Dirk Holemans

Dirk Holemans is coordinator of the Belgian Green think-tank Oikos and co-president of the Green European Foundation. His most recent book is Freedom & Security in a Complex World (2017, GEF).

Articles

10.05.2022
Just Transition Is About Systemic Change

Examining how Just Transition could be the key to tackling intersecting crises of environmental breakdown, social injustice, and global inequality.

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16.04.2020
Resilience Under Shock: Time for a Paradigm Shift

Faced with the systemic shock of the coronavirus crisis, the guiding principle for recovery should be resilience.

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11.03.2020
Emancipation in the Neoliberal Era: Rethinking Transition with Karl Polanyi

After 40 years of neoliberalism tearing at the social fabric, what form will the 21st-century counter-movement take?

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05.04.2019
A New Social Contract for the 21st Century

From climate change to robotisation, the challenges of the 21st century call for a new model of democracy. Dirk Holemans explores what a new social contract might look like.

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25.11.2017
The City Taking the Commons to Heart

Ghent is the first city in the world to enjoy a commons expert to enshrine cooperation and communal ownership into its very structures.

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28.11.2016
Institutional Diversity for Resilient Societies

A third option to management by the state or the market is explored: management by autonomous citizens.

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18.10.2016
Promoting the Interrail-Pass, yet Banning the Night Train?

The idea of a free interrail pass for every EU citizen on their 18th birthday to explore Europe’s diversity is enticing. However the EU’s emphasis on liberalisation is leading to the loss of night trains.

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29.09.2015
The politics of sufficiency: A new approach to ecological production

The ecological production project of the Green European Foundation (ECOPRO) centralises its focus on the development of sustainable green technologies in a post-growth society.

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17.08.2015
Piketty’s Missing Ecological Link

While providing valuable insights about the development of our economic system over time, Thomas Piketty’s work on capital suffers from a critical flaw: like so many economic frameworks, it ignores the limits of the finite resources of our planet – the fact that our ecological capital is rapidly running out. A new unit of measurement which takes this into account is urgently needed.

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16.04.2015
Sharing is Not Always Sharing

At first glance, sharing initiatives would appear to be important elements for building an economy based on solidarity and sustainability. Yet, these different models of sharing do not generate the same societal and financial return. Some of them, such as Uber, are forms of ‘sharewashing’. In fact, Uber’s business model, financed by Goldman Sachs, is at the polar opposite of sharing.

EN
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01.08.2014
Every Vote Counts: Social Themes on the Political Agenda

In Belgium voting is compulsory. Nevertheless, more and more people choose not to vote.

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01.10.2013
Cities as Eco-factories of the Future

As the world rapidly continues to urbanise, cities will have to play a progressively greater role in the move towards a low carbon economy. By working towards the creation of a closed circular economy and a slow economy cities could be well placed to lead the transition.

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08.03.2013
Looking the Gift Horse in the Mouth

What and how we eat has a profound impact on our culture, but changes in recent decades have profoundly changed our relationship with food, and not for the better. What are the costs of these changes, and can they be reversed?

EN
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