GeNECA - Fair sustainable development based on the capability approach

The project GeNECA aims at conceptualizing sustainable development on the basis of the Capability Approach so as to combine the issues of inter- and intragenerational justice drawing on an integrated understanding of social, economic and environmental development. Resuming the spirit of the Brundtland commission, GeNECA puts the needs and capabilities of people all over the world, now and in future into its focus.

On the basis of conceptual analyses, a set of indicators for sustainable human development (SHD) is to be proposed and tested and case studies on various areas of governance will be used to prove its usefulness in decision processes. Besides conceptual inputs, main IAW contributions include such governance case studies. First, building on Public Choice theory, opportunities, problems and limitations of politically operationalizing economically efficient intra- and intergenerational sustainability will be critically assessed. Second, potentials and challenges will be discussed that result of the new role of transnational corporations as political and social actors within multi-stakeholder settings that are of growing importance in times of political "governance gaps". Based on this analysis, impacts of transnational corporations on sustainable human development will be assessed from a capability perspective. GeNECA is a 3 years research project funded by the German ministry of education and research as part of the funding programme "Economics for Sustainability".