The current economic model is due for urgent revision. Environmentally and socially, its extractive tendencies are profound. The relentless focus on economic growth is ravaging the environment, while the concomitant social problems have either already reached glaring levels (e.g. skyrocketing global inequality) or seem poised to do so (e.g. climate displaced persons). Both the UN Sustainable Development Goals as well as the Paris Agreement recognise the need to alter the course of global economic development. Yet major disagreement persists on how to achieve these objectives. Those favouring variants of ‘green growth’ hope that increases in energy and waste efficiency, along with an appropriate mixture of ‘tax and transfer’, will prove sufficient to address the socio-ecological problems (initially the European Green Deal). Others suggest that a more radical transformation of the economic system is needed, problematising the concept of ‘growth’ itself, and looking for models to pursue prosperity for all in ways that don’t rely on unsustainable economic growth (Jackson 2009; Raworth 2017; Hinton, J. and Maclurcan, D. 2015, but also PostGrowth Conference, European Parliament, 2018).
The N-EXTLAW Project grapples with the question of how to make even more radical proposals for socio-ecological transformation better contenders for political support and mobilisation. Recognising in this regard the role of law in the attainment of the economic utopias of the past (Polanyi 2002), N-EXTLAW will explore how law could contribute to closing the perceived gap between today’s realities and these more utopian visions of economy, taking as a point of departure those existing economic practices that already embody the values of ‘non-extractive’ economy. By ‘non-extractive’ we mean economic practices that help to sustain and nurture – rather than deplete - the very resources on which they depend, be they environmental (e.g. substances, environment) or social (e.g. labour, localities, communities of users). The objective of this project is thus to answer the question: how can law support the proliferation of non-extractive economic practices - and thereby make socio-ecological transformation a more credible and achievable prospect?
