General information

Code: TAP Chanse Welriscc
Project leader at FDV: izr.prof.dr. Maša Filipovič Hrast

Abstract

 Climate change poses a significant threat to social well-being. As climate change leads to warmer, more unpredictable and more dangerous world, it introduces new risks to livelihoods, creates new distributional conflicts, and increases insecurity globally and intergenerationally. To mitigate the most severe impacts, a swift 'net zero transition' (NZT) is essential. However, also political mitigation of and adaptation to climate change can seriously affect human well-being, particularly burdening disadvantaged people, regions, and countries.  WELRISCC contends that a country's vulnerability and social risk exposure and its population's social risk perceptions are shaped by established institutions, interest structures, and ideas of not only existing welfare structures and environmental regulation, but also of environmental risk exposure, respective protection schemes, growth regimes, and moral principles. These, in turn, structure the path-dependent emergence of new institutional, interest-related, and ideological dimensions of social risk responses. The WELRISCC project seeks to fundamentally enhance our comprehension of how welfare states across Europe are managing novel social risks precipitated by the climate crisis, with a particular focus on safeguarding and promoting social well-being. By assessing new social risks from a comparative welfare state perspective, it explores how different countries respond to these risks and why responses vary and contributes to conceptualisation of 3rd generation social risks, identifying relevant patterns of responses to them across different welfare setups, and development of a comparative regime theory.

Key words

climate change, social cleavages, social risks, welfare states

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG13 | Climate action
SDG16 | Peace, justice and strong intitutions