Sustainable production system: eco-development versus sustainable development clément morlat all cha
Sustainable Production System: Eco-development versus Sustainable Development Clément Morlat
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Exergy. Energy, Environment and Sustainable Development
3rd Edition Ibrahim Dincer And Marc A. Rosen (Eds.)
First published 2020 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licenses issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned address:
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The rights of Clément Morlat to be identified as the author of this work have been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019955389
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-78630-332-5
vi Sustainable Production System
Chapter 4. Accounting:
4.1.
4.1.1.
4.1.2.
4.2.
4.2.1.
4.2.2.
4.3.
Chapter 5. Contractualizing:
5.1.
5.1.2.
5.2.
5.2.1.
5.2.2.
5.3.
Chapter 6.
6.1.
6.1.1.
6.2.1.
6.2.2.
Introduction
Since 2012, with the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development “RIO +20”, more strongly than before, the capitalist enterprise is invited to contribute to the achievement of the community’s ecological ambitions. In France, the Direction générale du Trésor (Directorate General of the Treasury) and the Commissariat général au développement durable (General Commission for Sustainable Development) declare in a joint report that the States alone have neither the vocation nor the capacity to assume the financing of the ecological transition (Dron 2013). Regulations, soft law, tax instruments and public financing must accompany the responsible company toward more environmentally sound practices. This role entrusted to the capitalist enterprise is that of a private social institution contributing, beyond the private purposes to which it devotes itself, to serving the general interest (Touraine 2003).
In June 2016, the Agence française de l’environnement et de la maîtrise de l’énergie (French Environment and Energy Control Agency) mentioned the positive effects of a scenario of switching to a “100% renewable” electricity mix (ADEME 2016). By 2050, this technological transition could, according to this report, create 800–900,000 jobs and generate a GDP increase of 3.8–3.9%. Such a scenario involved an investment of 31 billion euros per year, an increase of 7% compared to the investments already planned. The State would have had to bear only 4–5 billion per year, the rest could be provided by private actors. The role of the State would then mainly consist of organizing the consistency between the deployment of public and private investments.
In order to facilitate the organization of this investment flow management, the Dron’s (2013) report proposes extending to public and private institutional investors the social environmental responsibility (SER) framework imposed on certain companies since the New Economic Regulations (NER) Act of 2001. It suggests that the development of socially responsible investment (SRI) should be encouraged so that public and private investments can converge, within a common logic of social responsibility (SR). The purpose of this proposal is to base non-financial evaluation and reporting on understandable criteria of social and environmental utility, and thus to promote the selection of projects eligible for financing
While some aspects of this policy are theoretically appropriate – no one would criticize a desire for consistency in investment approaches – it is not suitably equipped in practice.
Only listed companies are covered by the NER law. And it is on a voluntary basis that these companies determine the SR objectives, and the non-financial reporting procedures by which they fulfill their generic reporting obligations to the community and key players in their market. The exercise of the company’s general interest mission is therefore very free.
On the other hand, while it is true that extending the scope of the SR framework to public and private institutional investors may lead the company to appropriate some of the SR criteria used by these investors (and thus to simplify the analysis of eligibility for financing and its effectiveness), a “mirror” challenge is to prevent this public/private SR commensurability from leading to an alignment of public objectives with those of the company.
Sustainable development policies must integrate market requirements and not seek to be eligible for them, to comply with them. Considering the economic conditions for sustainable development implies a syncretic approach to globalized finance and the very local socioeconomy of territories. It is, therefore necessary to address the point of friction between these two rationalities, which are complementary but whose contemporary expression is carried out in an extremely frontal way, as proven by the French political and economic situation highlighted by the “yellow jackets” crisis that broke out in 2018.
Investment in sustainable development strategies is most often considered from a technico-economic perspective. The focus is on the relationship between investments in “eco-efficient” technology, social conditions of work
and resource supplies, production costs, selling prices of products and the solvency of the actors.
A more socioeconomic approach will integrate this relationship between investment and technological production into a broader field of concern.
The socioeconomic approach will emphasize the importance of a collective capacity to represent the social, economic, and environmental benefits conferred by the choice of one means of production over another, and the sociopolitical propensity to organize the financial conditions favorable to the selection of this means, and therefore of these benefits. In a socioeconomic approach, the evaluation of returns on investments remains essential, but it is inseparable from the consideration of other issues –replacing the financial dimension in a broader field of representations and then recognizing its influence as less exclusive.
Economic actors are subject to solvency constraints specific to their business and situation, while being motivated, on the whole, by a common ambition of the sustainability of the territory whose development they contribute to. These actors take into account the two approaches, socioeconomic and technico-economic, to varying degrees, with each party’s constraints and customs sometimes predisposing them to one rather than the other.
The central issue addressed in this book is the balance of powers of economic representation. Ensuring this balance means, for example, ensuring that the distribution of investment between cleaner production technologies (technico-economic approach) and changes in the relationship to consumption (socioeconomic approach) corresponds to a truly constructed strategy, and not to a conditional, ideological reflex.
A thorough reflection on how to account for value is then needed. The current trend toward consistency between the various international extrafinancial frameworks, whether generic or sectoral, applicable to companies is accompanied, at the EU level, by their approximation of private accounting. This approximation is presented as a way to institutionalize a new way of observing and investing. The national accounts and public statistics systems are also under revision. In particular, they will incorporate the guidelines of a framework of post-2015 sustainable development goals (SDG) defined by the UN.
In many respects, this coevolution between national accounts, statistics and SDG is favorable to the evaluation of public and private coordination. The reading grid constituted by these goals allows an analysis that is at the same time global, adapted to biosphere issues, and locally differentiated according to the plural modes of representation of what can be the success of a sustainable development policy. Private actors will be able to have an integrated vision of their SER action and profitability. The State could make the SDGs coincide with the new indicators of wealth defined in 2015 by the Eva Sas1 law (in an almost total media silence) and put these goals and indicators in relation to the creation of added value. This would make it easier to understand the decoupling between GDP growth, and environmental and social groups degradation.
These new indicators of wealth, inspired by the Commission sur la mesure des performances économiques et du progrès social (Commission on measurement of economic performance and social progress) (Stiglitz et al 2009), then proposed by the Comité Economique Social et Environnemental (Economic, Social and Environmental Commitee – CESE) and France Stratégie (French socio-economic think task), describe the research effort, employment rate, debt, disability-free life expectancy, income inequality, poverty, life satisfaction, school dropout, soil artificialization and carbon footprint. They are again mobilized by the Philippe government at the end of February 2019 (still in media silence) to give a new orientation to the political evaluation2. They offer the analyst the possibility of a polychromatic reading of progress, complementary to that of GDP and debt, monochromatic, “in black and white”. It may also be surprising that they have not been mobilized to structure paths of contribution to the Great National Debate, or its restitution.
But let us return to the heart of the matter: the economic modalities of collective survival in what is now known as the Anthropocene
1 Law No. 2015-411 of April 13, 2015 published in the Official Gazette No. 0087 of 14 April 2015, the sole article of which states that “the Government shall submit annually to Parliament, on the first Tuesday in October, a report presenting the evolution, over the past years, of new indicators of wealth, such as inequality indicators, quality of life and sustainability, as well as a qualitative or quantitative assessment of the impact of the main reforms undertaken in the previous and current year and those planned for the following year (...) in relation to these indicators and the development of gross domestic product.”
To reduce the environmental impacts of the economy, it is often considered, as we have mentioned, to finance the adoption of more sustainable production technologies: this is the technico-economic approach. In a strictly financial analysis, returns are then clearly identifiable, associated with the physical productive apparatus that is the property of an entity.
We have also introduced a socioeconomic approach. And it is also necessary to finance socioeconomic engineering schemes to support cooperation through which the actors of a territory can create, outside specific financing, by the effect of their self-organization, conditions favorable to the diffusion of technological innovations or any other mode of bifurcation toward a more sustainable society.
Technological change is indeed one of several paths – certainly the most compatible with investors’ current practices but not necessarily the most efficient.
Reversing the perspective in this way, by considering the opportunity to invest in territorial socioeconomic engineering to bring out productive choices, implies that we should no longer limit ourselves to representing profitability and sustainability separately, nor to orient institutional financing toward one or other of the territory’s activities. The aim is to represent and coordinate, from the territorial level, a set of activities whose interactions have positive effects both in terms of sustainability and solvency.
In other words, it is a question of giving rise to a real mesoeconomic analysis of territorial development.
The SER indicators would then be used as a basis for deliberations, during which the actors would express their judgments concerning the interactions between activities within the territorial system, discuss together ways of strengthening the effects deemed desirable, and study on this basis innovative options for access to financial capital. These indicators would also be used during contractualizations to determine the precise and personalized terms and conditions of the contributions (in cash, organization and work) granted by each of the territory’s actors, including the institutional investor.
These two approaches complement each other. They imply that the private sector, the community and investors can escape from market reaction behavior in order to adopt a position of expertise and anticipation. The technico-economic approach contributes to the maturation of local markets,
xii Sustainable Production System
i.e. their renewal from within due to a change in the representations of the value generated by the increased consideration of environmental performance. A spread of the socioeconomic approach would lead to the opening up of a new economic area of valorization, outside the market, i.e. political, through coordination at territorial level. This would, moreover, without this being its central ambition, be favorable to the structuring of local markets and to the propensity of actors to adopt technical and economic innovations.
Coupling these two approaches would thus create the opportunity for a virtuous circle for an acceleration of the transition to more sustainable development. But if the alignment of public and private investment – which, as we have mentioned, now constitutes the core of French sustainable development policy – is to accompany the coupling of these two approaches, it is desirable that they can be apprehended with the same finesse and with comparable ease.
SER practices are already relatively suitable for public or private institutional investment in direct support for more environmentally sustainable technologies. Extra-financial reporting, activity reporting and financial statements allow a company to communicate fairly easily how the technological resources it mobilizes are consistent with its SR ambition. The investor can then choose to support this company according to the consistency of this ambition with its own objectives. A fairly clear link can thus be established between the indicators used by the investor to calibrate its contribution, and the indicators used by the beneficiary organization to reflect the virtuous nature of its production practice.
On the other hand, current SR practices are not very appropriate to support the dynamics of the emergence and functioning of multi-actor social innovations. The link between the indicators mobilized by the investor to calibrate its contribution, the indicators mobilized during the deliberations carried out by a multi-actor territorial organization and the indicators mobilized individually by each of the actors is rather weak. The ability to guide, calibrate, monitor and evaluate investments in a group activity is therefore currently weaker than in the case of direct support for technological change.
We might be tempted to argue that this gap is due to a difference in the ability to assess returns on investment: during a technological investment,
there is most often an institutional overlap between ownership of the production apparatus and responsibility for achieving SR objectives. That would not be inaccurate, but a bit quick. Once documented in terms of SR objectives, budgeted and contracted, a cooperation is legally embodied on a territorial scale. Its support by the institutional investor is therefore carried out according to very traditional methods.
It is well in advance that the limit is located. While the current accounting and SER systems can help to channel institutional investment – public or private – into an already established territorial cooperation structure, they are currently of no use when it comes to supporting its emergence and organization.
An investor who would like to encourage the emergence and organization of a territorial cooperation structure can finance mechanisms aimed at improving communication between territorial actors. Innovative socioeconomic engineering would, for example, strengthen the participation of these actors in the deliberations and improve these deliberation practices. The investor would thus contribute to creating a local heritage of mutual understanding that could encourage concerted specialization and innovation, thus increasing the potential for economic, ecological and social sustainability.
However, it is difficult for an institutional investor to invest in a potential when no quantified, financialized and contractualized reading of the future of its investment is available. Is it a diffusion of the notion of accounting assets to all spheres of the economy, including the public sphere, i.e. a need for certainty in the identification of future benefits – a certainty that, in accounting, is closely linked to the legal concept of ownership?
In any case, a “too indirect” relationship between investors and multiactor mechanisms that is not able to account for industrial production hinders the financing of socioeconomic innovation. This innovation is not always carried out by entities that have the very particular institutional basis conferred by the ownership of the means of production, which is accompanied by the ability – or at least the legitimacy – to document the effects of this production. For this reason, the link between the indicators used by the institutional investor to calibrate its contribution, the indicators used by multi-actor organizations during territorial deliberations and the indicators used by the actors who contribute to them is now too weak.
xiv Sustainable Production System
The Dynamic Modeling of Cost Systems (DMCS) approach – the principles of which are set out in this book – is intended to help institutional investors, both public and private, but also local inhabitants, associations, politicians and other actors, to encourage the emergence of local coordination. Its ambition is to provide an analytical grid that each of them can use to collectively renew representations of what coherence in investment is.
This approach is based on a breakdown of the territorial economy, which can be represented by the interweaving of information processing cycles, each characterized by three positions: deliberation, contractualization and valuation. These three-position cycles are incorporated into other cycles (ecosystem, social, political, institutional, etc.) whose representation sometimes implies that the micro-, meso- and macroeconomic levels are no longer separated.
In this “space” of representation, the relationships between economic costs used as arguments in political deliberations, prices of market or territorial contracts and values recorded in private and public accounts are changing. These representations are nourished by communication between actors. They are evolutionary and dynamic. And because of this dynamism, a clear formalism must make it possible to avoid any confusion between the plural times of investment: its past (the origin of the methods and tools that motivate it), its future (what is expected of it) and its present (the way it is implemented).
These conditions are first and foremost presented in this book as necessary for scientific rigor. However, since their formulation is intrinsically a proposal to clarify the rules and strengthen the readability of the relationship to what triggers the decision to invest, these conditions are also a way to avoid opposing wills and cultures head-on, thus freeing the ecological and social transition from certain inertia.
Chapter 1 focuses on representations of sustainable development and their influence on the choice of economic valuation tools. In particular, it describes how the currents of the ecological economy and the social economy both imply a systemic understanding of the economic concept of capital. The thesis developed in this chapter is that any attempt to analyze the relationships between wealth, the ecological and social impacts of production is intrinsically biased by distortions at the heart of the valuation process proposed by the neoclassical economic theory.
Chapter 2 suggests reducing the distortion of economic representations attached to neoclassical analysis by addressing ecological and social functions in an intrinsic way, directly at the territorial level. In particular, it is highlighted in this chapter that the methodology of collective understanding of these territorial functions is not only useful on an ad hoc basis and limited to the issues at stake in a particular governance situation. The memory of a coordination process remains within the social group. It helps to shape its identity, transforms views of economic performance and nurtures a territorial capacity to build on past experiences.
Chapter 3 proposes socioeconomic engineering tools whose mobilization is favorable to an increase in the capacity of actors to co-produce, implement and enhance a territorial development scenario. Deliberative practices, in physical meetings and with the support of digital tools, make it possible to qualify, through ad hoc and evolving indicators, the conditions for returning to a situation of sustainable functioning of ecological, technical and social systems. Such practices minimize some of the spatial, temporal and dimensional distortions inherent in neoclassical assessments. They improve the quality of economic information.
Chapter 4 is dedicated to accounting, in its broadest sense, that is, to everything that makes it possible to account for an activity and its effects. This includes its interactions with other activities, and the ecological, social and economic results of these interactions. This involves, first of all, strengthening the quality of the link between economic information resulting from the local deliberative life of a territory, and financial information subject to less localized fields of constraints (an example concerning the “green value” of buildings will be presented). Accounting innovations must lead, on the one hand, to no longer substitute the various capital assets (ecological, human and financial, in particular) considered by the sustainable development economy for each other, and, on the other hand, to jointly redesign profit formation and the measurement of national wealth.
Chapter 5 involves contractual practice – in both socio-political and market approaches – of what a contract can be. Negotiation prior to contractualization may lead to the inclusion in the contract clauses of performance objectives relating to the sustainability of the development of the territory. Consequently, placing contractualization in new dimensions, temporalities and scales of analysis – which is encouraged by territorial deliberation – can renew the interpretation of monetary information
associated with the costs of contract performance and change the willingness to invest (an example concerning the recycling of construction materials will be presented). More generally, the monetary amount associated with the execution of a contract is only informative in the light of the limited and detailed view that is taken, at the time of the transaction, of the territorial effects of this execution.
Chapter 6, by describing the dynamic modeling of cost systems approach, proposes a new way of considering the relationships between micro- and macroeconomic analyses. The representations used during multi-actor contract on territorial issues, and those used to structure accounting representations of value, are in co-evolution. In other words, the coordination of a multitude of activities considered at the microlevel, whose social, ecological and economic effects can be taken into account (the example of the fourth chapter), can motivate mesoeconomic restructuring, whose social, ecological and economic determinants can be contracted (the example of Chapter 5). Making this phenomenon of micro–meso emergence visible implies accepting the relativity of cost perception according to the modes and levels of construction and interpretation of economic information. Socioeconomic innovations (multi-criteria multi-actor analysis) must therefore be brought into dialogue with traditional practices (aggregation of added values, in particular). Moreover, since investing in socioeconomic engineering promotes sustainable and economically advantageous territorial coordination, these investments should be considered as productive investments. Such openness in terms of political economy allows a new approach to the governance of the commons. However, this last chapter insists on the fact that no theoretical politico-economic model can ever guarantee a development compatible with a bioclimatic reality that is sustainable for human societies.
I would like to thank Paulina for her patience, the International Centre for Research in Ecological Economics, Eco-Innovation and Tool Development for Sustainability (REEDS), Sylvie Faucheux and Kleber PintoSilva – editor and co-editor of my thesis – the Research Network on Innovation (RNI), the Institut de Recherche et d’innovation du Centre Pompidou (IRI), ePLANETe.Blue, the Centre lillois d'études et de recherches sociologiques et économiques (Clersé), as well as the ISTE Group.
1
Economics and Imbalances
1.1. Capturing power
The founding definition by Brundtland et al. (1987) – “Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” – emphasizes the idea of a capacity, which is embedded and renewed over time. One of the fundamental questions raised by the concept of sustainable development is the place of the economy in the renewal of this capacity over time.
On its website, INSEE, the French national statistics office, offers another definition of sustainable development, which emerged from the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992: “Economically efficient, socially fair and ecologically sustainable development.” What meaning should be given to this definition? Is sustainable development an adaptation to the margin of economic development? Is it a question of adding social equity and ecological sustainability to the list of criteria that, in the history of thought, came to qualify economic development1? Or is it a question of rethinking development itself?
An animal species develops; we speak of vegetative development for plants; a city can also be considered as being in development, or – in a
1 Flipo (2015) distinguishes criteria relating to the specialization of activities (List 1841), forms of exchange (Hildebrand 1848), production (ownership) relationships (Marx 1876), the length of the path between producer and consumer (Schmoller 1884), the quantity of consumption per capita (Rostow 1957), GNP growth (Solow 1972), or the parity of the private rate and the social rate (North 1976).
2 Sustainable Production System
figurative sense – a social organization, such as a sect. But when the term development is used without a qualifier, it most often refers to economic development.
The epistemology relating to a sustainable development economy needs to be clarified. A possible beginning point is to look at the origins of this economic approach. Several elements that characterize the concept of sustainable development were already present at the heart of another concept –eco-development. Some still consider the latter as the most suitable reference for analyzing the sustainability of relations between social, ecological and economic aspects.
1.1.1. From eco-development to sustainable development
1.1.1.1. A change in reference frame
The idea of eco-development was proposed by Maurice Strong at the Stockholm Conference2 in 1972. For Ignacy Sachs, who later made the concept popular, this eco-development “implies a hierarchy of objectives: first the social issues, then the environment, and finally only the search for economic viability, without which nothing is possible. Growth must not become a primary goal, but must remain an instrument at the service of solidarity between present and future generations” (Sachs 2002, p. 7). Ecological integrity is thus considered necessary to achieve the goal of social well-being. And economic viability – an essential condition for development –remains a means and must be within the physical limits of the biosphere.
This anchorage of development within the physical limits of the world implies a temporal anchorage. The ecosystem – its viability and its time for renewal – would become the planner’s paradigm. Human activities would adapt, “the time horizon would be calculated in decades and even centuries” (Sachs 1988, p. 40).
This adaptation would not be to the detriment of the populations. Ecodevelopment involves a certain level of economic, environmental and social policy planning to ensure that human beings are given a central place.
2 United Nations Conference on Development and the Environment held from June 5 to 16 1972, 15 years before the Brundtland Report and the first formulation of the concept of sustainable development.
Figure 1.1. Systemic approach to eco-development (Sachs 1978, p. 22)
For Diemer (2013), thinking of eco-development means “starting by setting clear objectives for food, housing, access to care and education, linking them to social groups and ensuring that the necessary production is done in harmony with the environment”.
An acceptable level of social homogeneity
Fair distribution of income
Social
Economic
Full employment or job security providing an acceptable standard of living
Equitable access to natural resources
Balanced development of the different sectors of the economy
Food security
The ability to constantly modernize the production equipment
A sufficient degree of autonomy in scientific and technological research
Integration into the national market while respecting national sovereignty
Ecological Protection of the renewal capacities of natural assets
Control of the limits on the use of non-renewable resources
Cultural Change in continuity (balance between respect for traditions and innovation)
4 Sustainable Production System
The possibility of designing a national program independently: personal autonomy, endogeneity (rather than blind trust in foreign models), self-confidence combined with openness to the world
Balancing rural and urban development (reversing trends that favor the allocation of public funds to urban areas)
Improving urban landscapes
Territorial
Fight against regional disparities
Implementation of environmentally sound development strategies for environmentally sensitive areas
Table 1.1. The five criteria of eco-development (Sachs 1997, pp. 84–85; Berr 2013)
Let us return to the concept of sustainable development. Its most wellknown representation, the interface of the three “spheres” – or “pillars” –proposed in Rio in 1992, shows the relations between the economic, ecological and social spheres in a very specific way – almost orthogonal to what eco-development suggests. While the two approaches can be described as systemic, the interface proposed in Rio places the three fields at the same level of challenge and means, while eco-development ranks them into interrelated, interlocking levels, distinguishing demand (social), supply (economic) and environmental quality.
Figure 1.2. Interfaced representation of the three “pillar” domains of sustainable development
The criteria and objectives of eco-development are also reminiscent of the seventeen global sustainable development goals (SDG) that replaced the eight millennium development goals (MDG) adopted by UNDP in 20003.
Table 1.2. The seventeen sustainable development goals (UN 2015)
The proximity of these two sets of criteria, which are separated by 20 years, is striking. Some eco-development criteria are more assertive regarding the means to be implemented (balance in innovation and tradition, possibility of designing a national program independently, etc.). However, identifying what fundamentally distinguishes them from the SDGs is not easy if we simply look at these two sets of criteria statically. The history of the propagation of the two concepts to which they are associated facilitates the understanding of phenomena that led to the installation of one at the expense of the other.
3 This replacement took place on September 25, 2015, at a United Nations Summit held at United Nations Headquarters in New York from September 25 to 27 in the form of a High-level Plenary Meeting of the General Assembly to adopt the post-2015 development programme.
1.1.1.2.
Spaces for the propagation of concepts
In October 1974, a symposium of experts from UNEP4 and UNCTAD5 met in Cocoyoc, Mexico, following the work initiated in Stockholm two years earlier. It dealt with the organization of resource use, the environment and development, in an approach strongly influenced by the logic of ecodevelopment.
The Cocoyoc final declaration calls for combating underdevelopment by stopping the overdevelopment of the rich, encouraging developing countries to build on their own strengths in order to gain self-confidence and learn to no longer be dependent on rich countries. In response, United States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger urged6 UNEP to remain focused on the issue of clean-up (Sachs 2007, p. 264). The eco-development project will then gradually be replaced at the forefront of the world political scene by the concept of sustainable development.
For Stengers (1989, pp. 21–22) “The propagation, or attempted propagation, of concepts does not take place in an indifferent, homogeneous space, but in landscapes structured by issues well known to the actors of these operations (...). Some of the issues that activate propagation operations are circumstantial, linked for example to technical, industrial or social problems. Others are more closely linked to the interests of prestige and authority attached to the scientific approaches themselves. Among the latter, we can identify two (...) that we will call ‘intensification’ and ‘capture’.”
The political exclusion of the concept of eco-development – i.e. the interruption of its spread – has not taken place in a “space” of indifferent influences and representations. It was not mainly circumstantial issues that came into play – the proximity of the criteria and objectives of ecodevelopment and sustainable development testifies to this. If the circumstances had been radically different between the emergence of the first
4 United Nations Environment and Development Plan.
5 United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, a subsidiary body of the United Nations General Assembly.
6 “What is this statement from Cocoyoc? Another such story and we will have to review our attitude towards the United Nations Environment Programme, whose mission is to deal with pollution clean-up.” Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State of the United States of America. Remarks reported by Sachs (2007, p. 264).
and the advent of the second, how would such similar environmental, economic and social criteria have been used to describe these two concepts?
Intensification and capture issues, as defined by Stengers (1989), were decisive. According to Berr (2013), it was Kissinger’s intervention, combined with the advent of neoliberalism, that led to the marginalization of the ecodevelopment project. For Diemer (2013), “eco-development, socially inclusive and respectful of the environment, is hardly compatible with the economic context of the 1990s, marked by the return of liberal theses, of which the Washington consensus is an emanation”.
The concept of eco-development provides a precise methodological answer to the fundamental question mentioned above – is sustainable development a renewal of economic development or a development giving way to a new economy? Its capture by global economic governance limits the space of possibilities for the propagation of its “successor”: neoliberal influence strongly contributed to the marginalization of eco-development, how could it be foreign to the propagation of sustainable development?
It is precisely to the exploration of this problem that this book is dedicated. The influence of economic representations on representations of other levels of reality, as well as on actions that can be taken to make these realities more sustainable, is decisive.
Let us then take an interest in neoliberal theses and the economic representations they convey. The application of these theses is supported by the mathematical formalisms of neoclassical economics (Denison 1967), one of the cornerstones of which is the logic of global factor productivity (Stiglitz 1974; Dasgupta and Heal 1979).
The central idea of such “global productivity” is that the value of economic production can be described as the joint mobilization of capital (financial and manufacturing), human labor and raw materials. This “global productivity” is embodied in particular by Stiglitz’s model (1974), which describes by a Cobb-Douglas equation – Q = La Kb Eg – the relationship between production (Q), labor “factor” (L), capital “factor” (K) and environment “factor” (E). The “partial elasticities” α, β, γ of production with respect to these three factors indicate the respective share of each of these factors in the product.
This approach leads to the possibility of at least partial substitutability of factors of production. Following this reasoning leads to the conclusion that since there is elasticity7 within a production, the lower availability of one factor can, to a certain extent, be compensated by a more substantial mobilization of another factor.
From the point of view of industrial production in a neoliberal economy, money can indeed buy machines, as well as paid working time and raw materials from the environment. But can this logic of substitutability be extended beyond the strict point of view of the industrial production firm?
The interfaced representation of sustainable development does not preclude the use of the global productivity model of production factors. On the one hand, ecology and economy together allow sustainability; on the other hand, environment and capital together allow economic production. A confusion of the representation spaces can quickly occur! Yet precisely in the space of representation of the value of industrial production in a neoliberal economy, social systems exist only with regard to the human work they provide, while ecosystems are assimilated to an environment that is only a stock of raw materials.
In any case, neoclassical economists answer in the affirmative –substituting is possible – they disseminate in particular the theories of compensation and the internalization of externalities.
The theory of compensation (Hartwick 1977) assumes that it is possible to ensure the ecological sustainability of development by maintaining economic savings above the depreciation of “natural capital” and by reinvesting the savings in the reformation of this capital (in order to “repair” the environmental impacts of economic activities).
The theory of the internalization of externalities proposes that nuisances and pollution – negative external effects of the economy, or “negative externalities” – should be associated with a price that allows them to be taken into account and thus controlled. This would be taken into account either through State intervention, through taxation (license fees), in order to bridge the gap between the social cost (cost of pollution and nuisances for society) and the private cost (cost for companies of switching to a less polluting mode of production (Pigou 1920)), or, without direct State intervention, through
7 Variation in percentage of a quantity, following a 1% variation of another quantity.
negotiation with a view to market compensation between emitters and victims of pollution (Coase 1960).
During the Rio Declaration in 1992, the very one that saw the emergence of the three “pillars” associated with the concept of sustainable development and their interfaced representation, 27 principles were set out to clarify this concept and put it into action.
Among them, the principle of integration8 emphasizes that environmental protection must be an integral part of the development process. Another principle, the 13th one, specifies one of the modalities of this integration by providing details on legislation relating to pollution liability and compensation methods for local and international victims of such pollution. It paves the way for the operationalization of the polluter pays principle9 , already adopted by the OECD in the early 1970s, and which has its direct origin in the neoclassical theory of internalization of externalities.
The 11th principle of this declaration argues that the effectiveness of local legislative measures must allow for the adaptability of standards to production contexts that may vary from one State to another. This is certainly a measure of equity linked to the social and environmental costs of production. But it is also a question, which is explained by the following principle10, of maintaining free trade in a system likely to generate economic growth while combating environmental degradation.
8 PRINCIPLE 4: “In order to achieve sustainable development, environment protection shall constitute an integral part of the development process and cannot be considered in isolation from it.”
PLANET EARTH SUMMIT. United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. June 3–14, 1992.
9 PRINCIPLE 16: “National authorities should endeavor to promote the internalization of environmental costs and the use of economic instruments, taking into account the approach that the polluter should, in principle, bear the cost of pollution, with due regard to the public interest and without distorting international trade and investment.”
PLANET EARTH SUMMIT. United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. June 3–14, 1992.
10 PRINCIPLE 12: “States should co-operate to promote a supportive and open international economic system that would lead to economic growth and sustainable development in all countries, to better address the problems of environmental degradation. Trade policy measures for environmental purposes should not constitute a means of arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination or a disguised restriction on international trade. Unilateral actions to deal with environmental challenges outside
10 Sustainable Production System
According to Damian and Graz (2001), “The Rio Conference is in line with the ‘Washington Consensus’. (...) The doctrine of extrovert development is then extended to the protection of the environment and the promotion of sustainable development through international trade and trade liberalization.”
All 27 principles that make up this declaration can lead to a more nuanced reading. The 10th principle – known as participation11 – states, for example, that “the best way to deal with environmental issues is to ensure the participation of all concerned citizens at the appropriate level (...)”, by facilitating their access to information and the decision-making process.
However, it is undeniable that bringing some of these principles closer together, as we have just done, reveals contradictory injunctions. How can we integrate economics and environmental protection by internalizing externalities and limiting regulatory barriers to free trade, while putting citizens at the heart of decisions?
Such a structuring of the concept of sustainable development leads to many operational biases, particularly when it comes to applying the 15th principle – the so-called precautionary principle12. If the lack of scientific certainty should not lead to stagnation, but to the implementation of proportionate measures to protect against potential damage to the environment – as this principle indicates – there is no reason why an economic and political capture similar to the one that stopped the spread of eco-development should not have any influence on the determination of the proportionality of these measures.
1.1.2. Interest and limits of the decoupling concept
1.1.2.1. Absolute necessity and intersubjectivity
The concept of decoupling is often proposed as a reference point for the analysis of sustainable development. “Decoupling indicators help decisionthe jurisdiction of the importing country should be avoided. Environmental measures addressing transboundary or global environmental problems, should, as far as possible, be based on an international consensus.” PLANET EARTH SUMMIT. United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. June 3–14, 1992.
11 It appears, before Rio, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
12 The origins of which are attributed to Jonas (1979).
makers to better understand how trends in two different spheres intersect” (Stevens 2006). Most often, these indicators describe the relationship between the economy and the environment. “They are based on the economic concept of elasticity and express the relationship between two growth rates, that of household waste and that of household consumption, for example” (Boulanger 2004).
This approach to decoupling, useful when confined to a neoclassical practice of economics, has major limitations when it comes to addressing the conditions for maintaining human activities in the Anthropocene era more generally.
In an industrial and neoliberal representation, the search for decoupling is part of the neoclassical logic of a linear relationship between technological investments, environmental performance and profitability. Some extend this logic to the public economy and consider, for example, that it is necessary to achieve “optimality” between the market price13 of CO2 and the costs to society, while subsidizing R&D for cleaner technologies (Nordhaus et al 1973; Nordhaus 2011).
What is described here is an attempt to provide public support for the emergence of a particular mode of industrial production in a sector subject to an attempt at market regulation favorable to this mode of production. Is this approach useful? Yes, of course. Would its generalization to all polluting activities be sufficient to help anchor the economy in an “absolute decoupling” between wealth production and the viability of the global ecosystem?
By rephrasing this question in a different way: will tomorrow’s technologies be less polluting, and will the market encourage the reduction of CO2 emissions today? Will it reduce these emissions and free us from the realities of their physical consequences, particularly climate change? For some economists, nothing is less certain! Pottier (2016) shows, for example, that Nordhaus’ approach inevitably leads to considering an economic “optimal” global warming of 3.5° in 2100, which is not at all compatible with the recommendations of IPCC researchers.
13 The CO2 market is considered by neoclassical economists as an instrument for internalizing the external effect of CO2 emissions.
More generally, in the context of the Anthropocene, decoupling is not only an absolute necessity. It must be intrinsically absolute. The pressures generated by human activities on natural systems must not decrease in a way that is relative to economic growth. They must decrease in absolute terms, enough to ensure the viability of the global ecosystem.
Avoiding this constraint, whether through straightforward political choice or through economic instruments for legitimizing political choices, means allowing the number and/or production of economic units to increase faster than the environmental impacts generated by each would decrease. This would generate an ecological intensity of the economy – pressure on natural systems due to economic activities – decreasing per unit of added value produced, but increasing in absolute terms14
Sachs (1976) argues that “there is no justification for unlimited technological optimism that society always finds a technical response to economic, social or energy problems”. Costanza et al. (1991, p. 7) consider that a high degree of uncertainty about the respective evolution of the trajectories of technological progress, resource availability and ecosystem sustainability dynamics makes such optimism quite irrational15.
For Bourg and Cohn-Bendit (2013), decoupling strategies based on the combination of technological progress and the market economy constitutes “the most important of the shortcomings” According to them, this association “inevitably leads in reality to this increase [in material flows]. Only the association of this progress with a framework for consumption could lead to the opposite result”. They thus introduce a social and political dimension that must be considered when analyzing decoupling.
The issue here is not to debate the framework of consumption, nor the regulation of production – we will come to this – but to specify the approach
14 It is here that the paradox of Jevons (1865) is illustrated. This paradox states that as technological improvements increase the efficiency with which a resource is used, total consumption of that resource may increase rather than decrease.
15 Costanza et al. (1991, p. 7) argue that “it is irrational to rely on the ability of technology to push back resource constraints. If we were mistaken, then the result would be the disastrous and irreversible destruction of our resource base and our civilization itself. We must assume, at least for the present time, that technology will not be able to push back resource constraints. If it is, we will be pleasantly surprised. If it is not, at least we will have achieved a sustainable system”.
for analyzing decoupling. Three points need to be clarified. First of all, it is necessary to qualify the purpose of the envisaged decoupling: what is being described? Then, to validate the relevance of this object, it is important to return to the purpose of the analysis: For what and to whom is the approach useful? Only then can it be possible to determine the operational modalities of this approach: what are the methods and tools used?
Asking the question of what one must describe to study decoupling may at first seem superfluous. We could hastily answer that it is a question of qualifying the impact of the economy on the environment. But by doing this, by qualifying this impact, what do we really do, if not compare a social representation of economic phenomena and a social representation of ecological phenomena?
For Nicolescu (2011), “Reality is not only a social construction, the consensus of a community, an intersubjective agreement. It also has a transsubjective dimension, insofar as a simple experimental fact can ruin the most beautiful scientific theory. By level of Reality, we mean a set of systems invariant to the action of a number of general laws: for example, quantum entities subject to quantum laws, which are in radical rupture with the laws of the macrophysical world.”
Thus addressed, the question of the object to be described is less obvious. When the comparison of two growth rates forms the basis for the decoupling analysis, the scope of the operation – to account for a ratio between two numbers of the respective evolutions of phenomena occurring in two levels of representation of reality – is limited.
A ratio reduces to a single dimension of analysis the instantaneous mathematical transcription of phenomena that are part of specific realities and take place at different times. In addition, the qualification of these phenomena, the assessment of their intrinsic qualities, specific to their universes, is carried out by actors with different subjectivities. Finally, comparing the mathematical transcriptions of these assessments presupposes a comparative scope, even though the distinct acts of assessment do not address the interaction between the phenomena concerned.
Diemer (2014) points out in this regard that in a decoupling analysis, “The economist will propose a method to take into account the effects of economic activity on the environment and thus delimit the field of
