Creating an Ecosocial Welfare Future: Core challenges for Irish Welfare, North and South

2 Oct 2023

Happening On 17/10/2023

Mary P. Murphy, Maynooth University and author of Creating an Ecosocial Welfare Future (2023, Policy Press)

3pm, Tuesday, 17 October 2023

ELECT L1

Our global political economy, through human action, is in social and ecological breakdown, experiencing the dual and related experience of growing inequality and climate collapse. These challenges are old but now more acute, exposed and understood. The reality of global climate change is everywhere but experienced locally in different ways (war, famine, migration, care crises, populism). Given the relationship between inequality, care and climate change, welfare policy becomes key and is an urgent if underexplored part of addressing our collective future. Welfare has capacity to advance our common security, address new risks and enable adaptation and transition. Welfare is key to system change and transformation. An ecosocial welfare paradigm is needed especially in the welfare/work nexus where we need to rethink work, care, time and income, revise what we value and what we want to reward for example shifting from growth to well-being as a new North Star.