Emerging pathways toward safe and just futures for people and the planet
Editors: Christopher Orr and Katie Kish
Submission of manuscripts: May 3 - July 22, 2021
Description: The COVID-19 crisis has led to many calls for recovery, to rebuild, and to build back better to address the climate crisis. Ecological economists have long emphasized the futility of attempting to address the climate crisis within an outdated growth-oriented economic framework that prioritizes economic activity at the expense of attending to quality and ecological integrity. But the pandemic has exposed vulnerabilities and tensions inherent in established political and economic systems. Existing vulnerabilities and inequalities have exacerbated challenges for health and wellbeing, community livelihoods, and efforts to achieve ecological stability and integrity. Moreover, tensions have revealed how deeply interconnected social, economic, and environmental dimensions of wellbeing are. Simply rebuilding to pursue the previous path is neither tenable nor desirable. Instead, the current context provides an opportunity to reorient: to pivot towards safe and just futures for people and the planet. This urgent task demands courage, creativity and experimentation. What groups, initiatives, and visions have been seeded in or are emerging from the cracks created by the pandemic? What structures must be reimagined and what relationships must be renegotiated? And what solutions are emerging capable of catalyzing action that supports this reorientation?
This special issue will engage with sustainability challenges from an ecological economics perspective in the context of recent vulnerabilities, inequalities, injustices, and systemic tensions. We invite contributions that apply ecological economics thinking to explore concrete problems that impact human and ecological wellbeing. Contributions to this special issue will use an ecological economics lens to engage with problems at the intersection of ecological and social challenges to inform effective and inclusive solutions. Recognizing that these solutions are inherently complex and systemic, they implicate diverse actors from governments, NGOs, Indigenous groups, activists, businesses and civil society. Thus, we especially encourage submissions that consider transformative solutions that address unequal relationships between different groups, societies and species in different regions and on different timescales. Contributors will be asked to increase the impact of their research by developing a publically accessible knowledge transfer piece such as a policy brief, op-ed, piece of artistic expression or related output as approved by the editors. In addition to knowledge dissemination, this piece may also propose recommendations for concrete steps needed to realize the solutions identified.
We invite proposals related to the theme of this special issue, and in particular welcome contributions on the following topics:
- Understanding systems change
- Sustainability transitions
- Post-COVID-19 recovery
- Degrowth
- Alternative visions and narratives of wellbeing
- City, urban and rural climate and sustainability initiatives
- Livelihood, care, and alternative economies
- Ecological and human health
- Regenerative human-Earth relationships
- Indigenous reconciliation
- Social movements and activism
- Political ideologies, populism and polarization
- Knowledge and intellectual property
Please submit manuscripts of up to 8000 words excluding references via the CIS submission system by July 22, 2021, indicating that the submission is part of the special issue on Emerging Pathways. Needs-based support may be available to cover publishing fees.
Alongside their manuscripts, contributors are asked to develop a knowledge transfer piece (i.e. a policy, practice, or action output). At the time of manuscript submission, contributors must also submit a 1-page (300 word) proposal for their knowledge transfer piece to the special issue editors describing their objectives, target audience, the media outlet/means of knowledge dissemination, and the length and format. Draft knowledge transfer pieces will be due August 19, 2021.
Plan for policy, practice, and action outputs:
- Pieces can have a wide range of purposes and outlets. However they must build upon the ideas developed in the accepted article. They should extend those ideas and apply them to real-world action, whether this is a specific problem, group, initiative, or debate.
- Policy, practice, and action outputs can be 300-2000 words, depending on the outlet and format required.
- Potential outputs:
o AlternativesJournal
o Policyoptions(IRPP)
o Targetedpiecewithinsightsorrecommendationsforaspecificinterestgroupor organization
o Op-edinlocalornationalmedia
o Blogpost/otherfordisseminationtobroaderpublic
For more information and to submit knowledge transfer pieces, contact Dr. Christopher Orr at [email protected]. Additional information can also be found on the CIS website: http://www.librelloph.com/challengesinsustainability/pages/view/specialissues