Environmental Problems in a Socio-Structural Perspective

The understanding of the background and character of environmental problems has important implications for suggestions regarding environmental politics. This project intends to explore the long-term socio-structural background of environmental problems and to develop political suggestions according to such a structural perspective. The theoretical foundation for the project is socio-ecological economics which is developed these years as an alternative to neoclassical environmental economics. Socio-ecological economics is characterized partly by including the biophysical basis for the human economy directly in the formation of concepts, partly by transgressing economic theory and applying a cross-disciplinary perspective including social, institutional and cultural aspects and focusing especially on distributional aspects. The project has a long-term character and intends to maintain a theoretical work concurrently with other, more concrete projects.