Petra Gümplová im Interview
Socio-ecological Transformation
According to recent analyses, seven of nine planetary boundaries have now been exceeded. Beyond the advancing climate crisis and biodiversity loss, ocean acidification has recently crossed safe thresholds. Meanwhile, social upheavals and conflicts are intensifying — some of which are directly linked to the ecological crisis and the political responses it provokes. A targeted socio-ecological transformation is one possible way forward.
In this context, the role of property often goes unexamined, both in driving the crisis and in shaping the conflicts and possibilities surrounding transformation. This dossier addresses that gap in three steps. The first section highlights texts showing how the prevailing property regime generates and deepens ecological crises: resource extraction, greenhouse gas emissions, and the consequences of climate breakdown are all distributed unequally. As the second section explains, this unequal distribution produces a deeply contested transformation with winners and losers. The resulting tensions play out not only in disputes over different pathways and speeds of change, but put socio-ecological transformation as a whole under pressure thereby threatening to derail it before it has truly begun.
Yet property is not only a driver of crisis. In its multifaceted, contested, and at times contradictory functions, it must also be considered part of the solution. Hence, the the third section highlights pieces that examine alternative forms of ownership within the transformation process. Central to these debates are questions about whether housing and energy should be treated as essential public services and organized through public or municipal ownership. The concepts of socialization and the commons have similarly gained broad traction in transformation discourse.