An eco-social contract for the 21st century

ETUI webinar, in cooperation with the Hot or Cool Institute (Berlin) and IDDRI (Paris)
The IPCC and IEA have both recently recognised that our environmental challenges cannot be addressed purely through technology. Rather, society-wide changes in lifestyles and consumption habits are key to the sustainability transformation. Although these changes should lead to benefits for the vast majority in the long run, recent political developments show that they cannot simply be imposed by governments on citizens, nor approached in a piecemeal fashion. Several organisations, including the ETUI itself, have argued that the scale of the challenge calls for a new social contract, where the expectations that citizens have of the state and their obligations to society, are renegotiated.
Given that substantial changes are needed to all our lifestyles, and to consumption patterns as well as production patterns, this call goes beyond discussions around just transitions, which tend to focus on compensating workers in impacted sectors. Since 2023, the Hot or Cool Institute in Berlin and IDDRI in Paris are working together to flesh out this idea, developing a new formulation of the current social contract and conducting qualitative research exploring citizens perceptions of that contract.
In this webinar, Hot or Cool Institute and IDDRI will present their latest work and discuss with trade union representatives, researchers and citizen participation experts on what is needed to achieve an eco-social contract fit for the 21st century.
Speakers:
Marion Bet, Research Fellow, Lifestyles in Transition, IDDRI
Saamah Abdallah, Programme Lead Sustainable Wellbeing, Hot or Cool Institute
Discussants:
Tea Jarc, Confederal Secretary, European Trade Union Confederation
Mary Murphy, Professor and Head of Department, Maynooth University
Judith Ferrando y Puig, Co-director, Missions Publiques
Moderator: Kalina Arabadjieva, Senior Researcher, ETUI