Giuseppe Feola discusses bottom-up approaches to sustainability at GeoHouse debate

7 October 2020

The Geosciences Honours College organized the Geohouse: Bottom-up and top-down approaches to sustainability: strengths and weaknesses

Dr. Giuseppe Feola and Dr. Rakhyun Kim debated the strengths and weaknesses of bottom-up and top-down approaches to sustainability. How can we achieve a sustainable society?

Dr. Giuseppe Feola, Associate professor of Social Change for Sustainability, Faculty of Geosciences

With a growing body of evidence on human activity induced changes to the Earth’s ecosystems, and national and international governance regimes faltering, bottom-up civil society initiatives have gained growing attention. Initiatives for the commons, community supported agriculture, community energy, seed banks, local exchange systems (e.g., time banks) and other civil society initiatives are often seen as promising cases of change towards sustainability. However, the academic and policy debate is too often skewed towards either enthusiastic accounts of ‘viral’ diffusion of such bottom-up ‘solutions’, or marginalizing representations of these initiatives as insignificant in the context of societal challenges. My intervention will provide a critical perspective on the achievements and the limitations of bottom-up civil society initiatives: what is their role in societal transition towards sustainability?

Dr. Rakhyun E. Kim, Assistant professor of Global Environmental Governance, Faculty of Geosciences

Sustainability transitions require both innovation and direction. New ideas and solutions often come from individuals working on the ground. But such bottom-up initiatives cannot, by themselves, ensure that they will scale up or add up to a net positive impact towards sustainability. This is my basis for arguing why some sort of top-down steering, or institutional hierarchy, is also necessary. Such a top-down approach is readily found in the domestic context where government-led law and policy making takes place. However, international politics works largely through interstate bargaining between sovereign states, and has so far failed to provide clear directionality for both local and global actions. My intervention will discuss some of the existing examples of top-down steering mechanisms in global governance, and highlight where the gaps are and what could be done to fill these gaps.