Social–Ecological Transitions Seminar

The SET (Social-Ecological Transitions) initiative aims to encourage collaboration between researchers working at the intersection of social and environmental issues, beyond disciplinary or institutional boundaries.

Organisers

Anne-Laure Beaussier (CSO), Éloi Laurent (OFCE), Mattéo Mandelli (LIEPP), Bruno Palier (CEE), Aurore Fransolet (ULB/OFCE), Tom Chevalier (CEE)

Description

The social issues associated with ecological transitions (climate, biodiversity, ecosystems, resources) are becoming increasingly central to academic publications and public policy at all levels of government. On the academic side, a growing number of publications and projects are addressing the issues of inequality and environmental degradation (Chancel, 2022; Laurent, 2022) and highlight the potential distributional, social and political issues that may arise from policies to reduce CO2 emissions, adapt to and protect against more frequent and severe environmental hazards, as well as the inequalities produced by climate policies (Boyce, 2018). The regressive potential of compensation and insurance, mitigation and adaptation policies, such as carbon taxes (Zachmann et al., 2018), is receiving increasing attention as the social risks associated with such policies become apparent, not only for low-income households but also for those "just above ‘ (Beaussier, Chevalier, Palier 2024). This work has recently fuelled heated debates on ’just transition" policies (Garcia-Garcia et al., 2022; Bauler et al. 2021) that could reconcile environmental protection and social well-being, highlighting the need to align climate and social policies (Duit, Feindt and Meadowcroft, 2016; Gough, 2016), striving to define a ‘sustainable welfare state’ (Büchs, 2021; Hirvilammi et al., 2023) or even a ‘social-ecological state’ (Laurent, 2024) in which ‘eco-social policies’ (Mandelli, 2022) would be implemented.

In terms of public policy, the need to reconcile ecological transition and social justice is now obvious, particularly in the European context. At a time when protests against climate policies are on the rise, as seen in the farmers' protests in France, but also in Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Italy and Greece, where populist movements are making their opposition to climate policies a key electoral issue, the challenge is to devise new socio-ecological policies capable of radically renewing the European democratic project, now under the aegis of the ‘Green Deal’.

In this new context, the SET initiative aims to be a platform for research and debate on the issues, costs and social risks associated with ecological crises and damage, and the policies implemented in France, Europe and internationally to limit their scale. SET is based on a now widely shared observation: the environmental transition is in reality a pluralistic socio-ecological transition.

This interdisciplinary initiative brings together four scientific laboratories: the Centre for the Sociology of Organisations (CSO), the Centre for European Studies (CEE), the Interdisciplinary Laboratory for the Evaluation of Public Policies (LIEPP) and the French Economic Observatory (OFCE). It also collaborates with AIRE and the Institute for the Environment at Sciences Po. It aims to bring together and promote cooperation between researchers from various disciplines (economics, environmental humanities, political science, sociology, etc.), while remaining open to researchers from other institutions, professionals and experts involved in political debates on just transitions. The aim is to encourage joint reflection, advance our knowledge and understanding of the social issues related to socio-ecological transitions, and raise the profile of social science research on socio-ecological transitions in French and international academic and political forums.

Publications

• Aurore Fransolet and Éloi Laurent, Mapping and Institutionalizing Social-Ecological Inequalities for a Just Transition in Europe, Sciences Po OFCE Working Paper, n° 16/2024/SET Papers n° 1
• Boyce, J.K., Inequality and the Environment, World Inequality Lab GiRA Lecture Series, 2024/01 / SET Papers n° 2 
• Matteo Mandelli, Anne-Laure Beaussier, Tom Chevalier, Bruno Palier, Defining, Operationalizing and Classifying Socio-Ecological Risks, Sciences Po LIEPP Working Paper n°170, 2024-11-26 / SET Papers n°3
• Vielle P., Fransolet A., Laurent É., Armeni C., Henet S., Bauler T., Lamine A., et Dorssemont F. (2025) Building a social-ecological protection for Belgium. SET Papers n°4.
• Éloi Laurent, La Ville du Bien-être, Sciences Po OFCE Working Paper, n° 02/2026/SET Papers n°5 (2026)

Upcoming events

• June 2026 - Understanding and Managing Social-ecological Risks

This workshop seeks to promote an interdisciplinary discussion on social-ecological, and thus to respond to the following questions: What are the ecological and social risks of our time? Who is at risk? How are ecological issues and policies reshaping the nature and distribution of social risks? How are welfare states protecting against social-ecological risks and contributing to social-ecological transitions? Are there new policies to be developed to cope with social-ecological risks?

Past events

• 21 November 2024 SET, Sciences Po, Eco Welfare - Towards a just transition in France: employment, work and environmental transitions

As part of a series of round tables organised by Sciences Po's SET (Social and Ecological Transitions) initiative, in collaboration with the Sustainable Welfare & Eco-social Policy Network, with a view to establishing a Fair Transitions Observatory (OTJ), we wish to bring together experts and actors involved in the transition to discuss the theme of jobs and work in the era of environmental transition. We sometimes talk about green jobs, but what kind of jobs are we talking about? What is their quality? Shouldn't we rather talk about greening jobs? More generally, we might ask ourselves how we can make work more environmentally friendly.

• 18 June 2024 SET, LIEPP, CEE - PhD workshop ‘Social and ecological policies: finding common grounds’

The workshop seeks to engage PhD students across Sciences Po and Université Paris Cité in exploring the multifaceted relationships between social and ecological challenges and policies, encouraging a synthesis of ideas that can pave the way for equitable and sustainable futures.

• 15 May 2024 SET, Sustainable Welfare and Eco-social Policy Network

Round table on Just Transition in France.

• 25 April 2024, Sustainable Welfare and Eco-social Policy Network

Study day on the social-ecological aspect of the European Green Deal, organised jointly with the Sustainable Welfare and Eco-social Policy Network. Bringing together European researchers who are highly regarded in current academic debates (Katharina Bohnenberger, Ian Gough, Max Koch, Pierre Charbonier, Adeline Otto, Katharina Zimmermann, Amandine Crespy, Ekaterina Domorenok, Benedetta Cotta) and speakers from the European Commission, the European Parliament and the ETUC, the aim will be to discuss theoretical perspectives on sustainable welfare and eco-social policies beyond growth, political conflicts related to environmental and social policies, and the socio-ecological dimension of the European Green Deal, highlighting its potential and shortcomings.

• 24 April 2024 SET/MIRE study day to launch the programme ‘Rethinking social protection in the light of environmental crises’ led by MIRE.

MIRE speakers will present their new research programme aimed at examining forms of social protection in the context of major environmental crises (climate, biodiversity, pollution, etc.), which led to a call for research projects in spring 2023. The seven selected teams will present their projects and discuss their progress and avenues for analysis.

• 5 April 2024, Lecture by James Boyce

James Boyce will receive the GiRA Prize and give an overview of his work, 30 years after the publication of ‘Inequality as a cause of environmental degradation’. The lecture will be introduced by Lucas Chancel and Éloi Laurent and will be organised in partnership with the World Inequality Lab.

• 7 February 2024, SET inaugural session

SET inaugural session bringing together researchers identified as conducting research on these issues (Pierre Charbonnier (CEE), Sophie Dubuisson Quellier (CSO), Charlotte Halpern (CEE),

Joost De Moor (CEE), Mattieu Saujot (IDDRI), Éloi Laurent (OFCE), Bruno Palier (CEE), Matteo Mandelli (LIEPP) and Anne-Laure Beaussier (CSO).

Based on two presentations providing an overview of research on eco-social policies (M. Mandelli) and a review of the work of the High Committee for Just Transition set up by the Belgian federal government (A. Fransolet), the aim was to discuss an agenda and common interdisciplinary research avenues on the social challenges of socio-ecological transitions.