Summary
The first four chapters are summarised in Chapter Five, and so there is no need to repeat what was said there.
The remaining chapters, Six to Ten, have demonstrated that an ecosocial framework can:
• summarise, catalogue and classify key literatures, relevant evidence and recent developments relating to those resources that are socially and naturally interdependent;
• enable us to critique diverse research fields so that we can understand the causes, symptoms and possible solutions to the poverty and deprivations which pertain to those resources;
• allow us to read across those fields, which often remain isolated from one another, suggesting a more integrated agenda that can shape future thinking, research, collaboration, campaigning, lobbying and organising.
The specific task set in Chapter Five was to fill the empty cells in Table 5.2. Are we now in a position to do this? Chapters Six to Ten have been summarised in the tables at or towards the end of each chapter. Imagine that we stack these tables on top of one another vertically. Now let's read down the columns, one by one.
Table C.1 summarises the ‘causes’ column, and we might extrapolate the main points accordingly:
Quantity: widening gaps between income/assets and prices of the relevant services or goods.
Mobility: rising costs and so restricted choice.
Value: disadvantages neglected or pathologised, leading to policy agendas and priorities which further disadvantage.
Control: exclusion from resources and relevant political processes.
Sharing: short-term, anthropocentric selfishness.
Caring: ecological bases of social wealth taken for granted and consequently depleted through excessive demand.
The ‘symptoms’ column is summarised in Table C.2:
Quantity: unmet needs, limited access and increased vulnerabilities.
Mobility: various traps impair opportunities for social participation.
Value: residual assistance; burdens of poverty falling disproportionately on poor people themselves.
Control: dominance of consumerist values emphasising market choice at expense of users’ voices.
Sharing: negative externalities passed on to others.
Caring: persistent social degradation and depreciation of ecological resources.
Finally we come to the ‘solutions’ column in Table C.3:
Quantity: new forms of revenue raising and expenditure; needs of the poorest prioritised.
Mobility: renewed emphasis on social needs.
Value: rights and entitlements to key resources.
Control: democratic and communal forms of participative inclusion in generation and distribution of resources.
Sharing: re-socialisation and regulation of collective social and ecological risks.
Caring: recognition of social and natural interdependencies; integration of ecological imperatives into social institutions and economic practices.
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- Information
- Climate Change and PovertyA New Agenda for Developed Nations, pp. 211 - 220Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2014