Economics for Rebels Dr. Köves Alexandra

Currently markets determine most of what happens around us. But markets have no morals: everything is up for grabs. If you have the money, you can turn wetlands, forests, or any other biodiversity rich areas into mono-cultural agricultural lands, human habitats, or mines in the name of development. But can we and should we compensate this by making the developers pay for biodiversity conservation somewhere else? This is the central question around biodiversity offsetting and
in his research, Sophus zu Ermgassen has been keen to understand if it is possible to design nature markets in a way that satisfies both ecological and financial objectives, and if not, what the alternative is. Sophus co-hosted Season 2 of Economics for Rebels and has asked his guests many exciting questions. In this opening episode to Season 3 we get to hear Sophus also as a guest. Edited by Aidan Knox.

Today’s show is one for the ecological economics lecturers out there – it’s about the joy of teaching ecological economics, the ‘aha’ moments when your students see the world in a new way, and how to teach really really well. We welcome Corinne Baulcomb onto the show, Director of one of Europe’s largest EE programmes at SRUC/University of Edinburgh, sharing her experiences over the last decade of teaching EE’s beautiful ideas to the next generation of thinkers.

Various global initiatives have emerged to try to address the degradation of the living world, but despite decades of implementation we’ve had limited success at changing that trajectory. Why? Dr Niak Koh is a sustainability scientist based at the Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University. In some of her recent work, Niak has focused on what biodiversity agreements can learn from the implementation of international human rights agreements, which have historically been more successful. So, what are the secrets behind better international agreements? Hosted by Sophus zu Ermgassen. Edited by Aidan Knox.

It is now well-established that contemporary society has finite ecological constraints, and massive inequality in wealth, wellbeing and carbon consumption. But how is the consumption of our shared ecological space distributed across society, and what’s the ecological efficiency through which today’s economy generates improvements in wellbeing? In this episode host, Sophus zu Ermgassen welcomes Dr Marta Baltruszewicz, who has led some fascinating research empirically exploring interlinkages between energy consumption, inequality and wellbeing in the UK.

The fundamental purpose of ecological economics is to deliver an economy that achieves high living standards for all within the constraints of the Earth system. There is arguably no economic sector which is more consequential for this vision than the food system, and perhaps the greatest sustainability challenge of the coming decades is the question of how to deliver quality nutrition for all, whilst minimising the biodiversity and carbon impacts of one of the most ecologically impactful sectors. Join today's host, Sophus zu Ermgassen and guest Mike Clark guiding us through the ecological economics of food. Edited by Aidan Knox.

Ecological economics is all about staying within planetary boundaries while providing prosperity for all. This, however, means that we desperately need to transcend both our growth-centred worldview and our fully growth-dependent economic and social systems. The solutions proposed by ecological economics cover messages of true political nature. While bottom-up initiatives are incredibly important in this transition, drastic top-down policy changes would make a massive difference. Our guest today, Tim Jackson is most certainly among those top ecological economists who are in constant liaison with policymakers trying to influence their decisions to move towards beyond growth institutions. In today’s podcast host Alexandra Köves is asking him, just how far is this concept beyond the political rationale for today’s decision-makers? Edited by Aidan Knox.