Rights beyond humans
For centuries, the concept of ‘rights’ has been reserved for people. However, the 21st century is broadening that horizon, and nature is beginning to be recognised as a subject of rights. This change, which may seem symbolic, represents a true legal, ethical and political revolution. It means moving from protecting the environment ‘for utility’ to recognising its intrinsic value and capacity for existence. The starting point is a pioneering case: Law 19/2022, which granted legal personality to the Mar Menor and its basin. This experience has opened up a broader debate: what does it mean to recognise the rights of an ecosystem? What changes in environmental management when the territory ceases to be an object and becomes a subject? The Mar Menor precedent: when nature speaks for itself Law 19/2022, passed by the Congress of Deputies in 2022, made the Mar Menor the first European ecosystem to be recognised as a subject of rights. This historic step was inspired by international models, such as the Whanganui River in New Zealand and the Atrato River in Colombia, where communities and lawyers had argued that ecosystems should have their own legal mechanisms of defence. Under Spanish law, the Mar Menor has four fundamental rights: 1. Right to exist and evolve naturally This implies respecting the ecological laws that sustain its balance. It is not just a question of ‘conserving’ the lagoon, but of allowing it to regenerate and evolve according to its natural dynamics, free from excessive human pressure. 2. Right to protection This means stopping or not authorising activities that pose a risk to its integrity, such as dumping, construction or overexploitation. 3. Right to conservation This requires active measures to preserve species, habitats and protected areas associated with the lagoon and its basin. 4. Right to restoration This requires the repair of damage caused, restoring the ecosystem’s functionality and the natural services it provides to society. To enforce these rights, the law created a system of institutional representation: a Committee of Representatives, a Monitoring Commission and a Scientific Committee. Together, they act as the ‘voice’ of the Mar Menor before the authorities and the courts. With this structure, the lagoon ceases to be a mere natural space managed by sectoral policies and becomes a political and legal entity with its own legitimacy. From protection to coexistence: towards a new legal culture The recognition of rights for entities other than humans marks a radical shift in how we understand the relationship between society and nature. Until now, environmental legislation has focused on regulating the use of resources: how much can be extracted, dumped, occupied or transformed. But in the context of climate crisis and ecological collapse, this model has shown its limitations. Recognising an ecosystem as a subject of rights means overcoming the instrumental view—nature as ‘property’ or ‘resource’—and placing it as part of the community of life, with dignity and a voice of its own. This change has profound consequences: • It introduces new ethical criteria into public decision-making. • It reinforces the ecological responsibility of institutions and companies. • It allows legal action to be taken on behalf of the ecosystem, even when there is no direct impact on people. • It broadens the notion of justice to an ecological and collective level. The concept of ‘more than human entities’ encompasses not only rivers and lakes, but also forests, mountains, soils, wetlands and key species that sustain life in a region. Each of these could, under certain conditions, be recognised as a subject of ecological law, especially those that are essential for climate adaptation. This change is also supported by a deeper understanding of nature itself. Ecosystems are not simply aggregates of biological or geographical elements, but complex systems with emergent properties (such as self-regulation, resilience, or adaptability) that allow them to maintain their balance and sustain life. These properties arise from the interaction between their components and cannot be understood from the sum of their parts. Thus, these new rights not only expand the legal framework, but also reflect an evolution in the scientific and ethical understanding of the planet: recognising nature as a set of interdependent beings, endowed with responsiveness and intrinsic value. Climate adaptation with rights The inclusion of formal recognition of the rights of more-than-human entities in climate change adaptation policies could ensure a more just, durable and biophysically coherent adaptation. For example, granting rights to strategic ecosystems—such as wetlands, rivers or forests—would make it possible to: • Establish automatic legal defence mechanisms against threats. • Ensure ecological priority in planning processes. • Encourage co-management between institutions and local communities. • Promote an integrated territorial vision that transcends administrative divisions. In this way, climate change adaptation would cease to be merely a technical policy and become a matter of ecological justice. A growing global trend The recognition of rights to nature is not an isolated anomaly. In recent years, this trend has spread throughout the world: • Ecuador was the first country to enshrine the ‘rights of nature’ (Pachamama) in its Constitution (2008). • Bolivia passed the Mother Earth Law (2010), recognising its intrinsic value. • In Colombia, the Constitutional Court declared the Atrato River a subject of rights. • In New Zealand, the Whanganui River and Mount Taranaki have legal personality and designated guardians. • In India, the Ganges and Yamuna rivers were given similar status (although with subsequent legal disputes). Towards a more than human democracy Ultimately, exploring and recognising new rights for more than human entities is a way of democratising our relationship with ecosystems, which cease to be mere settings for human life and become actors with their own agency and vulnerability. Recognising the complexity of ecosystems implies accepting their responsiveness and their role in the planet’s balance. From this perspective, more than human democracy is understood as a form of co-responsibility with everything that makes life possible. Furthermore, incorporating this vision into climate and adaptation policies is a necessary step to ensure the integration of resilience and sustainability into
Towards recognition of the right to a healthy environment
We are living in times of profound transformation. While the effects of climate change are becoming increasingly palpable in our daily lives – from more intense heat waves to extreme weather events – a silent transformation is taking place in the field of law that seeks to answer the fundamental question of whether we have a right to a healthy environment. The affirmative answer to this question has set in motion an international legal and political movement that is redefining the obligations of states and the rights of citizens. The climate emergency as a human rights issue Traditionally, climate change has been conceptualised as an environmental, energy or economic problem. However, this perspective is falling short. The climate crisis is, above all, a human rights crisis, and social perception of it is gradually moving towards this interpretation. This is because a stable environment and climate are the foundation on which all other rights are based. Without them, the right to health is compromised by diseases spread by heat or pollution; the right to housing is threatened by forced evictions after flooding; the right to life is at risk from the violence of extreme weather events; the right to food, besieged by droughts that destroy crops; and the right to equality, in critical condition because it is the most vulnerable – the impoverished, the elderly, indigenous peoples – who suffer disproportionately from the effects of an unstable climate. The scientific community has long pointed out that ecosystem degradation, deforestation and biodiversity loss have direct consequences on human health by altering the ecological balances that sustain us. It is not just a matter of avoiding the damage that befalls us, but of understanding that we are part of the same living system. This understanding challenges the traditional anthropocentric paradigm, which has historically placed humanity above the rest of nature. This comprehensive view, supported by the One Health approach promoted by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the scientific community, reminds us that human health, animal health and ecosystem health are closely interrelated, and reinforces the need for policies that recognise the continuity between human health, ecosystem health and the right to a healthy environment. Research and science have worked over the last few decades to prove this connection between climate change and the violation of rights through its impacts. The next step in protecting these rights lies in the legal sphere, which must translate this challenge into enforceable rights and specific obligations. It is at this point that Advisory Opinion OC-32/25 of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) marks a turning point. The ruling of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights: a new legal paradigm In May 2025, at the request of Chile and Colombia, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled on the obligations of States in the context of the Climate Emergency. Its opinion is not a mere recommendation; it is a detailed and binding legal roadmap for the countries that are part of the inter-American system. The Court breaks down the obligations of States into four fundamental pillars: 1. General obligations in the context of the climate emergency The Court makes it clear that States have a duty to prevent the catastrophic effects of climate change. This is no longer a political choice, but a legal obligation. Governments must take all necessary measures – legislative, administrative, judicial – to ensure that activities under their jurisdiction do not cause significant transboundary harm. Inaction, or insufficient action, may constitute a violation of human rights. 2. Obligations arising from substantive rights The Court explicitly links the climate emergency to established rights, such as the right to life and personal integrity. A healthy environment is an essential condition for the enjoyment of these rights. In practice, this could mean that an individual or community could sue the state if, for example, air pollution from a nearby thermal power plant is seriously affecting their health, arguing that the state’s failure to adequately regulate that source of emissions violates their right to personal integrity. 3. Procedural obligations: transparency and participation States must not only act, but they must do so in a specific manner. This includes: a. Access to information: ensuring that citizens have access to clear, timely and understandable information on climate impacts and policies to address them. b. Public participation: allowing people to participate meaningfully in environmental decision-making, such as the approval of a project with a high carbon footprint. c. Access to justice: ensuring that accessible judicial or administrative mechanisms are in place to challenge actions or omissions that affect the environment. 4. The principle of equality and non-discrimination The Court is unequivocal in its assertion that the climate crisis is a crisis of inequality. State obligations must be applied with a perspective of equity, prioritising the protection of vulnerable groups that are disproportionately affected. Climate policies must be designed to protect them specifically, preventing the burden of climate change from falling on those who have contributed least to causing it. Towards a new social contract The exploration of including these rights implies a profound change in the relationship between citizens, the State and the environment. For citizens: it would mean having a legal tool that would allow individuals and groups to take legal action against their governments to demand that they meet their climate targets, halt polluting projects, or implement plans to adapt to climate change and its effects. For society as a whole: it represents an opportunity to forge a new social contract that places sustainability and intergenerational justice at its core. For states: it would mean much stricter accountability at different levels of government. From climate agreements at international summits to local government resolutions, all would become legally enforceable commitments. Urban planning, energy policy and water management, for example, would inevitably have to pass through the filter of human rights. P. Cotarelo and O. Mayoral
University Observatory of transitions
According to the Law Regulating Universities (LOSU), both public and private universities must guarantee the public service of university education, as well as develop their functions and take as their reference points, among others, the fight against climate change and the values derived from the Sustainable Development Goals. In the current context of multiple crises, the university needs an Observatory to monitor the university’s performance in the design, development, implementation and transfer of eco-social transition plans to achieve sustainability. One of the tools to be developed by this Observatory is a system of objective indicators focused on obtaining a rating of the university’s performance in applying eco-social transition criteria. An exponential trajectory of efforts between 2024 and 2030 has a lower slope at the beginning of the process, which can facilitate the structural changes that the university must undertake to meet eco-social criteria. Over time, the slope increases, so that changes and improvements, made possible by those efforts, must be accelerated more rapidly in the years closer to 2030. The exponential trajectory of efforts translates into the size of the intervals for rating university performance in the application of eco-social criteria. Download
Towards the institutionalisation of public-community partnerships in the energy sector
The complex contemporary economic processes that enable the material and symbolic sustenance of people depend on energy. It is a resource of primary necessity and this makes it strongly linked to power and conflict. Access to and control over energy has historically been a fundamental political issue. The development of our fossil economies has led to the preponderance of energy ownership schemes (public and private) consistent with the liberal vision of ownership (exclusive and exclusionary) and with the dynamics of dispossession inherent to capitalism. But the energy transition towards renewables contributes to experimenting with alternative forms to the traditional ones: public (state) and private ownership of energy. This is due to the fact that in this impasse, renewable electricity becomes relevant, allowing the involvement of a wide diversity of actors: from large financial groups to SMEs of different legal natures (including social and solidarity economy enterprises), public bodies at local or regional level, and the citizenry as a whole. However, the fact that energy is such an absolutely strategic element for a country means that it is highly intervened by States and by supra-state bodies such as the European Union, fundamentally to guarantee security of supply in a framework of international economic competitiveness and a global energy and climate crisis. Intervention mainly involves a very high degree of regulation and ownership in the global energy sector, either through the acquisition of assets or through state-owned enterprises, especially in the electricity sector. According to the report State-Owned Enterprises and the Low-Carbon Transition published by the OECD (2018), 31 of the 51 largest electricity utilities in the world have a majority public shareholding, most of them Chinese and Russian. In Europe, the so-called ‘neoliberal consensus’ of the last quarter of the 20th century led to a reduction in the weight of the state in the electricity business and, as a result, only the Swedish Vattenfall, which is fully public, the French EDF (85% owned by the French state) and, in second place, the French ENGIE and the Italian ENEL, with a minority shareholding by their states (33% and 24%, respectively), stand out. On the other hand, it is also true that the very nature of energy makes public intervention indispensable. If we focus on electricity, it should be stressed that, unlike fossil fuels, once it has been generated, it circulates through the networks with little or no possibility of being stored. This key detail conditions its management because it requires precise coordination to match supply and demand at all times. To do so, it is also necessary to take into account the constraints imposed by the different generation technologies or processes: from their capacity to regulate production (for example, a nuclear power plant cannot be shut down suddenly or the production of a wind turbine varies depending on the wind blowing) to their geographical location (the distance between the point of generation and the point of use). Nor should we forget the management of international grid connectivity with neighbouring countries. In short, these issues cannot be ignored when discussing possible – and desirable – models of energy ownership. Energy is a resource that is difficult to compare to any other, and public non-intervention is inexcusable in order to adapt to its peculiarities. Energy ownership in Spain Before continuing, it should be noted that, depending on how one looks at it, linking ownership and energy does not only mean addressing the question of the possession of legally sealed titles in the energy sector. From a republican perspective, to speak of property is to speak of access to the set of material and immaterial resources considered relevant – of a nature and quantity contingent on each spatio-temporal context – to guarantee people a dignified livelihood. The social function of property has to do with enabling people to live a life of socio-economic independence. It is also assumed that the only interdependencies with others are those that are free from arbitrary interference. Thus, ownership is also defined by the right to control these basic resources. No one doubts that energy – and more so electricity in the current transition – falls into this category of basic resources and that public authorities are needed to guarantee the right to access them. However, citizens must have the mechanisms to control these public authorities. On the one hand, so that they do not allow certain private actors to interfere arbitrarily over others, giving rise to relations of dependency; and on the other, so that they do not feed clientelistic practices that lead to oligarchic and despotic logics. Looking at the Spanish case, we can conclude that the energy ownership model is far from fulfilling its social function: on the one hand, the regulation does not define electricity as an essential good in terms of universal accessibility, and on the other hand, the structure of property rights over energy infrastructures is controlled by a small and powerful block of private companies. As accessibility to electricity is not guaranteed ex-ante, what we do find in Spain are ex-post corrective measures whose level of effectiveness in universalising reasonable access is debatable: the bono social, Law 24/2015 against supply cuts, emergency aid, advisory services on rights, generation and optimisation of consumption, tax incentives or subsidies for renewables, or municipal supply companies. These measures do not tackle a problem that is structural and related to the legal system. Beyond ex-post public intervention, it is fair to point out that there are private initiatives whose actions are not profit-oriented and which offer a supply service with certain public service overtones, as they put the coverage of their members‘ or clients’ energy needs before obtaining profitability. This is the case of the energy cooperatives, among which Som Energia stands out. In its case, it is also an actor that promotes and facilitates popular participation in renewable generation projects, as well as an energy culture based on the values of sustainability, social justice and democracy. Energy communities and public sector participation Energy access schemes are
The tortuous path of destouristification
In recent months, neighbourhood movements in different parts of Spain have brought to public debate the need to structurally rethink the tourism sector in their areas. They warn that in these places (and perhaps in others as well) the carrying capacity has been exceeded due to the constant growth of tourist activity and its consequences. These include environmental degradation and increased pollution, frequent and in some cases dangerous crowding, deterioration of public services such as transport, increased cost of living, displacement of local people, difficulties for working people to live relatively close to their daily place of work, housing speculation, and loss of local cultural identity. Although perhaps new to the general public, different groups and social agents have been warning about this problem for years thanks to data collected in other locations where the process of touristification has advanced before. Due to this data and the reflections, analyses and publications from the social sciences, some political leaders have tried to provide solutions from the public policy sphere to avoid the most serious effects of the tourist monoculture and, in some cases, to try to reverse it, with mixed outcomes. First of all, it must be recognised that the incentives for policy-makers are not particularly favourable for carrying out this task. For, despite the institutional mandate to represent the interests of their population, and despite the social protests that have taken place in their different forms, significant factors that encourage the opposite seem to have more weight. As a result, we see that the general tendency is to remain the same as before, i.e. to do nothing to alter the tourism mechanism. Arguably, the biggest incentive for nothing to change is that change in general, and this one in particular, is very time-consuming and complex. This is due to inertia, technical difficulties and established power relations. Among the technical difficulties, one that, despite its importance, is often overlooked is the impossibility of replacing the tourist monoculture with another activity (or activities) while maintaining the main indicators in similar terms. Like any other predatory activity, tourism extracts ‘assets’ (beaches and other natural spaces, monuments, climate, architecture, educated and cared-for population, public infrastructures, etc.). ) for free and processes them, generating an economic return (which in many cases does not return to the area, not even to its capitalist class) and generally negative externalities (such as those listed at the beginning of the text: environmental deterioration and increased pollution, overcrowding, worsening of public services, increased cost of living, displacement of the local population, difficulties for working people to live near their daily place of work, housing speculation, loss of local cultural identity). Moreover, when the monoculture of such an activity has been consolidated, too many bridges have been dynamited for it to be considered as just another activity in a range of economic activities to be developed. The tourism process advances towards the socio-economic monoculture phase and, once there, continues to advance in its depredation of the environment and society on which it is based. Indicators that tend to point unequivocally to the fact that the tourist monoculture has become established include the following: the census population is decreasing; disposable family income in the area is increasing due to the expulsion of the less well-off classes because of the generalised rise in prices and of housing in particular; the surface area dedicated to tourism and the hotel industry is increasing in relation to other economic activities, such as industry and education; the saturation of this type of activity is advancing, colonising more and more areas of the city; the proliferation of dwellings for tourist use is spreading exponentially in the absence of effective control mechanisms; shops commonly aimed at the local population, such as food shops, are turning their offer towards tourists, with the disappearance of fresh produce shops such as fishmongers, butchers and greengrocers. In addition, phenomena that are incomprehensible to the naked eye are beginning to be detected, such as the closure of shops (the closing of shutters) in the most overcrowded areas or their surroundings because they are used as warehouses for other premises (mainly restaurants) whose activity cannot develop as desired due to the high demand to which they are subjected and their need for product rotation. This also leads to an increased feeling of insecurity and/or risk in these areas. Under these conditions, an economic return of the same characteristics without incurring serious externalities is not possible. In other words, replacing this monoculture activity with another could only be done by assuming the same (or greater) amount of negative externalities. Negative externalities could be found in two broad groups: those that are outside the law, or those that would put the very survival of the business at serious risk in the short term (such as those of an environmental or social nature that would considerably disrupt the flow of capital). In fact, a large part of the expansion of this monoculture comes from the perception that it is more profitable than other activities and that it is legitimate to facilitate its development. The mechanisms that facilitate its development over other socio-economic options also form part of the very institutional structure (public and private) of the tourist monoculture, which increases the perception of its high profitability and the lack of need for other activities unrelated to it. Therefore, the more the process of deepening the monoculture advances, the more the impossibility of substituting it with another sustainable activity in economic, environmental and social terms grows. On the one hand, the collective and institutional imaginary is moving further and further away from this possibility. On the other hand, in material terms, the growing inclusion of elements that threaten the environment and social rights and conditions, inherent to monoculture tourism, makes it impossible for there to be another activity that, while complying with socio-environmental rules, could generate similar monetary returns. Such an option is ruled out for political action. It is also a tremendously perverse incentive for policy makers
Green rating of the General State Budget
The analysis of the methodology used by the Government to establish the degree of alignment of the General State Budget with the ecological transition offers ample room for improvement. The modifications proposed in the report are aimed at addressing the two major weaknesses identified in the methodological analysis: Download report
Challenges of inclusive digitisation
Digital technologies and data are, for better or worse, transformative. People, businesses, and governments live, interact, work, and produce differently than they did in the past, and these changes may be accelerating rapidly due to digitalisation. It is vital to ensure that the immense promises of digital technologies and data are directed exclusively towards growth and social well-being, while limiting and minimising their negative impacts. Download report
Confronting the Coronavirus Crisis: A case for a Pandemic Basic Income with evidence from Spain
The coronavirus crisis is easily comparable to the great financial crisis of 2007-9 and might even turn out to be more severe. Its impact on the long-term development of the world economy could also prove crucial because neoliberal, financialised capitalism entered the crisis in a state of structural weakness, especially in the USA. Ιn the course of the great crisis of 2007-9 the leading nation states took steps to rescue finance and prevent a structural challenge to financialisation and globalisation, while shifting the costs of adjustment onto working people and the poor. Consequently, the years 2009-19 bear the hallmarks of a declining social system trapped in unmanageable conflicts of interest. Throughout that decade, investment, production, and capital accumulation were historically weak, particularly in Europe. Even more remarkable was the weakness of productivity growth despite the constant chatter about a new “industrial revolution” through Artificial Intelligence. At the same time, the profound inequalities of neoliberal financialisation were maintained, and even worsened, as the rich were protected by the machinery of the state. Toward the end of the decade even some thoroughly systemic mainstream economists argued that the core of global capitalism has been mired in stagnation for some time. Since the outbreak of Covid19 nation states have implemented quite different policies reflecting the historically distinctive nature of this crisis. Some states have adopted extraordinarily expansionary fiscal and monetary policies, above all, the USA. Other states, such as Germany, have been equally expansionary in fiscal policy while also providing gigantic support to domestic industry. And still other states, such as those in the Southern periphery of the EU, have been much more constrained in their actions by the great burden of public debt. The likely outcome will be even greater divergence among national capitalisms in the years ahead. In this historically unprecedented context, social struggles have already broken out among competing interests in each country, and they are likely to lead to significant changes and perhaps even in paradigm shifts. There are signs that the representatives of international capital as well as the national oligarchies are trying to use the crisis to further their interests. This could only mean that the livelihoods of workers would be badly affected. The way to defeat these attempts and to obtain a new social dispensation favourable to the interests of labour and the social majority is to be bold in proposing new socioeconomic structures and mechanisms of social interaction. An important policy concept in this respect is that of a Pandemic Basic Income. The distinctive character of the Coronavirus Crisis and the role of the state The distinctive features of the Covid19 crisis are due to state-imposed lockdowns, which immediately affected the side of production and circulation of goods and services. A major shock was delivered to manufacturing that disrupted interlinked supply chains and international trade by reducing the availability of inputs. The shock was manifestly more severe in the field of service provision, particularly travel, tourism, entertainment, restaurants, hotels, pubs, and so on. Lockdowns also immediately affected the side of aggregate demand by restraining social contact and forcing people to stay at home. Consumption declined precipitously, leading to a jump in private saving, perhaps also as a response to the profound uncertainty created by the disease and the unprecedented state responses to the pandemic. Investment collapsed equally precipitously in the USA, the EU and elsewhere as enterprises set aside investment plans in the face of extreme uncertainty. Finally, lockdowns also affected the sphere of finance by immediately deflating the overblown stock markets across the world but also by restricting portfolio flows to developing countries and raising the prospect of a full-blown global financial crisis. Faced with the unfolding economic disaster caused by the lockdowns that they had instigated, nation states had to respond urgently. In the heavily financialised US economy, the state undertook an extraordinary expansion of its fiscal deficit through tax cuts, public spending, and direct support for household income. The state also provided guarantees for bank loans to industry. At the same time, the Federal Reserve provided enormous volumes of liquidity to private banks and corporations driving interest rates to zero. The ensuing expansion of the money supply has been very great, It is instructive to observe the contrast between the USA and China in confronting the crisis Chinese economic policies reflected the different structure of the country’s economy, which is much less financialised, as well as its different internal power balance. Rather than relying primarily on incentives provided to private enterprises, the Chinese state boosted employment directly by mobilising the State Operated Enterprises, which are still crucial to the core of the economy. It also engaged in a wide programme of public investment in new technologies, including 5G. However, the Chinese state was much less concerned with supporting personal income, shifting much of the burden onto the poor, and it relied proportionately much less on credit provision through the central bank. It is equally instructive to note, nonetheless, that the US government has been extremely careful to buttress its global hegemony via dollar provision. Faced with a shortage of international liquidity as capital flows dried up and trade was disturbed, the Federal Reserve stepped in and provided dollars through swaps with the central banks that it had also traded with in the previous crisis. Not only this, but the Fed also allowed institutions to obtain dollars by swapping US Treasury Bills. It appeared, furthermore, that the most pressing need for dollars originated with Japanese institutions that had previously provided funds to the Collateralised Loan Obligations market among US enterprises. The actions of the US government indicate that it intends to prevent any challenges to the role of the dollar as the world currency in the years ahead. The EU faced with Coronavirus Crisis For our purposes, however, it is even more important to observe the contrast between the EU and the other two leading economies. In the EU the crisis was confronted largely by each separate nation state, with no evidence of coordination. For EU states in the EMU,
ESG criteria to condition EU recovery
In the context of the Covid-19 crisis, it is highly foreseeable that European member states will spend and invest large sums of public money. Part of that money will go to strengthen the health and social protection systems, and the other part will be employed to the support the social and economic recovery. In fact, both the EU and its member countries have started to draw up their recovery plans, which will be applied in phases as the lock-down is relaxed. The use of conditionality in the Covid-19 crisis In relation to the social protection of the most vulnerable groups affected by the lock-down and that might be affected by the foreseeable reduction in activity in later stages, in some countries (for instance, Spain) temporary basic incomes are being considered. Such provision of income will have a triple objective: first, ensuring material living conditions; second, avoiding the spread of the pandemic by reducing the pressure to leave the house seeking subsistence means; and third, sustaining internal consumption. Accessing this basic income is subject to a series of conditions as: being part of the active population, the level and period of income loss, personal wealth, family structure, and other social variables. Conditionality is also attached to aid to companies that face a reduction in activity. In Canada[1], Denmark, France and Poland[2], for instance, companies that are registered in tax havens will not be allowed to access public aid that is being granted to protect the supply of goods and services at the national level, protect jobs, and maintain tax revenues. In Portugal, although no concrete measure has been presented so far, both government and opposition have argued publicly that banks should not make a profit during the years 2020 and 2021, and that they should increase credit provision to support the economy in return for the bail-outs that they received after 2008. This last case points to the main bias of the recovery policies after 2008, which was that conditionality was omitted in the transfer of public money to ‘too-big-to-fail’ agents (Financial, Insurance and Real Estate corporations). The asset prices of the FIRE sector were reassured through new indebtedness assumed by states and households, which imposed few to no constraints related to social, environmental or governance responsibility. This has had a large negative impact in the form of inequality, environmental crises, corruption, lack of public control and accountability, and in turn, a large damage to democratic legitimacy. Conditionality based on ESG criteria In a scenario of -3.8% of GDP in the EU in the first quarter, governments should aim at reactivating the supply of goods and services, at avoiding the destruction of the productive tissue and laying the foundations for a new and more resilient production model. The consequences of this crisis will favor a re-localization and re-industrialization of European economies to reduce dependence on global supply chains, especially in the sectors most sensitive to domestic security (health, food, energy, etc.). As has been mentioned before, generally, nation-states will attach conditionality to public aid within their borders, either in their direct income provision to the population or other different types of aid to enterprises and banks. The sums of this expenditure will be very high, so high should be the degree of responsibility demanded to agents receiving this money, specially the most powerful. Responsibility should not only be demanded as a short-term condition until the crisis has been overcome, but as a permanent set of conditions that allows for the generation of more resilient and sustainable production-consumption models. In recent years, environmental, social and governance responsibility criteria (ESG) have become part of the usual vocabulary of institutional investors, both public and private. The ESG approach is a system of assessing the impact of business practices from environmental, social and governance (ESG) perspectives. The Ekona Center of Economic Innovation, based on these general premises, has developed an ESG Certification system that targets the real economy, including the SME system. Its aim is to assess the commitment to responsibility of enterprises. The certification provides an objective measurement of a representative set of variables associated to the environmental, social and governance areas of companies, which produces a composite indicator. This model allows, on the one hand, to measure current performance in ESG responsibility, and on the other hand, the detection of possibilities for strategic development regarding ESG responsibility. The advantage of Ekona’s model compared to self-declarative Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reporting lies on its objective measurement and absence of conflict of interests. As is shown in Figure 1, this model allows public and private fund providers to identify responsible enterprises through the rating obtained in the process of certification. With this information, public administrations can direct their effort through public procurement or other aid, which places them in a very advantageous position of influence in improving the responsibility of the economy[3]. Source: own elaboration Precisely in the period prior to the Covid-19 crisis, the use of ESG criteria was growing rapidly, as climate change was generating public pressure for both public administrations and the private sector to act accordingly. In fact, ESG concerns are rapidly shifting from the field of impact investing into conventional investment practice, as climate risks become increasingly apparent. Currently, the global responsible investment market is several billion euros in size, and is growing at a double-digit annual rate, despite the fact that so far it has been focused on large companies rather than on small and medium-sized companies, which have not yet found a method to be included in the ESG investment category. The growing importance of these new criteria is evident at institutional levels such as that of the European Union, which has developed an Action Plan for Sustainable Finance[1], which will serve as the basis for integrating ESG criteria in the evaluation of financial risks, as well as the United Nations Working Group on Transnational Corporations and Human Rights[2]. Ekona’s approach to the ESG criteria responds to social, environmental and governance concerns, but also to concerns related
Of Strong and Weak, of Arrogance and Ignorance
Let’s explode the myth that a surplus economy is good and a deficit economy is bad. The euro zone will work only if deficit (South) countries can borrow to keep the surplus (North) countries trading. It is stupid and arrogant to think otherwise. We are the strong, the others are the weak. The Dutch-German mantra is not only arrogant, it’s stupid. Whoever utters it only shows that he has not the slightest idea of co-operation between nations. “Where there is need, foolhardiness becomes wisdom,” Niccolò Machiavelli once said – and he is right. In times of need, it shows who is the child of whose spirit, who can be trusted and who cannot be trusted. It also shows who has the intellectual ability to leap over his own shadow and question his own dogmas. Germany, the Netherlands and Austria are just showing that they do not have the foolhardiness that becomes wisdom. That will have dire consequences. To know exactly what this is all about, you only have to listen to the interview that Federal Minister of Economics Peter Altmaier gave to Deutschlandfunk Thursday, April 9. There it is clear again that only those in Europe “who have really made an effort in the past few years” can now have the opportunity to borrow the money they need to fight the corona crisis without any problems and without any interest surcharge. Altmaier said literally: “The state… we are all part of it. But together, by adhering to the debt brake, by consolidating public finances in recent years, we have created the conditions for us to be able to take money in hand now, for us to be able to temporarily increase government spending significantly in order to save companies, to save jobs, to save the prosperity of this country”. Which, conversely, can only mean that “the others”, who have not done just that, cannot now take money in their hands either, because they have none. They have not created the conditions for saving their economy today. And the German media – how could it be otherwise – have jumped right on this government bandwagon. In a special programme by the German state television station ZDF this week, there was repeated talk of the “weaker” countries in the South and the “economically strong” ones in the North, who are supposed to be liable for the weak. ntv has the effrontery to talk about the “credit addicts” in the South. But also DIE ZEIT says that countries kept afloat by the ECB could “slide into bankruptcy” if interest rates do not remain permanently low. The weak logic of the “strong” “Weak” and “strong” seem to be quasi natural categories. Weak countries are those that have not succeeded in consolidating their national budgets and reducing their public debt since the financial crisis of 2008/2009. And this despite the fact that a country like Italy has made greater efforts to save money than any other European country. “Strong” are those who, like Austria, the Netherlands and Germany, have taken advantage of the “good times” to prepare themselves for an emergency like the present one. All this, to put it bluntly, is the German view, which is narrowed down to a tunnel vision, which has absolutely nothing to do with macroeconomic logic and therefore nothing to do with the reality of European Monetary Union (EMU). At the same time, it is an impressive testament to intellectual poverty. The underlying error is the years of refusal by German policymakers and the mass of the German media to acknowledge the importance and consequences of Germany’s current account surpluses. After all, whether or not it is possible to reduce public deficits depends almost exclusively on whether or not it is possible to build up current account surpluses under present global economic circumstances. It is precisely at this point that there is a logical restriction in the form of a zero-sum game, because not all countries in the world can post current-account surpluses at the same time. Nor can EMU as a whole build up huge current-account surpluses because it would then provoke counter-reactions in the rest of the world, especially in the USA. The euro would appreciate in value and prevent a current-account surplus strategy on the scale that Germany and the Netherlands have been pursuing for years. The very fact that every surplus country necessarily needs deficit countries is a reason why the arrogance of surplus countries is completely out of place. The classification of strong and weak is stupid from the outset. The same logic applies to the argument over competitiveness. People say that the countries in the South have lost competitiveness and pretend that this is all their fault. Anyone who has understood that EMU cannot have persistently large current-account surpluses vis-à-vis the rest of the world also understands how void of any logic is the idea that within EMU all countries could and should have improved their competitiveness. This idea has not become any more logical over the years, even though it has been repeated like a mantra by most German politicians, above all Angela Merkel, and because it was and still is seriously considered an economic strategy for Europe. It is precisely because, for logical reasons, not all EMU members can become more competitive together that the northern members of EMU needed the loss of competitiveness of the southern members, otherwise they would never have been able to increase their own competitiveness so enormously. And how was that possible? Contrary to the economic rules of EMU, the northerners did not increase their wages as much as would have been appropriate in view of the jointly agreed inflation target. If all countries had tried to pursue the same wage restraint policy from the outset, EMU would have been in a deflationary situation much earlier and no country would have improved its competitiveness. The statement about competitiveness (those who increase it are right, those who decrease it are wrong) is therefore just as nonsensical