In this NERI blog, Professor Mary Murphy, Department of Sociology, Maynooth University presents on an eco-social contract to underpin an all-Ireland model of development.
Find her presentation and video from the 12th Annual NERI Dónal Nevin Lecture that took place on Thursday 5 December 2024 where Professor Murphy was the keynote speaker.
NERI is key to enabling the trade union movement to lead demand for an eco-social contract to underpin an all-Ireland model of development. Economic and social security is needed to facilitate a politically feasible route to multiple transitions over the next decades. Ultimately, we need to systemically transform the economy embedding it to work for an equal society and a sustainable environment.
What is the problem? North and South, inequality needs to be at the heart of debates about climate change. Policy is overly fixated on the market and economic growth, the two welfare regimes, north and south, have to work hard to mitigate inequality, while excessive consumption causes environmental damage. Low pay is a problem in both jurisdictions while gendered male breadwinner models are associated with serious care deficits and significant intersectional inequalities for lone parents, people with disabilities, migrants and older people. While data problems, particularly in Northern Ireland, make comparison difficult, it is clear that both jurisdictions are challenged to meet 2030 interim and 2050 emissions targets.
What is the solution? For both ecological sustainability and social well-being, we need a different political economy, north and south. We need to rebalance the respective roles of state, market and society and replace the central fixation on economic growth with a focus on care, equality and well-being. The twin intertwined goals of ecological sustainability and social equality need to pursued simultaneously, a new eco social settlement can enable social and economic security, this is essential if different transitions are to be politically feasible. This alternative approach has care of people and planet as an effective compass point guiding towards a future that is local, place based and democratic. Such an eco-social contract can be built on five foundational features in an active state that more equally distributes care, time, services, work, income, wealth, power and participation.
- Universal Basic Services, north and south, where the state regulates, plans, funds and monitors a plurality of diverse providers to provide collective services to meet different needs (transport, health, libraries, housing, local ecologies, education, social services).
- Participation Incomes as forms of universal income and/or job guarantees that socially value form of reciprocity including care, ecological and community work.
- Enabling institutions to enhance navigational agency through education, community development, active labour market programmes, and local democratic participation.
- New and alternative forms of revenue, widening the tax base in ways compatible with an ecosocial future, wealth and environmental taxes and employer social insurance.
- Building a public care infrastructure and measuring progress towards care and well-being as an agreed all island focus.
How to proceed. Change happens through the interaction of ideas, interests and institutions. NERI in particular has an ideational role in ensuring trade unions are capacitated with policy and institutional imagination. It is crucial to bring an equality dimension to this work. The immediate focus is ICTU Biennial Delegate Conference in Kilkenny in 2023 mandate for NERI to advance a North South agenda in the Trade Union movement by June 2025. Coalition building is at the heart of the Trade Union movement, whether that is international collaboration, networking across civil and political society, of generational and intersectional organising. Alliances need to be built across production, social reproduction and environmental issues. Crucially, inclusive mobilising can ensure workers feel a ‘sense of belonging’ in the trade union movement. Trade unions have a strong track record of advancing change though local and national institutional mechanisms, Social Dialogue, the LEEF and NESC can be used to advance and frame new understandings. NERI plays a specific role supporting trade union participation in such processes, and should continue its excellent collaboration with higher and further education sectors. NERI also supports strategic participation in Commissions (Low Pay, Housing, CTW, IHREC) and processes in Northern Ireland. The new Just Transition Commission is particularly important. State free spaces for imagining the future are crucial. NERI have much to offer in collaboration with civil society to initiate new processes concerning the future of the Island.
Of course, all this needs to happen inclusively and democratically. The time pressure associated with urgent targets and deadlines for zero emissions is necessarily real. However, in ‘the urgency of now’ we must prioritise the time for deep listening and for utilising different knowledges to build a secure future for all, while also preparing and being ready for that future.
Blog by Professor Mary Murphy, Department of Sociology, Maynooth University