Earth science

Shaping a Communitarian Ethos in an Era of Ecological Crisis

In response to the deep social and ecological crisis for which the international community is proving incapable of attenuating, many Peasants and Indigenous peoples in Mexico, and in other parts of the Global South, are transforming their visions of their futures, shaping a new ethos of self-managem...
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In response to the deep social and ecological crisis for which the international community is proving incapable of attenuating, many Peasants and Indigenous peoples in Mexico, and in other parts of the Global South, are transforming their visions of their futures, shaping a new ethos of self-management and conviviality, consistent with a responsible relationship to their territories. From the vantage point of the Global South, these peoples constitute a social and economic force that is altering the social and productive dynamics in many countries, proposing models of organization and building alliances among themselves regionally and internationally to exchange information, develop common strategies, and provide political support. In Mexico, many continue to produce traditional crops, while modifying their techniques to incorporate agroecological experiences from other communities, diversifying output and protecting the environment. Recently, they are enriching local practices with a systematization of their inherited traditions and cosmologies, creating effective models of social, political and environmental organization that lend authority to their claims to be able to manage their territories autonomously. There is a growing body of scientific literature that substantiates this capacity, demonstrating that the collective knowledge of the global networks of local communities is more effective in protecting biodiversity and attending to their own basic needs while improving their quality of life than that of societies more fully integrated into the global economy. In conclusion, we describe how these visions are shaping international networks, defining new channels for collaboration, improving the quality of life for people in these communities, while protecting them from the continuing incursions of capital.
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Is sustainable certification's ability to combat greenwashing trustworthy?

Introduction Certifications are widely recognized as important tools in addressing climate change, safeguarding human rights, and promoting environmentally sustainable practices. However, this critical review article draws attention to potential negative impacts associated with certifications. The ...
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Introduction Certifications are widely recognized as important tools in addressing climate change, safeguarding human rights, and promoting environmentally sustainable practices. However, this critical review article draws attention to potential negative impacts associated with certifications. The purpose of this review is to highlight the risks and challenges associated with certifications despite their intended benefits. Methods The review draws on existing literature on certifications and their impacts, as well as empirical studies on the effectiveness of certifications in addressing climate change, safeguarding human rights, and promoting environmentally sustainable practices. Results The review finds that certifications can increase the perceived value of eco-friendly brands and consumer willingness to pay. However, the review also highlights the risks of greenwashing and free riding, which can undermine the intended benefits of certifications. Additionally, the institutional organization of certification systems may exhibit structural inertia, which may impede the integration of disruptive green technologies and market transitions. Discussion The potential negative impacts of certifications on addressing climate change, safeguarding human rights, and promoting environmentally sustainable practices should not be overlooked. It is essential to implement measures to mitigate the risks of eco-opportunism and to effectively combat greenwashing. The review suggests that certification systems should be designed to promote innovation and the adoption of new technologies, rather than being a barrier to change. Conclusion Certifications are important tools for addressing climate change, safeguarding human rights, and promoting environmentally sustainable practices. However, their potential negative impacts should be acknowledged and addressed. The review recommends implementing measures to mitigate the risks of eco-opportunism and to effectively combat greenwashing, while promoting innovation and the adoption of new technologies.
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The Invisible Barrier to Safe Textile Recycling

• Presence of certain chemical additives (e.g. halogenated flame retardants, perfluoroalkyl substances, and phthalates) could hinder textile recycling operations as their presence renders end-of-life materials as “hazardous” and therefore not recyclable;• In 2018, there was an estimated mini...
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• Presence of certain chemical additives (e.g. halogenated flame retardants, perfluoroalkyl substances, and phthalates) could hinder textile recycling operations as their presence renders end-of-life materials as “hazardous” and therefore not recyclable;• In 2018, there was an estimated minimum of 1.7 million tonnes of hazardous and unrecyclable textile waste generated in the EU;• Blanket-bans on classes of chemicals would likely be partially effective in reducing environmental uptake of and human exposure to harmful chemicals, but could also lead to increased use of “regrettable substitutions” with unforeseen implications;• Legislative restrictions on chemicals must be accompanied with reduction in demand: reducing volume of textile waste generated by reducing volume consumed, thus eliminating necessity for huge volume of chemical additives in the first instance.
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Equity Within Ecological Limits: Grand Challenge for Sustainable Consumption

Forgotten dust: following plasterboard for non-destructive circular economies

The exploitative and unsustainable life of the construction material plasterboard requires more sustainable economies. In this article I examine the disposal of plasterboard as an experimental case for discussing a type of non-destructive circularity. A non-destructive circular model is one way to o...
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The exploitative and unsustainable life of the construction material plasterboard requires more sustainable economies. In this article I examine the disposal of plasterboard as an experimental case for discussing a type of non-destructive circularity. A non-destructive circular model is one way to open imaginaries for more sustainable activities of construction. My focus is on end-of-life plasterboard, including its demolition, removal from construction sites, recycling and landfilling. Three months of fieldwork in the south of Finland clarified the current state of the material. I followed plasterboard across two building sites, two recycling facilities and a landfill site, and visually exposed disposal practices and material states to show the entanglement of workers, materials and circular economy discourses. The results highlight that plasterboard reproduces a problematic circularity that merely focuses on waste management through limited recycling, doing little to decrease the need for raw gypsum extraction. I outline how plasterboard in disposal conceptually disappears from the current economic model, which fails to address a variety of opportunities for more sustainable construction. By exposing a material reality that is concerned with small amounts of plasterboard in disposal, I show gypsum crumbs and dust which are unable to play a role in the current circular economy. However, I argue that attending to end-of-life plasterboard opens possibilities to imagine more ethical engagements with the material, towards non-destructive circularities. The disposal of plasterboard makes the inadequacy of the material for current circulation visible and can contribute to a debate on more sustainable economies of construction.
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Doctrines for occupational health and safety

The balance between structure and handling uncertainty through mindfulness remains a riddle in occupational health and safety. In a similar vein, the relationship between strategy, business models, management control, and its influence on actual practice is still poorly understood. Hence, the notion...
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The balance between structure and handling uncertainty through mindfulness remains a riddle in occupational health and safety. In a similar vein, the relationship between strategy, business models, management control, and its influence on actual practice is still poorly understood. Hence, the notion of doctrines is here suggested as a new way of talking about these tensions, as a middle-way between abstract models and routines on the one hand, and actual mindful practices on the other. What becomes clear in this exploration is that the tension between structural abstractions on the one side and the concrete everyday, and possibly mindful, practice on the other are not only theoretical and practical concerns, but touches on the fundamental intelligibility of human action.
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A Thermodynamic Measure of Sustainability

A novel thermodynamic approach to the quantification of the “degree of sustainability” is proposed and discussed. The method includes a rigorous -and innovative- conversion procedure of the so-called externalities that leads to their expression in terms of the exergy of their equivalent primary ...
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A novel thermodynamic approach to the quantification of the “degree of sustainability” is proposed and discussed. The method includes a rigorous -and innovative- conversion procedure of the so-called externalities that leads to their expression in terms of the exergy of their equivalent primary resources consumption. Such a thermodynamic approach suggests a detailed re-evaluation of the concept of sustainability because it is well-known that the Second Law strictly negates the possibility for any open and evolving system to maintain itself in a “sustainable” state without availing itself of a continuous supply of low-entropy (i.e., high specific exergy) input. If a human society is modeled as an open system, its capacity to “grow sustainably” depends not only on how it uses non-renewable resources, but also on the rate at which it exploits the renewable ones. The necessary inclusion of different forms of energy- and material flows in such an analysis constitutes per se an argument in favor of a resource-based exergy metrics. While it is true that the thermodynamically oriented approach proposed here neglects all of the non-thermodynamic attributes of a “sustainable system” (in the Bruntland sense), it is also clear that it constitutes a rigorous basis on which different physically possible scenarios can be rigorously evaluated. Non-thermodynamic indicators can be still used at a “second level analysis” and maintain their usefulness to indicate which one of the “thermodynamically least unsustainable” scenarios is most convenient from an ethical or socio-economic perspective for the considered community or for the society as a whole. The proposed indicator is known as “Exergy Footprint,” and the advantages of its systematic application to the identification of “sustainable growth paths” is discussed in the Conclusions.
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Sufficiency and the state: A prospective project

Sufficiency as a social organizing principle can be applied to individuals, organizations, and economies. But if the encompassing social structure, namely, the state, is still organized around expansionist principles like efficiency and growth, the outcome will be the same—excess, the exceeding of...
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Sufficiency as a social organizing principle can be applied to individuals, organizations, and economies. But if the encompassing social structure, namely, the state, is still organized around expansionist principles like efficiency and growth, the outcome will be the same—excess, the exceeding of regenerative capacities biophysical and social, local to global. A prospective project of effecting fundamental social change argues that sufficiency must be applied to the state. From a natural resources perspective defining features of the state form are concentration and surplus both of which tend to excess and require endless frontiers. Re-organizing to counter this tendency and institutionalizing sufficiency requires imaginative politics. A long multicultural human history of reorganizing to adapt to environmental conditions bodes well. Resistance, though, even as the contradictions play out, is to be expected.
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Sustainable consumption, resonance, and care

Consumption is a key issue for more sustainable development. In our quest to understand the role of care for more sustainable consumption, we make use of the concept of resonance. Resonance assists in explaining the role of care for more sustainable consumption, emphasizing the relationships people ...
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Consumption is a key issue for more sustainable development. In our quest to understand the role of care for more sustainable consumption, we make use of the concept of resonance. Resonance assists in explaining the role of care for more sustainable consumption, emphasizing the relationships people have with the world. Through resonance, we add to debates on sustainable consumption that focus on the good life. Resonance describes a responsive mode of being-in-the-world and therefore depends on how we (passively) experience the world and how we (actively) appropriate or assimilate it. It is a reciprocal relationship between the individual and the world through which both are shaped. According to Hartmut Rosa, resonance as world relationship can be detected on three axes on which individuals relate to the world: (1) horizontal (people and politics), (2) diagonal (things), and (3) vertical (collective singulars such as nature, art, history, and religion). Using these axes as heuristic, we analyze solicited journaling method as well as in-depth interview data. Caring relationships can be detected along the three axes of resonance. Resonance thus helps to advance the characteristics of care as not limited to relationships between humans but also for things or collective singulars such as nature. Resonance also highlights how caring relationships support sustainable consumption in a positive way by focusing on its relational and reciprocal dimensions.
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On sustainable land rent

Introduction This paper introduces the concept of Sustainable Land Rent (SLR), providing a comprehensive, multidimensional exploration anchored in the dynamics of its origin, separability, mobility, valuation, and the imperative for equitable distribution. SLR capitalizes on the economic mobility o...
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Introduction This paper introduces the concept of Sustainable Land Rent (SLR), providing a comprehensive, multidimensional exploration anchored in the dynamics of its origin, separability, mobility, valuation, and the imperative for equitable distribution. SLR capitalizes on the economic mobility of land’s value to enhance community welfare and promote environmental sustainability. Advocating for the systematic institutionalization of SLR, the research tackles the complex challenge of distinguishing land value from improvements. Methods Employing traditional Price, Cost, and Income (PCI) methods as practiced in North America, the study addresses the technical challenge of inseparability by estimating and integrating the SLR value within each of these methods. The methodology clarifies the valuation process and establishes an objective framework for resource allocation and negotiation between public and private sectors. Results and discussion Furthermore, our findings highlight SLR’s vital role in advancing public revenue generation and underscore its function as an innovative catalyst for integrating sustainability into economic valuation models and practices in real estate development and urbanization.
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