The missing piece: co-operatives´ significance in sustainability transitions

The environmental and social crises such as climate change and increasing inequality have arisen calls for sustainability transitions in our economic system. Academy research fellow Taneli Vaskelainen from Ruralia Institute leads the project SUSTRACOOP, which examines the role of cooperatives in inhibiting and promoting these sustainability transitions. Below, he features three reasons why cooperative sustainability should be researched.

First – many societal stakeholders consider cooperatives as sustainable

The UN has emphasized the role of cooperatives in the and the International Labor Organization has described cooperatives as an . Also, when researchers present visions of future economic systems that are more equitable and environmentally sustainable, they perceive that cooperatives have a key role to play in implementing these systems.

The media often raises cooperatives to the fore as a potential solution for the ills of hypercapitalism. For example, worker cooperatives have been suggested as a , to empower gig workers, who are often vulnerable to exploitation by the gig platform companies.

Secondly – Cooperatives have proven their capability to scale

Cooperatives are sometimes referred to as an, because they have a vast economic effect without people realizing it. The International Cooperative Alliance has , that 12% of the world population are members in one of the world´s three million cooperatives and these organizations employ 10% of the world´s employing population.

Thirdly – we know very little of cooperative sustainability

Based on the above, as a sustainable and scalable form of organizing cooperatives could seemingly provide a major solution to sustainability transitions. However, there is very little scientific research cooperative sustainability. While some researchers have touched upon the subject, existing studies are based on snapshots of individual sectors and very short time periods. Therefore, they cannot take a clear stand on how cooperatives can contribute to sustainability transitions.

The SUSTRACOOP project aims to bring nuance in understanding cooperative sustainability. The working hypothesis holds that cooperatives can, indeed, often instill some positive sustainability outcomes (e.g., economic democracy and decreased inequality) better than other organizational forms. However, cooperatives are not perceived as a panacea and in SUSTRACOOP, we also look at cooperatives critically to consider whether these organizations tend to perform poorly with regards to some sustainability goals.