The social and economic challenges of ecological transformation

Most people now recognize the urgent need to take action to meet the challenge of the climate emergency: 64% of those taking part in the largest ever survey of public opinion on the climate emergency (50 countries, 1.2 million responses) believe climate change is an emergency*.

^{*People’s Climate Vote, UNDP, 2021.}

> Reed the introduction.

While there is increasing unanimity about the diagnosis, the same cannot be said for the question of how to implement ecological transformation. The debate is intense between those who maintain that it is possible to sever the link between increasing GDP and greenhouse gas emissions, and those who refuse a view they judge unrealistic and likely to keep us prisoner of present-day models.

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Our societies’ reactions to environmental challenges appear ambivalent, characterized as much by a form of resistance and denial, as by proactive movements to embrace change. Reflecting the varying forms and timescales of these changes, green solutions tend to be heterogenous and unevenly taken up from continent to continent. There appear to be several keys to embedding them durably, and to switching from sector-led approaches to the sweeping transformation demanded by the systemic nature of the climate emergency.

> Read the introduction.