Eco-Social Contracts for Sustainable and Just Futures: Mobilising Collective Power to Deal with the 21st Century Polycrisis

Synopsis:

Eco-Social Contracts for Sustainable and Just Futures is a groundbreaking volume

that reimagines how societies can respond to the interwoven crises of our

time: climate collapse, biodiversity loss, widening inequality, and the erosion

of public trust and democratic legitimacy. At its heart lies a fundamental realisation

that can no longer be ignored: the social contract has been broken for

billions of people, and with it, the bonds between people, planet, and power

must be rewoven.

Grounded in diverse knowledge systems, from Indigenous cosmologies and

feminist and care-based economics to regenerative development and post-growth

thought, this book presents eco-social contracts as a bold and transformative

vision for systemic renewal. Far more than policy tools, these contracts

serve as a compass for profound cultural and institutional change, what

Joanna Macy has described as hospicing the old systems that no longer serve

life, while midwiving new ones rooted in care, reciprocity, and collective

flourishing.

With contributions from leading scholars, policymakers, practitioners, artists,

and activists across the globe, the volume bridges theory and practice to

illuminate how communities are already advancing inclusive, regenerative,

and dignity-affirming

alternatives. Whether addressing food or climate justice,

rethinking democracy, or embedding the Rights of Nature into law, each

chapter offers a window into the transformations already underway, and the

deeper shifts they call forth.

Increasingly recognised by the UN, global assessments such as the IPBES

Transformative Change Assessment, and by a growing international community

of civil society leaders, youth movements, and NGOs, eco-social contracts

call for renewed solidarity, systemic equity across generations and communities, inclusive governance, and a fundamental transformation of

economic systems. They challenge dominant economic logics and call for a

reimagining of economies not as engines of extraction, destruction, and

inequality, but as systems in the service of life, supporting people, planet, and

the more-than-human world.

This vision moves beyond GDP and consumption as measures of progress.

It centres relational, ecological, and cultural understandings of broad and

shared prosperity. It honours the intrinsic value of natural systems, cultural

lifeways, and all living beings, refusing to reduce life to metrics of utility or

profit. It is a call for regeneration, rebalancing, and reweaving, where equity,

dignity, and ecological integrity guide how we live and what we value.

This timely and courageous book captures the growing global momentum

towards societal transformation. It offers both hopeful inspiration and hard-won

lessons on unlocking collective agency in an age of ecological breakdown

and social fragmentation.

For changemakers, students, and all those seeking hope, direction, and

clarity in a time of global uncertainty, this book is both a call to action and a

guide for transformation—inviting readers to imagine and co-create sustainable

and just futures our hearts and minds know are possible.

Click here to access the full book.