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Business and finance play a key role in advancing the biodiversity and climate agenda. Small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) receive too little attention in the quest. Work by CUSP researchers at Middlesex University shows that it overlooks both the overall economic contribution of SMEs, as well as their environmental impacts.
Speaking to our addiction to productivity, to usefulness, about how this feeds capitalism, colonial violence, environmental destruction and personal burnouts, in this blog Malaika Cunningham argues that rest and slowness might actually be the most important act of resistance we can enact.
For many people, COP27 has left much to be desired. So long as money and profitability are dominating the conversations, Smith Mordak writes, we’re trapped in a Truman Show.
A recent CUSP paper explores how the use of hashtags on Instagram shapes the visibility and recognisability of understandings of the good life in the discursive field created by #goodlife on the platform. This blog provides some reflections.
With the mounting cost of living crisis and environmental challenges affecting rural areas, there is a need to look beyond ‘business as usual’, CUSP researcher Ian Vickers writes, summarising key findings from recent NICRE funded work, exploring rural enterprise across the UK.
The siren call of climate-burning expansion bewitches British politics. More of the same will emerge in the autumn statement, Tim Jackson writes. To all intents and purposes, we’re already living in a post-growth world. And it’s time to take that challenge seriously.
England’s housing strategy will consume our entire carbon budget by 2050—there are alternatives, but they face political and economic barriers.
“It is the fate of most economists that their ideas become dated, however relevant they were to the times in which they lived. Not so with Herman Daly. The pressure of the human economy on the natural world has surpassed what can be sustained.”
In her guest blog, Denise Baden introduces the latest Green Stories anthology No More Fairy Tales—Stories to Save Our Planet, set out to inspire engagement with and action on climate change.
CUSP researcher Malaika Cunningham reflects on The Light Tree Celebrations—a festival marking the end of a three-year project undertaken by The Bare Project and The Canal and River Trust.
SMEs play a key role in transitioning to net zero. In their recent paper, Theresia Harrer and Robyn Owen explore why funding problems are so persistent for early-stage Cleantech ventures. This blog provides a summary of the findings.
A new study for the UK Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), examining the role and potential of public service mutuals as a viable way of delivering public services, has just been published. Dr Ian Vickers is summarising the main findings.
The role and importance of social enterprise has continued to grow as a positive and inclusive response to the multiple economic, societal and environmental challenges of the past decade. A recent report, commissioned by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), examines the sector and identifies its scale in the UK.
Gross domestic product remains the predominant measure of progress across the world, it’s time to change that, write Paul Allin, Diane Coyle and Tim Jackson. Amid the global threats posed by climate change, spiralling energy costs, insecure employment and widening inequality, the need to rethink our notion of progress is now an urgent priority.
To honour this season of harvest, of pickling, of ‘putting up’, CUSP researcher Malaika Cunningham is dedicating the eight blog in her series ‘Collecting Real Utopias’ to celebrate and signpost some of activism and art that is happening in the UK around food justice.
Mainstream politics has long proved resistant to the arguments of those who question the pursuit of unending economic growth. CUSP researcher Richard McNeill Douglas suggests a treatment.
ESG, Socially (Ir)responsible ISAs and the Anthropocene. This essay examines a fragmented financial sector and looks to the concepts of Universal Ownership and Systems Change Investing as a foundation for driving truly sustainable investment
Labour leader Keir Starmer has declared the UK Labour party’s priorities to be “growth, growth and growth”. But what if endless economic growth is not only impossible with our current technological armoury, what if it’s also a living nightmare?
Drawing on their new book on the events of 2020-21, CUSP co-investigator Will Davies, Sahil Jai Dutta, Nick Taylor, and Martina Tazzioli offer a critical account of COVID-19 as a political-economic rupture, exposing underlying power struggles and social injustices.
From the slopes of Mount Kenya to the University of Kansas; from the horror of Nazi Germany to the atrocities of the Vietnam War; from ancient Chinese wisdom to the civil disobedience of a Swedish schoolgirl, in his recent book Post Growth, Tim Jackson wanted to draw together a coherent narrative for our time—a different story from the one we have consigned ourselves to.
Very recently, IPCC lead author Prof Julia Steinberger went to give a climate talk at her old high school in Geneva—and—in her own words—was given a masterclass in our failings. This is the story of a day that shook her up.
The interest in a transition beyond the existing parameters of ‘political reality’ means such research faces significant barriers to influencing policymakers. Discussing findings from his recent report, Richard Douglas explores how ideas from the margins can come to shape policies and cross divides.
A recent CEEDR study showcases small enterprises in the UK fashion industry that implement extended circular economy practices with an aim to influence their customers’ consumptive behaviour. This blog introduces some of the details.
‘Lockdown’ has affected people throughout society in very many different ways. Among all the restrictive measures taken during heights of the pandemic, school closure was by far the worst blow for wellbeing across all UK nations, according to new ONS data.
Whatever the UK government says it’s doing—and not doing—one thing is clear, Tim Jackson writes, the “treasured free-market economy” is never going to compensate for our failure to insulate people’s homes against the cold, and the future against the ravages of climate change.
Research has just started to unpick the positive effect dance can have on cognition. But can it also have other positive effects? In this blog, Michela Vecci and colleagues are introducing their latest transdisciplinary research endeavour exploring the role of dance on wellbeing and productivity.
It is a hard time to write about utopias. It feels frivolous in the face of war—indulgent, meaningless. The failure of utopias though is when we hold on too closely to perfection, and believe that there can only be one version of the world.
The Green Stories project in partnership with BAFTA have launched a new competition to create a short video that raises awareness of the role of fictional role models in promoting sustainable lifestyles, and call out those writers, producers and characters that implicitly promote excessive consumption as an aspiration.
Whitehall’s delivery plans need strengthening, CUSP researcher Richard Douglas writes in this blog, summarising the findings of a recent APPG briefing on the UK Government’s new Outcome Delivery Plans.
A blog and film to account for Malaika Cunningham’s and The Bare Project’s residency at Lyth Arts Centre in Caithness—offering the sketched beginnings of the giants they discovered in their time there.
The term ‘social innovation’ has come to thrive in recent years. A new study is looking at the diverse use of the term in scholarship around sustainability action and tackling biodiversity loss.
This is the sixth blog in the ‘Collecting Real Utopias’ series, which aims to collect, connect, and celebrate arts-based real utopian projects from around the world.
CUSP Director Tim Jackson reflects on the life of and work of the late Thich Nhat Hanh and its relevance for contemporary debates about the meaning of prosperity and power.
Climate assemblies are at the peak of the current deliberative wave, CUSP fellow Graham Smith writes, but much more creative work is needed to integrate these bodies into the political system of policy making and policy cycles more effectively.
Co-operatives as an alternative business model to solely commercial firms are a widely known concept, partly through UK supermarket experiences. But, as Kate Oakley summarises her recent project, there’s much more to the practice of co-ops. Her study shows that the political and ethical meaning is what motivates workers and keeps them going in the long term. Institutional support, however, to maintain a co-op structure against mainstream pressure is often inadequate.
An event held as part of the University of Surrey’s Economic and Social Research Council’s (ESRC) Festival of Social Sciences (FOSS), focussing on the role of independent politics to cultivate a different, more inclusive, less adversarial and potentially greener politics. Here, Amy Burnett is summarising the discussions.