Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability
Encyclopedia
Feasta, the Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability is an organisation based in Ireland
which aims "to identify the characteristics (economic, cultural and environmental) of a truly sustainable society, articulate how the necessary transition can be effected and promote the implementation of the measures required for this purpose". It was founded in Dublin, Ireland
in 1998.
word which means "in the future". Feasta was founded as the result of a week-long workshop given by the economist Richard Douthwaite
in County Kerry
, Ireland, in the course of which attendants decided to establish an organisation to promote sustainability
in Ireland and elsewhere, with an emphasis on the role played by systems in the world economy. Founders of Feasta included retired barrister John Jopling, co-author of Gaian Democracies, architect Emer O'Siochru, and events organiser Davie Philip.
is assumed to be an important component of sustainability.
Bottom-up
Feasta is registered as an educational non-profit, and membership is open to all. According to its website, Feasta tries to operate in as democratic and non-hierarchical a way as possible. Activities have generally been initiated by individual members who were interested in pursuing specific projects. They have often been willing to start working on these projects with little or no funding, using Feasta for support and to make contact with other interested people, with funding only coming later. Feasta employs a Members' Agent, Morag Friel, whose job is to help members get in touch with one another, identify common interests and develop projects.
The Feasta website is interactive, with a forum
section that includes discussions on broad topics such as energy
, food
and land
, as well as ongoing projects such as Cap and Share
. Members can also get in touch with one another via the website. Relevant papers and articles can be uploaded to the forum by members.
Feasta has hosted a large number of sustainability-related events which are open to the public. It has organised several major conferences, covering subjects such as Ireland's transition to renewable energy
, the merits of introducing a land value tax
, third-world debt
and climate change
, and the challenge of sustainable food production
in a world of depleting fossil fuel
. Since its founding it has held an annual lecture each year in Dublin. Past lecturers have included Herman Daly
, David Korten
, Marjorie Kelly and Wolfgang Sachs
.
Feasta has also hosted numerous workshops, courses and discussions. It has frequently collaborated on events with other organisations such as the London-based New Economics Foundation
, Jubilee Research
, Cultivate Centre in Dublin, the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, Trocaire
and CORI (the Conference of Religious in Ireland).
Top-down
Since 1999, Feasta has made a series of submissions and reports to governmental bodies in Ireland and the UK on topics ranging from financial system reform to rural housing. It ran a series of seminars entitled "Converging Crises: Policy Responses" in the summer of 2008 that was also aimed at policymakers, although the general public were welcome to attend.
Feasta has received funding from the Irish Environmental Protection Agency for a number of projects, ongoing ones (as of late 2008) consisting of research into carbon sinks and cycles and "smart taxes". The Irish government is currently considering the adoption of Cap and Share, an approach to addressing climate change which was developed by Feasta, to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions from transport
.
Since 2005, Feasta has expanded into multimedia production. Videos of Feasta lectures and of many other Feasta events are available for free download from its website.
carbon market mechanism for reducing emissions in the large chunk of the economy -road transport
- not subject to the EU emissions trading scheme. Under cap and share, emission permits to cover fossil fuel
usage would be issued free and equally to all consumers, but limited to an overall cap that would reduce over time. Consumers would sell their permits to oil and companies, which would be required to purchase permits to cover the emissions associated with all fuels they sold.
The aim of the Smart Tax Network is to research, design, develop and adapt fiscal and market-based mechanisms to increase environmental, social and economic sustainability in Ireland.
The mechanisms with which the Network concerns itself will, amongst other things, be designed to address climate change, develop national and local resilience, foster biological, cultural and economic diversity, and foster justice and equality.
The primary role of the Network is to research and devise tools for policymakers and to engage in the policy making process. In particular, it will contribute to and liaise with the Commission on Taxation.
The core areas being examined by the CCSN include:
1. The best management practices and technologies to reduce or eliminate the release of greenhouse gas emissions from damaged peat bogs.
2. The best management practices to increase the carbon content of forests, hedgerows, scrub, arable and pasture land.
3. The best management practices and technologies to reduce nitrous oxide emissions from fertilizer use and the development of policies to substantially reduce nitrous oxides and other gases from tillage land and to reward farmers for using these new practises.
4. Study of the greenhouse gas emissions from slurry storage and ways of reducing them by adopting technologies such as anaerobic digestion to capture methane for energy and organic fertilizer.
5. The best ways of measuring soil carbon, establishing a baseline for later comparison with various agricultural practices or additions of amendments such as compost, biochar and/or microbial innoculations.
The aim of the Liquidity Network is to address the Irish national liquidity problem - the slow down in economic activity triggered by the credit crunch.
Currently virtually all economic activity is powered by debt based credit - individuals and businesses borrow in order to finance their activities. Using the credit released by these loans they employ or do business with other individuals/ businesses who in turn do business with their suppliers and so on. There is thus a multiplier effect whereby the initial credit fuels transactions worth many times more than the value of the initial loan.
When the ’seed’ credit from banks dries up, as in the current crisis, the multiplier effect which normally helps to create liquidity efficiently acts in the reverse way and removes liquidity quickly.
FEASTA’s Liquidity Network aims to address this problem by creating an alternative ‘liquidity stream’ which is not based on debt.
The Feasta Liquidity Network group is hoping to launch the world's first debt-free electronic currency in County Kilkenny early in 2010.
Republic of Ireland
Ireland , described as the Republic of Ireland , is a sovereign state in Europe occupying approximately five-sixths of the island of the same name. Its capital is Dublin. Ireland, which had a population of 4.58 million in 2011, is a constitutional republic governed as a parliamentary democracy,...
which aims "to identify the characteristics (economic, cultural and environmental) of a truly sustainable society, articulate how the necessary transition can be effected and promote the implementation of the measures required for this purpose". It was founded in Dublin, Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
in 1998.
History
The name "feasta" is an IrishIrish language
Irish , also known as Irish Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now spoken as a first language by a minority of Irish people, as well as being a second language of a larger proportion of...
word which means "in the future". Feasta was founded as the result of a week-long workshop given by the economist Richard Douthwaite
Richard Douthwaite
Richard Douthwaite was a British economist, ecologist, campaigner and writer living in Ireland. He died of cancer at his home in Cloona, near Westport, Co. Mayo....
in County Kerry
County Kerry
Kerry means the "people of Ciar" which was the name of the pre-Gaelic tribe who lived in part of the present county. The legendary founder of the tribe was Ciar, son of Fergus mac Róich. In Old Irish "Ciar" meant black or dark brown, and the word continues in use in modern Irish as an adjective...
, Ireland, in the course of which attendants decided to establish an organisation to promote sustainability
Sustainability
Sustainability is the capacity to endure. For humans, sustainability is the long-term maintenance of well being, which has environmental, economic, and social dimensions, and encompasses the concept of union, an interdependent relationship and mutual responsible position with all living and non...
in Ireland and elsewhere, with an emphasis on the role played by systems in the world economy. Founders of Feasta included retired barrister John Jopling, co-author of Gaian Democracies, architect Emer O'Siochru, and events organiser Davie Philip.
Philosophy
Feasta sees itself as promoting the coming, and necessary, transition to sustainable economic systems, including a sustainable financial system, transport system and food production system. The organisation uses the tagline "designing systems for a sustainable future". Social justiceSocial justice
Social justice generally refers to the idea of creating a society or institution that is based on the principles of equality and solidarity, that understands and values human rights, and that recognizes the dignity of every human being. The term and modern concept of "social justice" was coined by...
is assumed to be an important component of sustainability.
Activities
Since its inception, Feasta's attitude has been that sustainability needs to be explored and promoted both by the public in general and by policy-makers in particular. So it has simultaneously taken a "bottom-up" and a "top-down" approach to its activities.Bottom-up
Feasta is registered as an educational non-profit, and membership is open to all. According to its website, Feasta tries to operate in as democratic and non-hierarchical a way as possible. Activities have generally been initiated by individual members who were interested in pursuing specific projects. They have often been willing to start working on these projects with little or no funding, using Feasta for support and to make contact with other interested people, with funding only coming later. Feasta employs a Members' Agent, Morag Friel, whose job is to help members get in touch with one another, identify common interests and develop projects.
The Feasta website is interactive, with a forum
Internet forum
An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are at least temporarily archived...
section that includes discussions on broad topics such as energy
Energy
In physics, energy is an indirectly observed quantity. It is often understood as the ability a physical system has to do work on other physical systems...
, food
Food
Food is any substance consumed to provide nutritional support for the body. It is usually of plant or animal origin, and contains essential nutrients, such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, or minerals...
and land
Land (economics)
In economics, land comprises all naturally occurring resources whose supply is inherently fixed. Examples are any and all particular geographical locations, mineral deposits, and even geostationary orbit locations and portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. Natural resources are fundamental to...
, as well as ongoing projects such as Cap and Share
Cap and Share
Cap and Share was originally developed by Feasta and is a regulatory and economic framework for controlling the use of fossil fuels in relation to climate stabilisation...
. Members can also get in touch with one another via the website. Relevant papers and articles can be uploaded to the forum by members.
Feasta has hosted a large number of sustainability-related events which are open to the public. It has organised several major conferences, covering subjects such as Ireland's transition to renewable energy
Renewable energy
Renewable energy is energy which comes from natural resources such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides, and geothermal heat, which are renewable . About 16% of global final energy consumption comes from renewables, with 10% coming from traditional biomass, which is mainly used for heating, and 3.4% from...
, the merits of introducing a land value tax
Land value tax
A land value tax is a levy on the unimproved value of land. It is an ad valorem tax on land that disregards the value of buildings, personal property and other improvements...
, third-world debt
Developing countries' debt
The debt of developing countries is external debt incurred by governments of developing countries, generally in quantities beyond the governments' political ability to repay...
and climate change
Global warming
Global warming refers to the rising average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans and its projected continuation. In the last 100 years, Earth's average surface temperature increased by about with about two thirds of the increase occurring over just the last three decades...
, and the challenge of sustainable food production
Sustainable agriculture
Sustainable agriculture is the practice of farming using principles of ecology, the study of relationships between organisms and their environment...
in a world of depleting fossil fuel
Fossil fuel
Fossil fuels are fuels formed by natural processes such as anaerobic decomposition of buried dead organisms. The age of the organisms and their resulting fossil fuels is typically millions of years, and sometimes exceeds 650 million years...
. Since its founding it has held an annual lecture each year in Dublin. Past lecturers have included Herman Daly
Herman Daly
Herman Daly is an American ecological economist and professor at the School of Public Policy of University of Maryland, College Park in the United States....
, David Korten
David Korten
David C. Korten is an American economist, author, and former Professor of the Harvard Business School, political activist and prominent critic of corporate globalization, "by training and inclination a student of psychology and behavioral systems". His best-known publication is When Corporations...
, Marjorie Kelly and Wolfgang Sachs
Wolfgang Sachs
-Wolfgang Sachs:Wolfgang Sachs is a researcher, writer and university teacher in the field of environment, development, and globalization.He studied sociology and Catholic theology in Munich, Tübingen and Berkeley...
.
Feasta has also hosted numerous workshops, courses and discussions. It has frequently collaborated on events with other organisations such as the London-based New Economics Foundation
New Economics Foundation
The New Economics Foundation is a British think-tank.NEF was founded in 1986 by the leaders of The Other Economic Summit with the aim of working for a "new model of wealth creation, based on equality, diversity and economic stability"....
, Jubilee Research
Jubilee 2000
Jubilee 2000 was an international coalition movement in over 40 countries that called for cancellation of third world debt by the year 2000. This movement coincided with the Great Jubilee, the celebration of the year 2000 in the Catholic Church...
, Cultivate Centre in Dublin, the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, Trocaire
Trócaire
Trócaire is an Irish non governmental organization development agency. The charity is registered in the Republic of Ireland under Irish Charity No...
and CORI (the Conference of Religious in Ireland).
Top-down
Since 1999, Feasta has made a series of submissions and reports to governmental bodies in Ireland and the UK on topics ranging from financial system reform to rural housing. It ran a series of seminars entitled "Converging Crises: Policy Responses" in the summer of 2008 that was also aimed at policymakers, although the general public were welcome to attend.
Feasta has received funding from the Irish Environmental Protection Agency for a number of projects, ongoing ones (as of late 2008) consisting of research into carbon sinks and cycles and "smart taxes". The Irish government is currently considering the adoption of Cap and Share, an approach to addressing climate change which was developed by Feasta, to reduce greenhouse gas
Greenhouse gas
A greenhouse gas is a gas in an atmosphere that absorbs and emits radiation within the thermal infrared range. This process is the fundamental cause of the greenhouse effect. The primary greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere are water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone...
emissions from transport
Transport
Transport or transportation is the movement of people, cattle, animals and goods from one location to another. Modes of transport include air, rail, road, water, cable, pipeline, and space. The field can be divided into infrastructure, vehicles, and operations...
.
Publications
- Cap and Share: A Fair Way To Cut Greenhouse Emissions 2008
- Living In The Cracks: A Look at Rural Social Enterprises in Britain and the Czech Republic 2005
- Feasta Review 2: Growth, the Celtic Cancer 2004
- Before the Wells Run Dry: Ireland's Transition to Renewable Energy 2003
- Feasta Review 1 2001
Since 2005, Feasta has expanded into multimedia production. Videos of Feasta lectures and of many other Feasta events are available for free download from its website.
Cap and Share
FEASTA has proposed a Cap and ShareCap and Share
Cap and Share was originally developed by Feasta and is a regulatory and economic framework for controlling the use of fossil fuels in relation to climate stabilisation...
carbon market mechanism for reducing emissions in the large chunk of the economy -road transport
Road transport
Road transport or road transportation is transport on roads of passengers or goods. A hybrid of road transport and ship transport is the historic horse-drawn boat.-History:...
- not subject to the EU emissions trading scheme. Under cap and share, emission permits to cover fossil fuel
Fossil fuel
Fossil fuels are fuels formed by natural processes such as anaerobic decomposition of buried dead organisms. The age of the organisms and their resulting fossil fuels is typically millions of years, and sometimes exceeds 650 million years...
usage would be issued free and equally to all consumers, but limited to an overall cap that would reduce over time. Consumers would sell their permits to oil and companies, which would be required to purchase permits to cover the emissions associated with all fuels they sold.
Smart Tax Network
In September 2008 Feasta was awarded multi-annual funding from the Irish Department of the Environment for this project and the Carbon Cycles and Sinks project (see below).The aim of the Smart Tax Network is to research, design, develop and adapt fiscal and market-based mechanisms to increase environmental, social and economic sustainability in Ireland.
The mechanisms with which the Network concerns itself will, amongst other things, be designed to address climate change, develop national and local resilience, foster biological, cultural and economic diversity, and foster justice and equality.
The primary role of the Network is to research and devise tools for policymakers and to engage in the policy making process. In particular, it will contribute to and liaise with the Commission on Taxation.
Carbon Cycles and Sinks
The purpose of the Carbon Cycles and Sinks project is to develop policies which will enable the Irish land mass to become a carbon sink rather than a source of greenhouse emissions. This project is led by Richard Douthwaite, and Corinna Byrne is project coordinator and lead researcher.The core areas being examined by the CCSN include:
1. The best management practices and technologies to reduce or eliminate the release of greenhouse gas emissions from damaged peat bogs.
2. The best management practices to increase the carbon content of forests, hedgerows, scrub, arable and pasture land.
3. The best management practices and technologies to reduce nitrous oxide emissions from fertilizer use and the development of policies to substantially reduce nitrous oxides and other gases from tillage land and to reward farmers for using these new practises.
4. Study of the greenhouse gas emissions from slurry storage and ways of reducing them by adopting technologies such as anaerobic digestion to capture methane for energy and organic fertilizer.
5. The best ways of measuring soil carbon, establishing a baseline for later comparison with various agricultural practices or additions of amendments such as compost, biochar and/or microbial innoculations.
Liquidity Network
Richard Douthwaite and others are volunteering on this project - unfunded as of August 2009.The aim of the Liquidity Network is to address the Irish national liquidity problem - the slow down in economic activity triggered by the credit crunch.
Currently virtually all economic activity is powered by debt based credit - individuals and businesses borrow in order to finance their activities. Using the credit released by these loans they employ or do business with other individuals/ businesses who in turn do business with their suppliers and so on. There is thus a multiplier effect whereby the initial credit fuels transactions worth many times more than the value of the initial loan.
When the ’seed’ credit from banks dries up, as in the current crisis, the multiplier effect which normally helps to create liquidity efficiently acts in the reverse way and removes liquidity quickly.
FEASTA’s Liquidity Network aims to address this problem by creating an alternative ‘liquidity stream’ which is not based on debt.
The Feasta Liquidity Network group is hoping to launch the world's first debt-free electronic currency in County Kilkenny early in 2010.