climate justice’, ‘just transition’ and ‘social justice’ comprise a consistent doctrine? Do they lead to integrated or complementary policies? Which policy areas are or should be impacted? Should these policies be radically rethought, taking into consideration the limits to growth?

The introductory article by Béla Galgóczi and Philippe Pochet provides a short review of the challenges confronting the welfare state in the context of the climate emergency. The article by Maria Petmesidou and Ana M. Guillén lays out a research agenda on the social policy challenges faced by the EU under the combined impact of a triple transition: green, digital and demographic. Matteo Mandelli’s article sets out a framework for understanding eco-social policies by introducing a typology for distinguishing various eco-social policies and emphasising their role as enabler to facilitate transformation and behavioural change. The article by Béla Galgóczi seeks to demonstrate that, given the complexity of inequalities in the climate-environment-social nexus, fragmented just transition policies that tend to focus on one dimension of inequality will not deliver results to achieve a ‘just transition for all’. The fourth main article, by Dunja Krause, Dimitris Stevis, Katja Hujo and Edouard Morena, combines environmental and social objectives in the effort to address climate change and other environmental challenges, making it possible to assess different just transition pathways in the context of different types of welfare states and economic structures. In the ‘News and Background’ section, Peter Nitsche-Whitfield argues that ecological movements should advocate for a social-ecological transformation in which trade unions play a key role – and in turn, trade unions should continue to strengthen their strategies supporting climate change mitigation.