Editorial: Social-Ecological Transformation Conflicts and Left Strategies

Abstract

This issue of PROKLA is dedicated to social conflicts into which the increasing ecological problem pressure translates, and which can thus be understood as socio-ecological transformation conflicts. As a rule, the ecological crisis is not the direct cause of transformation conflicts. Rather, specific ways of processing crisis tendencies and the socially selective passing on of crisis consequences are decisive: Ecological dislocations and reform efforts encounter social contradictions, conflict potentials or already manifest conflicts with which they interact, they combine with unequal class and gender relations, racist discrimination and neo-colonial North-South relations and in this way result in transformation conflicts.

The multifaceted strategies to overcome or contain the ecological crises involve far more than technological measures. Rather, they themselves generate certain burdens, redistributive effects, risks as well as opportunities and are highly contested.