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Hervé Corvellec.

Hervé Corvellec

Professor

Hervé Corvellec.

Resourcification : A Non-Essentialist Theory of Resources for Sustainable Development

Author

  • Hervé Corvellec
  • Johan Hultman
  • Anne Jerneck
  • Johan Ekroos
  • Susanne Arvidsson
  • Niklas Wahlberg
  • Timothy Luke

Summary, in English

Overuse of resources is accelerating today’s negative trends in climate change, ecosystem destruction, and biodiversity loss. The ultimate result is contemporary human societies are reaching or exceeding the limits of planetary boundaries. It is therefore imperative to articulate a new theoretical understanding of resources and the ethical, political and environmental conditions of their use. In this article, we introduce a radical departure from existing paradigms, which treat resources as having fixed essential qualities usually ready-to-exploit by anyone who finds them, to a non-essentialist theory of how resources never exist in this fashion as such. Instead, they come into being as the result of social processes. We label this approach resourcification. This shift offers a new theoretical platform for developing a post-sustainability understanding of the relationships of humans to humans, to other living creatures, and to the physical environment, which is more suited to meet the challenges of working with the sustainable development goals in the Anthropocene.

Department/s

  • Department of Service Studies
  • LUCSUS (Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies)
  • Centre for Environmental and Climate Science (CEC)
  • BECC: Biodiversity and Ecosystem services in a Changing Climate
  • Accounting and Corporate Finance
  • Systematic Biology Group
  • Biological Museum

Publishing year

2021

Language

English

Pages

1249-1256

Publication/Series

Sustainable Development

Volume

29

Issue

6

Full text

Document type

Article

Publisher

John Wiley & Sons Inc.

Topic

  • Other Social Sciences
  • Ecology (including Biodiversity Conservation)

Keywords

  • Anthropocene
  • Genes
  • Labor
  • Resources
  • Waste
  • SDG 15 - Life on Land
  • SDG 14 - Life Below Water
  • SDG 1 - No Poverty
  • SDG 7 - Affordable and Clean Energy
  • SDG 13 - Climate Action
  • SDG 12 - Responsible Consumption and Production
  • SDG 2 - Zero Hunger
  • SDG 11 - Sustainable Cities and Communities
  • SDG 16 - Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions

Status

Published

Project

  • Resourcification - Theme, Pufendorf IAS
  • Service Studies Sustainability

Research group

  • Systematic Biology Group

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 0968-0802