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Concept and project objective(s)

Concept

The principle of Contraction and Convergence (C&C) (Meyer, 2002) developed in the early 1990’s currently provides a framework for a smooth transition to a low level of greenhouse gas emissions from anthropogenic activity. C&C was visionary in the early 1990’s, underpinning the UN Framework Convention for Climate Change including a 60 Billion Euro Carbon Market (World Bank, 2007), the Clean Development Mechanism and EU Emissions Trading Scheme. More recently, it has been suggested as a follow-up or replacement to the Kyoto Protocol. “C&C has been described as “the buzz word” on every climate change negotiator’s lips ahead of the Climate Summit in Copenhagen in December 2009 (Walker & King, 2007).

C&C is based on the principle that every global citizen has the right to emit an equal per-capita share of ‘carbon’. It suggests that those levels of global emissions that are acceptable to the Earth be estimated, and that this be used to determine how much each country needs to cut back its emissions. Taken out of the frame of greenhouse gas emissions, C&C unites a simple ethical principle of basic human equality with the need for sustainability and suggests the broad outlines of a programme to guide positive future change.

CONVERGE proposes to extend the concept of C&C and its political applications to embrace the sustainability of trade, economics, society, the natural environment, energy, food, governance, wellbeing and consciousness – a new visionary concept for Sustainable Globalisation in the 21st century. ‘New visionary concepts need to be created to enhance the pursuit of sustainable development at a global scale, to respond to policies and international agreements with political commitments already made’ (Millennium Development Goals – Johannesburg, Env. 2008. 4.2.3.1). To differentiate between meanings of C&C, this project’s extended version of C&C will be referred to as ‘convergence’.

The world has already gone a long way to stating that everyone should have political and religious freedom and access to law, health care and education. Convergence embodies the Declaration of Human Rights in its philosophy – fully implemented, the declaration would produce a convergent world (Pontin & Roderick, 2007).
The development of the human race to date has led to a unsustainable situation at global and regional levels. In the past 30 years we have lost a quarter of our productive soils and a third of our forests; 1.8 billion people will reside in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity by 2025 (GEO4, 2007); and demand for oil, gas, water and food is outstripping the capacity of supply. Humankind depends on the environment, which is critical for both development and human well-being (GEO4, 2007).
The challenge CONVERGE proposes to address is how, given the current situation, do we manage and allocate, today, the Earth’s resources for the survival of a projected global population of 9 to 10 billion people in 2050 - and for their offspring indefinitely?
In order to test the extended convergence concept, one of the key tasks will be to develop criteria for what counts as success across the three areas of application: social movements and community sustainability projects; policy communities and stakeholders; measurement and indicator regimes. These criteria will help to determine the evaluation of the different elements of the project.

In tackling this challenge, CONVERGE will employ a functional systems approach to identify the convergent and divergent processes involved across social, economic and ecological aspects of sustainability. N.B. In the systems model, convergence is a negative, controlling feedback whilst divergence can be considered a positive, out of control feedback. Reframing policies using a systems approach defines sustainability as seeking to maintain processes in equilibrium, rather than seeking a steady-state.
CONVERGE will generate an indicative set of indices for convergence which it will use to quantify the levels of convergence achieved by existing processes of convergence, examining their characteristics and strengths to identify where intervention can make them more effective. This will involve an exploration of those processes that lead to ‘malign’ forms of divergence or limit convergence, and the discovery of ways to diminish, eliminate or reverse them. Of particular interest are those new processes that introduce convergence where it does not already exist. The project aims to understand how and where these processes can start, including with the individual, with local community groups, and with businesses. It will also investigate how convergent behaviour can be created and/or supported via policy.

The collection of this information will enable CONVERGE to generate and test a multi-level framework for convergence which can then be used to promote convergence within the three-sector model of CONVERGE’s stakeholders: civil society organisations; governmental and inter-governmental organisations; and business organisations.
The project will make full use of the wide disciplinary base of its participants, many of whom are already working on sustainability in interdisciplinary ways. This skill base will form an invaluable part of the in-team testing and development of the convergence concept, reviewing its coherence against a variety of disciplinary criteria for adequacy of explanation, rigour and appropriate focus. In addition, the project will seek to identify innovative new research agendas and methods to help to address European concerns that ‘European Universities currently face difficulties to generate high standards of cutting-edge research and become powerful catalysts for innovation [...] including when it comes to sustainable development.’ (COM (2006) 208, p81).
The outcomes of this research will not be to suggest more goals, such as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), but to define processes necessary to achieve long-term convergence in order to reach these goals.

Objectives

  1. To develop the concept of convergence across social, economic and ecological systems in the context of globalisation
  2. To test convergence as a framework for holistic indicators
  3. To evaluate how national, EU and international policies and agreements conflict or support processes of convergence, and to test the convergence frame with policy communities and stakeholders
  4. To investigate how different methods of community engagement can contribute towards building sustainable communities in the North and South, and to test the convergence frame with local stakeholders
  5. To identify processes of Convergence through case studies
  6. To use a wide range of disciplines to analyse the results of objectives 1 to 5, and synthesise new understandings into a multi-scale conceptual framework.
  7. To recommend how to integrate Convergence into the internal and external policies of the EU
  8. To communicate and disseminate the findings of CONVERGE to different end-users through a range of media.


We'll be updating this section regularly as the project progresses. Please contact us for more information.