The Revolutionary Socialist Network, Workers
The alt turns war - satisfying human needs is a prerequisite
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- AT - No Radical Transformations in paradigms
The alt turns war - satisfying human needs is a prerequisitePadilla ’21 [Luis-Alberto; 2021; president of the board of the Guatemalan International Relations & Peace Research Institute (IRIPAZ), member of the International Peace Research Association (IPRA), former Secretary General of the Latin American Council on Peace Research (CLAIP), Director of the Diplomatic Academy, Former Vice Minister, former ambassador in Chile, former permanent representative to the United Nations at the Vienna International Centre, former ambassador to Austria, former ambassador to the Russian Federation, former ambassador to the Netherlands, permanent representative to the UN in Geneva, and professor of the Seminar of World Geopolitics at the Faculty of Political Sciences of the Catholic University Rafael Landivar (URL) of Guatemala; Sustainable Development in the Anthropocene, “Sustainable Development as a UN Paradigm,” Ch. 4.8, p. 192] SPark Many people remember the famous phrase of Pope Paul VI in his Encyclical Populorum Progressio (1967) 17 about development as “the new name of peace”, but after what has been said on previous pages about the nature and history of the concept of sustainable development, and its relationship with both the environmental sciences and the theory of human needs, including cultural and community development and the cosmovision of indigenous people, it should be clear that sustainable peace requires sustainable development, among other reasons because the type of peace that goes beyond the absence of war - positive peace, as Johan Galtung calls it - requires the satisfaction of human needs to sustain itself.18 AT - No Radical Transformations in paradigmsPadilla ’21 [Luis-Alberto; 2021; president of the board of the Guatemalan International Relations & Peace Research Institute (IRIPAZ), member of the International Peace Research Association (IPRA), former Secretary General of the Latin American Council on Peace Research (CLAIP), Director of the Diplomatic Academy, Former Vice Minister, former ambassador in Chile, former permanent representative to the United Nations at the Vienna International Centre, former ambassador to Austria, former ambassador to the Russian Federation, former ambassador to the Netherlands, permanent representative to the UN in Geneva, and professor of the Seminar of World Geopolitics at the Faculty of Political Sciences of the Catholic University Rafael Landivar (URL) of Guatemala; Sustainable Development in the Anthropocene, “Maja Göpel and Renewable Energy in Germany: A Change of Paradigm?,” Ch. 5.6, p. 259-260] SPark It is now time to refer to some of the more positive experiences that could indicate a change of paradigm, such as the situation in Denmark, where appropriate policies made it possible for local communities to launch numerous renewable energy projects, and the most notable case of Germany, which has exceeded its official goal of obtaining at least 45% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020. This change of paradigm in energy matters is of such magnitude that a substantial transformation in the thinking of citizens and the private sector has already occurred - a mind-shift described by Göpel (2016: 25) which demonstrates that it is feasible to change the dominant paradigm in the field of socio-technical systems (STS). This turn means that a multilevel perspective and its incremental radical transformations can also be applied to other spheres of human activities, such as the environment, production, trade, and so on. This is not a minor issue, since Germany is not just an economic power but also the most influential country within the European Union. Despite being highly dependent on the importation of hydrocarbons, it fostered a group of visionary entrepreneurs (who could met with opposition through the lobbying of conservatives) in order to promote the ecological niches indispensable for transforming the energy matrix by replacing fossil fuels with renewables. Göpel describes the process by which a clever mechanism effectively created a return on investment security that convinced banks and even risk-averse investors to lend small businesses, farmers and citizens money to install renewable energy technology, thereby creating a market for renewable energy even though the sector had previously been dominated by an oligopoly of powerful companies: Since these older business models had rendered the transaction costs of switching to renewable energy solutions prohibitively pricey in the past, no pioneering movement had been possible. The Renewable Energy Law hedged the risks of a plethora of new, decentralized energy producers and unleashed the competitive activity of many small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) active in technology development. By the mid-2000s the tipping point into the acceleration or navigation phase had been reached, and pioneering activities had become mainstream considerations. Fossil energy suppliers now felt threatened and tried to fight the regulation at all levels, e.g., attempting to make the EU declare feed-in tariffs incompatible with energy market integrations. But the renewable energy sector grew very quickly, created many jobs in rural areas with high unemployment and turned Germany into an international technology leader that inspired other countries. Thus, an environmental issue had found technology solutions and became solidly economic when it served the export interests of the German economy and found wide, bottom-up citizen support. The share of renewable energy in the electricity mix increased steadily, debunking the strongly spun narrative that renewable energy systems were technologically unfeasible - although concerns about black-outs remain. However, a new narrative was established in which a transformation of the energy sector was both possible and in progress, drawing in many new participants (Göpel 2016: 25). In other words, the strategy of a gradual radical transformation worked: it started from a pre-development phase, moved towards the take-off phase, and reached a point of maturation (tipping point) that led to a third phase of acceleration, until finally, the socio-technical system (STS) stabilized at a new level. This same process can be seen in a multi-level perspective, demonstrating that changes can be promoted from small innovative niches which, once gathered in a design that brings them together, can take advantage of windows of opportunity to lead to a new regime that exerts influence on the upper level of the ‘socio-technical landscape’. That is the level at which the ideology, the ‘mindset’, and the predominant way of seeing things in society is located and, despite belonging to an exogenous context, will react downwards so that the preferences of markets and consumers are properly articulated within public policies, culture, industry, science and technology in order to provide feedback through expectations and social networks to the small innovators who started the whole process. Figure 5.3 clearly shows how, starting from innovative actions at micro level (niches), influence is exerted on science, public policies, market patterns, social practices and the same technology at an intermediate level, thereby affecting the higher level, which is the field of ‘meta-narratives’ where world-views (‘cosmovision’) and paradigms are located. This all provides feedback to terrestrial ecosystems, which benefit from the change in the energy matrix by completing thecycle and, in the example provided, is consistent with moving from the predominance of non-renewable energy to renewable energy. It is also important to point out that the mind-shift necessary to promote sustainable development coincides with the ideas of Sachs (2015), who argues that reconciling economic growth with ecological realities requires a profound change of economic model. It also aligns with the views of Klein (2015) and Wolff (2012), who are in favour of models in which local companies are managed democratically in the form of cooperatives or communal enterprises to produce food, energy, crafts and goods of all kinds in a renewed version of socialism. Download 2.09 Mb. Share with your friends:
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