In Memoriam and Editorials

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Laurent J. G. van der Maesen
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In Memoriam: Bas van der Horst (1951–2022)

On Discourses Inside the United Nations, Urban–Rural Relationships, and the Impacts on Inequality of Ageism and Digitalization

The Current State of Socioenvironmental and Ecological Challenges in 2022 from an Academic Perspective

Unexpectedly, on 24 October 2022, Bas van der Horst, Managing Editor of this journal since 2017, passed away. During one of his traditional visits to one of the northern Wadden Islands in Holland in September, he was overwhelmed by tiredness. Back in Amsterdam, it soon became clear that he had only a few weeks to live. Bas died peacefully under the intense cloak of the love of his wife and children. This existential bombshell and the short time left to Bas was extremely hard to negotiate. It kept him from saying farewell to many friends and colleagues. As colleagues, “we couldn't say goodbye, sealed with a kiss.” Bas, for the International Journal of Social Quality, was much more than a “Managing Editor.” He upgraded our journal in many ways. He gave the website of the International Association on Social Quality a new color scheme and visual significance. With expressive images, he emphasized the necessity of “bridging” between people. Technically and in substance, he made indispensable contributions to the development of the huge list of the IJSQ's relationships. He contributed to the transformation of the peer review system into a supportive process for authors who lacked the expertise to present arguments on an international platform such as the journal. Based on these great personal contributions, a productive collegial relationship was built with the Berghahn Journals team. Such sensitive and complicated processes only take shape through sympathy, perseverance, and readiness to mutually accept trial and error. From deeply rooted personal conviction, in his own inimitable and humble way, Bas strove to enhance the global dialogue about how to strengthen the normative principles of social quality: social justice, human solidarity, equal value, human dignity, and eco-equilibrium. The Russian invasion of the sovereign state of Ukraine in February 2022 was, for Bas, unbearable, echoing as it did what had happened in Syria, Afghanistan, and Sudan.

Bas had a long career at ARTIS, the Amsterdam zoo. The Planetarium there was his great passion. Among many other things, he invested hugely in its internal and external digital communication and its educational aspects. He taught children passionately about the current “state of the art” of what we know about the origins and processes of the universe, stars, planets, and black holes. Humans, he argued, should be aware and take due account of these processes in the universe when acting on our “tiny planet.” After his retirement he continued his work for ARTIS as a volunteer. Thankfully, he was also able to create time to contribute to improving communicative processes regarding the social quality theory and approach. Bas was substantially involved in social quality issues. He was fascinated by the fundamental assumption that “the social” should be conceived of as the outcome of the dialectic between processes of self-realization of people and processes resulting in the formation of collectives. The same held true for judging the meaning of the outcomes through the five normative principles. For him, this approach allowed for an essential critique of the neoliberal paradigm and contemporary interpretations of Marxism. As he taught young people, for him it was “evidence sui generis” that the social quality of people's daily lives is undermined when interventions are at odds with “natural processes.” He strongly believed in the necessity of interdisciplinarity in theory and practice for contributing to the enhancement of the “overall sustainability” of (existence on) the Earth. In his private life he was a gentle and modest person who felt especially happy when surrounded by nature. The latter he always found while staying in his simple weekend house at the edge of the woods, or camping on the Wadden Islands, overlooking the infinite sea. He always had a passion for music and poetry. The future of his grandchild, he believed, depended on strengthening social justice and restoring the balance between nature and the human species. All of this was present in his backpack and came to expression in his being our journal's “Managing Editor.” The editors of the journal and the Berghahn team are experiencing the loss of Bas with great sadness, but we all know that his spirit lives on in the work of social quality and its realization.

Laurent J. G. van der Maesen, Harry G. J. Nijhuis, and Alan Walker, Amsterdam, The Hague, Sheffield.

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Bas van der Horst at his trusted Wadden Sea, extreme Dutch northwest.

Citation: The International Journal of Social Quality 12, 2; 10.3167/IJSQ.2022.120201

On Discourses Inside the United Nations, Urban–Rural Relationships, and the Impacts on Inequality of Ageism and Digitalization

Harry G.J. Nijhuis and Laurent J.G. van der Maesen

This editorial differs from those of other issues. It shorter than many former editorials and in particular focuses on the essence of the five published articles. The reason for this is twofold. Firstly, we would like to give space to contemplating the tragic passing away of Bas van der Horst, the highly valued and beloved Managing Editor of the International Journal of Social Quality. Furthermore, we decided to create a separate section in this issue to devote the necessary ample attention to “The Current State of Socioenvironmental and Ecological Challenges.” The social quality of the daily circumstances of people all over the world is increasingly threatened by ecological issues, such as climate crises, destruction of biodiversity, and pollution. These events are rooted in and have impacts in daily circumstances of all people on earth. Numerous initiatives and developments have arisen to cope with (or to purposely disregard) the persistent ecological threats to the regional and global circumstances of daily life. The growing urgency of all these events and the related developments has been discussed in former editorials. Gradually, it has become a relatively dominant aspect of our editorial arguments. Considering this, we have judged it right to reserve in the journal a special space for current issues and ongoing processes in the socioenvironmental and ecological dimension. With this in mind, in this editorial we present summaries of and reflections on the significance and common denominator of the articles in this issue. This is primarily done from the social quality perspective.

In the first article, by Des Gasper, through careful text analysis, three authoritative reports from the United Nations are compared. The article concerns the 2020 Human Development Report (HDR) on Human Development and the Anthropocene, the 2022 Special Report on New Threats to Human Security in the Anthropocene, and the 2021/2022 HDR on Uncertain Times, Unsettled Lives. The comparison regards values assigned to and tendencies observed in the deployment and interpretation of core notions of “human development” and “human security.” Essentially, the emergence of a deeper picture of human beings and an awareness of the foundational significance of “human security” is observed. In the conclusions, the tendencies discovered are connected with interesting observations about what currently happens in the world. Among other aspects: (1) “human security” is often perceived as a personal responsibility, while it needs to be promoted as a public responsibility; (2) the approaches of “human development” are too oriented to conceptions of people as individuals, neglecting the fact that they are “social beings”; (3) “human security” needs to be ensured even before entering into processes of “human development”; (4) individualistic and economistic orientations to “human development” will encounter both physical environmental limits and internal conflicts in pursuing human security itself; (5) in current global patterns of development and unlimited economic growth, the world of business and political institutions tends to colonize the world of daily circumstances of people, thus undermining their security and their personal development; (6) the emerging portrait from the tendencies discovered allows for the recognition of a deeper picture of humankind as capable of destroying itself and its environment in the foreseeable future. Gasper—in his analysis of the thinking in UN circles—identifies tendencies in discussing “human security” and “human development” that are significant and promising, considering today's global challenges. These imply a critique of current prevailing economic and political patterns, which may be held responsible for today's global ecological crisis and for the deterioration of human security in many places in the world. Referring to the importance of the conceptualizations of “human beings,” “human security,” and “human development” presented in the UN reports, Gasper launches a plea to reconsider the contemporary similarities, differences, and possible complementarities between herewith related approaches. Reconsidering the assessed UNDP documents about these approaches in the light of contemporary societal processes and challenges is very relevant. It fully aligns with the critique, discussed in contemporary social quality studies among others, regarding the use of these approaches in UN circles. The results of his article invite us to rethink the original question discussed in some documents: “what does the human security approach have to say to the social quality approach and vice versa?” (Gasper et al. 2009: Gasper 2014: Giri 2011: IASQ 2009, 2012, 2019: Phillips 2006, 2011).

The second article, by Paolo Motta, Cintia Jaime and Federico Salmeron Escobar, concerns the need to reflect on the processes resulting in current urban–rural relationships. It may be appreciated as a deepening of the previous article by Paolo Motta on urbanization and sustainability after COVID-19 (Motta 2020). Stimulated by the impacts of both climate change and the pandemic, the question of the transformation processes of these relationships has become critical. This is also important because the urbanized, according to the forecasts of the United Nations, will represent over 70 percent of the total population of the Earth in 2050. Today it is estimated that 24 percent of the population already reside in slums worldwide. This proportion will increase as well. In Japan, for example, these processes have resulted in the concentration of 37 million inhabitants in Tokyo and millions of unoccupied homes in rural towns. To address this, families in the Tokyo metropolitan area, including those headed by single parents, will be eligible to receive USD 7,700 per child if they move to less populated areas across the country (McCurry 2023). This example of contemporary trends in urban–rural relationships, however, cannot be changed with money transfers. The authors make a plea for a new urban-rural development approach, based on a new urban paradigm connected with the assumptions of the social quality theory. In the past decade, explorations from this perspective have been made in the Dutch city of The Hague and the Chinese city of Jiaxing (IASQ 2015). A prevailing contemporary argument for this change of approach is also technological opportunities, which represent a unique prospect for a revival of towns and villages as the renewed locations of human aggregation. In the article, a broad exploration is made into related outcomes and the nature of debates about them. Missing in these debates is a consensus about a consistent point of departure. It stresses the necessity of a comprehensive approach to future urban–rural relationships, based on processes and outcomes in and between the four main societal dimensions, instead of a restricted physical-economistic approach to the built environment (IASQ 2019). Another important conclusion of the presented explorations is that the future development of metropolises, where most of the world population already lives, may be more vulnerable to pandemics and other emergencies (Benfan et al. 2022). For example, cities increasingly become heat islands in the summertime, with serious consequences for people over sixty-five (Horton 2022). The authors refer to new, megalomaniac initiatives of reckless and invasive growth in urban agglomerations, which are deeply alienating from the point of view of human well-being. An example is the NEOM Initiative presented in August 2022 as part of the 2030 Saudi Vision program, which is already assured financial resources. NEOM's proposals, among others, are: the Line, a linear city 170 km long and 200 m wide for over nine million inhabitants; Trojena, a futuristic, exclusive winter resort in the mountains of Saudi Arabia.

The third article, by Shivi Grover and Leemamol Mathew, addresses processes of digitalization of schools in India during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through literature research and interviews with teachers and others directly involved, both the facilitating and inhibiting factors in digitalization were studied. Attention was primarily paid to processes in which teachers were involved. The article concentrates on “the case” of Delhi state, reasoning that this area represents a “best case” with which to consider nationwide patterns. Deploying the social quality analytical framework, various constitutional (subjective) factors regarding teachers and conditional (objective) factors regarding supportive systems are analyzed. The latter, such as availability of facilities and information technology, are seen as “first-order” conditional factors. The first as beliefs, attitudes, and the responsiveness of teachers regarding the changes are seen as “second-order.” The findings show that particularly the “second-order” factors (intrinsic to teachers) constitute serious obstructions to processes of digitalization. Support from school administrators and government officials and programs did not deliver the expected results. One of the reasons is that the support was usually generic and not tailored to the specific needs and demands of the teachers. Informal dialogical groups, among colleagues, parents, and students, as opposed to formal approaches, appeared to be quite fruitful. Across the board, (the support of) digitalization of educational spaces was less successful in government schools than in private and elite schools. It is concluded that, taking into account the “best case” nature of the studied Delhi area, as well as the pressing circumstances of the COVID-19 situation, the digitalization of educational space in India is a serious challenge. It is in no way keeping pace with the much-applauded general “digital revolution” in India. The authors conclude that the capabilities of teachers to adopt digital devices in the classroom are of course conditional to the teaching process and the performance of students. Thus, investments in (personally tailored) supportive programs for teachers are important for the personal development of youth in the whole of India. The observed reality of confining effective supportive programs to well-financed private schools is in contradiction with the normative assumptions of social quality concerning “social justice” and “equal value.”

The fourth article, by Anna Tsetoura addresses universal issues related to the “technological vulnerabilities” (and “inequality”) of the elderly. This specific vulnerability—like many others—has been accentuated during the COVID-19 pandemic. This has extensively been demonstrated in a previous double themed issue of this journal, see its Editorial (Nijhuis and van der Maesen 2021). The results of an extensive international literature review are presented in this article. In structuring her article and explaining the outcomes, the author deploys the theoretical and analytical frameworks of social quality. These frameworks, from socioeconomic, sociocultural, and sociopolitical perspectives, give shape to the workings of subjective (constitutional) and objective (conditional) determining factors in play in the societal dynamics of the vulnerability discussed. Determining factors that come to the fore are, among others: age, “ageism,” personal capacities, digital responsiveness, social inclusion, social participation, social cohesion, health, e-health, e-commerce, socioeconomic security, dominant political and economic systems, and the role of communities. In the complex web of interrelated factors depicted, particular attention is paid to “societal exclusion” as a core problem. In the conclusions, for a deeper understanding of the evident vulnerability of the elderly, quite significant arguments are presented. Of course, personal solutions (training, adequate facilities, etc.) tailored to the capacities and needs of the elderly will be helpful. But collectively oriented approaches, such as participation in neighborhood communities in which older people live, are also important. But the author in her interpretation goes a few steps further: “Society is identified with the economic realm and those not able to contribute to capital accumulation are not considered to contribute to society.” Central in her explanations of the modern societal context in which the exposed painful vulnerability of the elderly arises is the primacy of the economistic orientation of processes of digitalization, which does not take into account the daily life situations, capabilities, and needs of the elderly. Most significant and clarifying is the question put on the table of whether society will be adjustable to the societal needs of vulnerable groups such as older people, or whether people are obliged to be adjustable.

In the fifth article, from Ukraine, by Iryna M. Zharovska, Vitaliy B. Kovalchuk, Nataliya M. Gren, Yaryna S. Bohiv, and Iryna I. Shul, age discrimination (“ageism”) is discussed from a global perspective. Its increasing significance is demonstrated by explaining patterns of current global demographic transition. This thorough article is based on an extensive literature review, analyses of politics and legal systems, policies, and institutional practices, and heuristic cases of national systems and court cases. Much attention is given to current policies, initiatives, and practices in the European Union. A thorough elaboration is presented concerning the definition, meaning, and substance of “discrimination.” In the authors’ elaboration, “ageism” is conceived as a complex societal construct and related practices, encompassing a wide spectrum of personal and societal aspects. A distinction is made between “direct” and “indirect” discrimination. The first is visible and expressed in formal structures, like organizational arrangements and national legislation and policies. The latter is not made explicit, instead working in cultural behavior and attitudes between people. Nurtured by stereotypes and prejudices, it is often obscured at present. Illustrative examples of ageism in the labor market and the workplace are depicted. In structuring the authors’ conceptualization of ageism, the configuration of social quality frameworks is deployed. Next to the subjectively oriented (constitutional) factors and the objectively oriented (conditional) factors, sociopolitical ideologies, legal and institutional constructions, and cultural patterns also play roles in ageism. The authors strongly emphasize the comprehensive nature of the dynamics of age discrimination. The societal context (in ideological, economic, and cultural senses) in which it emerges and must be solved remains mostly out of sight. Interpreting the results of their study, the authors conclude that one of the basic drivers of age discrimination is the ranking in modern societies of economic growth and productivity as the supreme goal. The stereotypical, culturally embedded image of the elderly is that they are not economically productive (anymore); thus, they are valued as inferior.

Reflecting on the outcomes and conclusions of these articles, the following critical issues come to the fore. All the studies emphasize that it is essential to develop a comprehensive picture of the issues and problems they address. The overall motive is the awareness that complex problems cannot be thoroughly solved by dealing with just one or several aspects of them. A main feature of the critical arguments brought forward is that studies, policy documents, and political and professional debates mostly focus on characteristics and problems of individual people. Little or no attention is devoted to collective aspects, which constitute the context in which people live and in which their problems emerge. These collective aspects need to be addressed to solve the challenges discussed. As Des Gasper concludes from his analysis of tendencies in authoritative UNDP documents, although a “deeper picture” of the nature of human beings may be noticed, people seem to be conceived as autonomous individuals and not as “products of their societal context.” Apparently, his conclusion—as well as the conclusions of the other articles—refers to the dominant (ontological) image that implicitly underlies contemporary thinking. The “atomic” and individualistic nature of prevailing ideas about the nature of human beings is a recurring theme in this journal, as well as in other publications by the International Association on Social Quality. This ideology does not come out of the blue. Nor is it a solely cognitive issue, stemming from scientific ideas on what constitutes the real nature of a human being. Again, from the discussion in the presented articles, it is evident that the ontological picture underpinning contemporary thinking about human problems and the way they can be solved is thoroughly connected with specific, normatively loaded ideologies.

The Saudi NEOM Initiative, discussed in the article by Motta et al., may serve as a good example of how the social quality of people's daily life circumstances in low-income countries may in future further be disrupted by the outgrowths of a program built on contemporary, capitalist ideological foundations. In this program, public authorities, private interests, and companies are working on and carrying out various urban mega-projects, some already in the development phase. These initiatives of urban development systematically deny the real causes of climate change, the destruction of biodiversity, and increasing pollution. People belonging to the top 10 percent worldwide in terms of wealth, reasoning from their private lifestyles and interests, are constructing these fantasies and plans. In this way, they enforce capital accumulation, endless economic growth, and the (ab)use of millions of migrant workers. The normative significance of these plans, which indeed may come true, is evident. Given this foundational significance, the workings of “normativity” as part of the social quality “configuration of frameworks”—as presented in the Editorial of the double themed issue on the COVID-19 (Nijhuis and van der Maesen 2021)—deserve reconsideration. In the near future, a project will be launched to conduct further elaborations on this important issue.

References

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The Current State of Socioenvironmental and Ecological Challenges in 2022 from an Academic Perspective

Laurent J. G. van der Maesen

The Rationale of this New Post-Editorial Section

This is a new section that, according to our plans, will appear in every issue after the editorial. It concerns relevant processes in the socioenvironmental and ecological dimension and their impact on processes in and between the three other dimensions of societal life (and vice versa), namely the sociopolitical and legal, the economic and financial, and the cultural and welfare dimensions, as explained recently in this journal (Westbroek et al. 2020). This four-dimensional approach has been introduced by the International Association on Social Quality's Dutch think tank oriented toward the connection of social quality assumptions and those of overall sustainability (IASQ 2012), and has since then been further elaborated (IASQ 2019). For many reasons, it deviates from the traditional three-dimensional approach as introduced in the Brundtland Report (UN 1987). The latter concerns three pillars of sustainability: the economic, social, and environmental pillars or dimensions. This untheorized three-dimensional approach has retained an iconic quality to this day in all the institutions of the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), and the European Union. Over the past few decades, the orientation on the ‘social dimension’ (see UN 1987) made it impossible to gain a true understanding of societal processes that influence the overall sustainability. The reason is the lack of any theoretically grounded meaning of the nature of ‘social dimension’ (IASQ 2012).

Processes in the socioenvironmental and ecological dimension (see above) have—as a result of human interventions—a huge impact on daily living circumstances today. Understanding the consequences of this impact on the social quality of these circumstances and how to contribute positively from a social quality perspective is the heart of the matter discussed in this journal. The emphasis in this section is on the relationships between COP26 and COP27, some relevant questions concerning the forthcoming COP28 addressing climate change, and the outcomes of COP15 addressing biodiversity. As an introduction, we begin with reference to the environmental and ecological topics in the editorial of the previous issue of this journal (van der Maesen and Nijhuis 2022).

The Relevant Points of the Editorial of Issue 12(1) for this Section

These points—to be understood as points of departure for this new section—are:

  • The list of various declarations by natural scientists criticizing the non-incorporation of their knowledge about increasing climatological problems by the world of policymakers;

  • The 2021 and 2022 documents by IPBES (the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystems Services) and the IPCC (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) on the dramatic destruction of biodiversity since the 1970s;

  • The million-dollar investments by the business world to deny and cover up these problems, as strategies to even strengthen their own neoliberal revenue model.

COP26, Held in Glasgow, 2021

In the double themed issue of this journal on the societal impact of COVID-19, it is argued that “the lessons learned convincingly reveal that the focus on the natural scientific (medio-biological/epidemiological) angle cannot deliver the approaches to thoroughly cope with the problems. Nor do they expose the impact in the four dimensions of societal life leading to adverse outcomes for the social quality of people's daily circumstances” (van der Maesen and Nijhuis 2021: 331). It is also argued, through references to and interpretations of recent events and processes concerning climate change, the increasing destruction of biodiversity, and many forms of pollution, that the same very much holds true for their impact. This was also discussed in the editorial of the previous issue of this journal (van der Maesen and Nijhuis 2022). More attention will be paid to this entire complex in this journal, because it will affect the core of daily living conditions in the future. The COP26 meeting, held in Glasgow (UK) in summer 2021, remained in a general sense too restricted to socioeconomic processes causing climate change.

It paved the way neither for internationally organized support to combat the dangers facing Bangladesh or the Pacific islands in light of rising oceans, nor for the climate tragedies in Pakistan, Nigeria, and Sudan suddenly exposed at that time (Gul 2022). Even in the final moments of COP26, the restricted commitment to phasing out coals, the most polluting fossil fuel, was watered down by China and India to a phasing down. An agreement to phase out all fossil fuels by 2050—the main condition for sticking to the limit of 1.5°C above preindustrial levels—was totally out of the question (Harvey 2022; Harvey et al. 2022). The fact that a start has been made toward serious reduction of emissions with help of the development of carbon markets has been welcomed. According to Tim Cadman and Robert Hales in this journal, this refers to:

the ability of markets to provide the necessary reductions in fossil fuel emissions at a scale large enough to combat climate change; [this should imply] the integrity of current systems for the accounting of carbon; [it should prevent] possible negative impacts on natural capital generally and biodiversity in particular arising from such mechanisms; [it should exclude] the inherent risks associated with trying to simultaneously deliver other (co-)benefits; and [it should deliver] clarity concerning the extent to which the rights will be safeguarded. While there is an urgency in ensuring that mechanisms will deliver the emissions reductions required, the risks of carbon market failure remain due to the insufficiency of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and the lack of transparency of carbon markets. (Cadman and Hales 2022: 76)

This rather problematic economistic approach, oriented to carbon markets, prevents societal transformation—a concept applied by the UNFCCC (2022)—because such transformation implies attention to the reciprocity of processes within and between all four main dimensions of societal life, mentioned above. Despite this one-dimensionality, according to the UNFCCC, progress had indeed been made with promoting in the final text about the agreements reached the necessity for renewable energy production (ibid.). However, at the same time, it also highlighted the acceptability of low-emission energy, and this means the acceptance of natural gas, and thus a fossil fuel. This inconsistency remained unexplained. But according to the same UNFCCC, the Emission Gap Report 2022—released by UNEP just before COP27, held in Sharm el-Sheikh (Egypt)—painted “a bleak picture, finding that without rapid societal transformation [sic], there is no credible pathway to a 1.5C future. For each fraction of a degree that temperatures rise, storms, droughts and other extreme weather events become more severe”; for this reason, COP 26 failed seriously in this respect (ibid.).

COP27, Held in Sharm el-Sheikh, 2022

To arrive at a 1.5°C future, all scientific evidence indicates that we need fossil-free production of energy by 2050. To achieve this, global emissions must be reduced by 50 percent already by 2030, thus within seven years. But as the Environment Editor of the Guardian, Damian Carrington, explained: “record levels of pollution are still being pumped into the atmosphere … the 1.5C goal may not yet be physically impossible to achieve, but COP27 has shown it is politically impossible” (emphasis added). He continues,

Can the UN climate talks deliver this at speed? It does not look that way. It is too easy for the fossil fuel states to hold the consensus-based negotiations to ransom, threatening to blow up the whole thing if their black gold is so much as mentioned by name. There were more fossil fuel lobbyists at COP27 than delegates from the Pacific islands, which their industry is pushing below the waves … The global oil and gas industry has raked in an average equivalent of $1tn a year in unearned profits for the last 50 years by exploiting a natural resource that belongs to citizens. Imagine redirecting that financial firepower at decarbonising the world. (Carrington 2022)

We see in this quotation a certain manifestation of the reciprocity of processes in and between the four dimensions referred to above. To whom, for example, belong the treasures of the Earth, and how should they be managed on behalf of the whole of Earth's population? Important in COP27 in contrast to the previous meeting is the agreement by nearly two hundred countries that a fund for loss and damage, which would pay out to rescue and rebuild the physical and societal infrastructure of countries ravaged by extreme weather events, should be set up within a year (Harvey 2022). This agreement was very much welcomed by Pakistan, for instance (Gul 2022). But no agreement was made on how much money should be paid in, by whom, and on what basis. Fiona Harvey (ibid.) continues that “A key aim for the European Union at the talks was to ensure that countries classed as developing in 1992 when the UNFCCC was signed—and thus given no obligations to act on emissions or provide funds to help others—are also considered potential donors. These could include China, Saudi Arabia, other Gulf States, and Russia.” But their enthusiasm to participate was far from clear. It should be noticed with this in mind that the World Bank also came under increasing fire at COP27 from countries that believe it is failing on climate finance. Nor can the International Monetary Fund or the World Trade Organization adequately face twenty-first-century issues (Harvey et al. 2022).

COP28, to Be Held in Dubai, 2023

What can happen within a year? COP28 will be held in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Already in the beginning of 2022 from the side of the UAE explained is that Dubai Expo City will serve as the venue of this global UN meeting. It continues with the remark that:

there can be no better location to host COP28 than Dubai Expo City, as both COP28 and Expo 2020 Dubai have some goals in common: achieving sustainability and encouraging global cooperation to address global issues … The UNFCCC made this decision after UAE received unanimous support from the Asia-Pacific group at COP26 in Glascow, Scotland in 2021 … The position of the UAE as the host for COP28 reflects the government's effort to transform the economy into one that is fueled by clean [sic] and renewable energy sources along with technological advancements and climate-smart solutions. The conference will primarily focus [sic] on the economic case for inclusive climate action. (Dubai Digital Interactive 2022)

According to the UNFCCC's own texts, these are apparently conditions for realizing the “societal transformation” it advocates (UNFCCC 2022). How can its employees claim this with sincerity? The answer may be, that their concept of ‘societal transformation’ is not anchored in a transparent theoretical construction. With their use of this concept as an empty shell it will be impossible to substantiate the indispensable ‘societal transformation’. As we can conclude, the “energy lobby” of hundreds fossil fuel representatives in COP26 and also COP27, as well as many others there to prevent rather than promote progress and action (see McGuire 2022) proved very successful. Also the Government of Egypt as host of COP27 could afford to make it difficult for NGOs and other representatives of civil society to participate in the conference of Sharm el-Sheikh (UN 2022). This provided implicit support for preventing the needed progress. Apparently, this all contributed to convince the UNFCCC to view Dubai as an attractive location for COP28.

The connection between COP26 and COP27

Two relevant characteristics have COP26 and COP27 in common: (1) the accepting of clean fossil fuels and (2) the placing of an isolated emphasis on the economic and financial aspects of the energy transition. This may be precisely in the interests of the UAE. David Kirkpatrick and colleagues from the New York Times interviewed Maire Martini from Brazil, a researcher with Transparency International, which campaigns against corruption. She explained that

rich Russians, though, have reasons other than geopolitics to buy property in Dubai. The sheikhs who ruled the city-state have long sought to attract business by allowing a high degree of secrecy about asset ownership and by sharing only limited information with other jurisdictions. Dubai has been a key player in most of the big corruption or money-laundering schemes in recent years, citing recent scandals involving Russian businessmen, the daughter of Angola's former president, top Namibian fishing regulators and South Africa's Gupta family. Citing such failings, the Financial Action Task Force, an influential money-laundering watchdog, on Friday put the United Arab Emirates on its “gray” list. (Kirkpatrick et al. 2022)

Dubai is a paradise of the neoliberal imagination, including private planes and huge yachts, removed from any responsibility for people and nature. And yet there can be no better location for COP28, according to UNFCCC?

Continuing the One-Dimensional Economic Approach

The COPs thus far could not do so, but the unlawful Russian invasion of Ukraine caused fundamental changes in energy production, with much more attention paid to renewable energy (Jolly 2022). According to the very influential International Energy Agency (IEA)—an advisor for many governments participating in COP27—this meant for the first time that government policies would lead to demand for polluting fossil fuels peaking this decade. The IEA has presented seven key principles for implementing net zero by 2050. Its director Fatih Birol explains that

Despite the current gap between rhetoric and reality on emissions our Roadmap shows, that there are still pathways, to reach net zero by 2050 … [it is possible] to promote secure and affordable energy supplies to foster economic growth … transforming our energy systems [in this way] is also a huge opportunity for our economies, with the potential to create millions of new jobs and boost economic growth. Another guiding principle of the Roadmap is that energy transitions must be fair and inclusive, leaving nobody behind. The transition to net zero is for and about people. (IEA 2022a)

On the basis of their calculations, however, the IEA concludes that “Moreover, even if successfully fulfilled, the pledges to date would still leave around 22 billion tonnes of SO2 emissions worldwide in 2050. The continuation of that trend would be consistent with a temperature rise in 2100 of around 2.1° C” (IEA 2022b). The resulting human impacts, outcomes of current political unwillingness, would be indescribable.

There are at least four issues here, which are also related to the traditional one-dimensional economic approach, which is in accordance with the IEA's presentation. The first is that the aim of “net zero by 2050” will be by definition impossible if the USA and China are unable to jointly play a coordinating and stimulating role in the global transformation process. This immediately concerns the sociopolitical and legal dimension, the most important dimension for creating conditions to cope with climate changes (van der Maesen and Nijhuis 2021:328). COP26 and COP27 failed in this respect: the expectations for COP28 are even more dire. Due also to Russian politics, as expressed in the invasion of Ukraine, we are in danger of getting further and further away from this collaboration. COP27 sidestepped the war as a fundamental block to any form of cooperation. The second point is made by Bill McGuire, professor emeritus of geophysics and climate. He argues that “the all-encompassing nature of the annual COP climate conference provides one enormous open goal for fossil fuel representatives; an unprecedented opportunity to kettle ministers and heads of state from every corner of the planet, but particularly the majority world, to browbeat them into handing over their untouched fossil fuel reserves for exploitation” (McGuire 2022). This point goes beyond the IEA's presentation. The third point refers to the ambition of the “Arab oil states” to pave the way for megalomanic urban projects in order to become a powerful sociocultural alternative to the European Union. This topic is discussed in the article by Paolo Motta et al. in this issue. The hosts of COP28 have primarily neoliberal, limitless plans that are other than realizing “net zero by 2050.” They must make a huge amount of money from gas and oil to realize their plans, as already presented in August 2022. That is the reason that they are not enthusiastic to contribute to the proposed fund for coping with climate damages in many countries, as agreed at the end of COP27. The fourth point is the divide between the specific topic of emissions causing the increase of temperatures on the planet and the general issue of the meaning of biodiversity for human life on Earth in the future (see below). One reason for this divide may be that in the climate COPs, the issue of the urbanization of the world's population and the increasing “industrial use” of the rural environment—much to the dismay of UN-Habitat—is conspicuously absent. An outcome of ignoring the reciprocity of processes in and between the four main societal dimensions is that we move from bad to worse.

The Current Conspicuous Consumption of the Richest 10 Percent of the Population

Economic growth pur sang directly ignores the unacceptable divide between the richest 10 percent and the rest of the global population. Nor has the theme of economic growth been broached in the light of increasingly obvious constraints imposed by natural ecological systems. No influential discussions were dedicated to both issues in previous COPs. For logical reasons (see also Kirkpatrick et al. 2022) neither topic will really be on the table during COP28 in Dubai under the leadership of Arab fossil fuel producers. And seen in the light of the limitless, conspicuous consumption by wealthy populations, why to stimulate economic growth if the pre-existing wealth can be distributed equitably around the world? This concerns the essence of ‘societal transformation’ of the existing legal constructions which will prevent such a distribution. But in circles of the UN or the World Bank does not exist, as far as we can oversee, such an orientation on this type of transformation. And the contemporary legal constructions are also a conditio sine qua non for the current nature of Dubai and the UAE; the status quo causes the need for economic growth.

There is another reason why this status quo must be broken. Oxfam International published a study more than two years ago, concluding that the richest 1 percent of the world's population have also been responsible for more than twice as much carbon pollution as the 3.1 billion people who make up the poorest half of humanity during a critical twenty-five-year period of unprecedented emissions growth (Oxfam 2020). It is therefore not surprising that “some of the countries with the highest carbon footprints per capita are Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain. These countries have high incomes and high levels of consumption, which leads to more emissions” (Net0 2022). A more recent study by Oxfam concludes that 125 of the richest “billionaires’ investments—with a collective $2.4 trillion stake in 183 companies—give an annual average of 3m tonnes of CO2e per person, which is a million times higher than the average 2.76 tonnes of CO2e for those living in the bottom 90 per cent” (Oxfam 2022). This growth of emissions is an outcome of general economic growth, the profits of which have mainly benefited the richest 10 percent of the population, many of them intrinsically related with the UAE, including Dubai. And yet (or therefore?) these countries are chosen as the best place for COP28.

Confirmed Historic Misleading by ExxonMobil et al.

The one-dimensional approach of the IEA (see above)—especially concerning processes in the socioeconomic and financial dimension—is debatable because the powerful political and cultural interests referred to above are outcomes of processes in the sociopolitical and sociocultural dimensions. A clear example of these interests is offered in a recent study in Science by a Harvard-led team of researchers, namely G. Supran, R. Rahmstorf, and N. Oreskes (2023). According to the introduction in Science:

For decades, some members of the fossil fuel industry tried to convince the public that a causative link between fossil fuel use and climate warming could not be made because the models used to project warming were too uncertain. Supran et al. show that one of those fossil fuel companies, ExxonMobil, had their own internal models that projected warming trajectories consistent with those forecast by the independent academic and government models. What they understood about climate models thus contradicted what they led the public to believe.

The Harvard Gazette wrote of this new analysis that “Research shows that company modeled and predicted global warming with ‘shocking skill and accuracy’ starting in the 1970s” (McCarthy 2021). According to Hiroko Tabuchi (2023), however, “for years, the oil giant publicly cast doubt on climate science, and cautioned against any drastic move away from burning fossil fuels, the main driver of climate change [in line with COP27]. Exxon also ran very expensive public relations program—including ads that ran in The New York Times—emphasizing uncertainties in the scientific research on global warming.”

A greater disregard for societal responsibility in favor of shareholders is hard to imagine. During the year 2022 an expression of this neoliberal disregard was highlighted by the policies of the world's seven biggest oil firms, including Exxon (again), Shell, and British Petroleum. They shared bumper profits of nearly 180 billion dollars in the first nine months of 2022, thanks to the increase of oil prices because of the war in Ukraine (Jolly et al. 2022). A large part of these profits are handed out to shareholders. Ukraine was completely out of the picture, despite the destruction of its cities and infrastructure and the need of its citizens to flee. According to Julia Kollewe, the general secretary of the Trades Union Congress described “the profits as an insult of the millions of working people struggling to get by because of soaring energy bills” (Kollewe 2022). It is not surprising that, for example, Shell boosted biofuel production with a new acquisition in Southeast Asia (Biofuels International 2022). In response to criticism, ExxonMobil's chief executive dismissed calls for a windfall tax on the oil industry and criticized European efforts to cap energy prices. Directly from a neoliberal perspective, he explained: “There has been discussion in the US about our industry returning some of our profits directly to the American people. In fact, that's exactly what we are doing in the form of our quarterly dividend” (Jacobs 2022).

COP15 (on Biodiversity), Held in Montreal, 2022

In December 2022, COP15, or the United Nations Biodiversity Conference, discussed the protection of the biodiversity of our planet in Montreal, cohosted by Canada and China. This led to an agreement titled the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, named after the official host cities in China and Canada (CBC 2022). This was widely welcomed as a positive development. It includes a target known as “30 by 30,” which means a commitment to protecting 30 percent of the planet—both land and sea—for nature by the end of this decade. It has a decent chance of being taken on board by so-called “civil society” in many countries. According to the Guardian,

The concept of national biodiversity plans, with a similar function to the nationally determined contributions in the UN climate process, is also sound. The UN has a key role to play as the steward of environmental politics, but governments take most of the decisions that determine which commitment are fulfilled. … The removal from the final draft of a target of a 5 percent increase in natural ecosystems by 2030 was a missed opportunity. Without specific goals, the danger is that fine intentions will fizzle out. Other problems include the lack of a commitment to tackle consumption patterns, above all in the rich west, which make huge demands on finite resources, as well as producing lager amounts of carbon. (Guardian 2022).

The Guardian also reported that, shamefully and alarmingly, the US was at the talks as an “influencer” rather than a participant, because its Senate refused to ratify the UN convention on biological diversity (ibid.). This summary is of great interest, because it has been argued in various ways that processes related to climate change cannot be decoupled from processes leading to the destruction of biodiversity or from the protection and further recovery of biodiversity.

This argument is forcefully elaborated by David Wallace-Wells, author of The Uninhabitable Earth. His two points are, firstly, that we cannot recover biodiversity only with decarbonization, and secondly, that an increasing destruction of biodiversity will slowly but surely make life on our planet impossible. First of all he argues that COP15, on biodiversity, received only a fraction of the press coverage lavished on COP27. This is partly because due to the Paris Agreement, decarbonization is to be the environmental goal above all others. But this aspect—the decreasing of carbon levels or the ambition of net zero by 2050—will not save the planet. The reason is that under constant conditions (ceteris paribus)—and see the assumptions underlying the work of the IEA (referred to above)—according to Wallace-Wells, “warming is just one of the many ways that human civilization is stripping the planet of its biological complexity. In fact, last December, in a commentary published in Conservation Letters, a group of biologists called climate change a ‘myopic lens’ through which to view the biological decline of the planet and called warming far from ‘the most important horseman of the biodiversity apocalypse’—indeed more of a ‘mule’, powerful but slow” (Wallace-Wells 2022). He also refers to the IPBES, discussed in the editorial of the previous issue of this journal (van der Maesen and Nijhuis 2022). This Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services analyzed the alarmingly accelerated decline of all kinds of animal species since 1970 (UN 2022). Wallace-Wells continues: “what the new generation's climate alarm has produced is a far more widespread understanding that warming risks devastation to humans and human society, not just animals and ecosystems … Even the most ambitious proposals [see COP15] preserving 30 percent of the planet's surface, protecting the Amazon from further deforestation—seem to point to a future defined as much by normalization as by conservation” (Wallace-Wells 2022). The great challenge will be to better understand why and how the undermining of the biodiversity and ecosystems will result in disaster for human life on Earth, and why therefore the core issues of the so-called “climate-COP” and “biodiversity COP” must be intrinsically linked. Furthermore, how both core issues should be related to processes in and between the four main dimensions of societal life. The UN's choice to hold COP28 in Dubai is a very bad sign of things to come.

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