I found this book while looking for anarchist literature regarding approaches to economics that consider ecosystems and non-human animals as actors with needs. Initially, I was quite enthusiastic about having found something with this combination of topics. I was also happy to read that Jakobsen, as a (former) professor of Ecological Economics, is giving anarchism some visibility in one of the science bubbles.
Jakobsen confirms that to tackle problems like the gap between rich and poor and the climate crisis, a system change is needed. He also states that many researchers agree that there is a positive correlation between economic growth on the one side and environmental harm, as well as an increasing wealth inequality on the other side. He thus concludes that we need qualitative development with the needs of humans and ecosystems in mind instead of quantitative growth. The book explains the difference between green economics and ecological economics: Green economics suggests reforms like carbon a tax that try to improve the symptoms but don't question the system of capitalism and unlimited economic growth. Ecological economies on the other hand, is a transdisciplinary research field that suggests changing to diverse ideas of degrowth systems. Not all ecological economics researchers would suggest anarchist economics, but Jakobsen does. He claims that there are many similarities between anarchism and ecological economics. E.g., he writes that they both “ask questions that fall outside the ideas dominating the current society” and that they both want to overcome capitalism.
I agree with Jakobson's view of anarchism as requiring both freedom and solidarity, also including responsibility. He also notices that the requirement of responsibility might be the reason why people fear freedom. I also agree on the importance of prefigurative and anti-militarist practices. What I'm not a fan of is that the parts of the book that are on anarchism are full of quotes, even quoting quotes from other authors and feel a bit unstructured and wild. Related to this, Jakobson also uses a very wide range of people he calls “anarchists”, including people who promoted racist views.
Jakobsen mentions some common patterns between anarchists from various currents and fails to mention their differences. (It is noticeable that Jakobsen is also into philosophy - the book often stays a bit abstract, talking about concepts and ideas rather than concrete practices.) Especially as this book is on economics, it's disappointing to read only about mutualism as "the anarchist idea of economy". I would have hoped for an analysis of how mutualist anarchist economies differ from non-market-based anarchist economies like the anarcho-communist one with regard to ecosystems and non-human animals.
Jakobson seems to be aware of the issues of prices: “The most important consequence of putting price tags on every living and non-living entity in nature is that the relationships between them disppear” or “every activity leading to enjoyment of life or creating the good life has non-quantifiable economic value” or “because everything is reduced to economic resources, liberalist economy is both anti-social (it dehumanizes workers) and anti-ecological (it devalues nature to an economic resource)”, but still he is advocating for a market-based solution.
Maybe Jacobson did not want to look any further than rough anarchist ideas and mutualism. He seems to be looking for some minimal parts of anarchism to incorporate into his version of ecological economics. So he is happy to keep both a mutualist market, paid labor, and even the state as an authority that can enforce global resource usage limits. I strongly disagree with that.
Jakobson might be right that decentralization can help with ecological questions and the climate crisis. However, he does not seem to see that the anarchist values of freedom and solidarity that he wants to strive for can’t be combined with authorities like a state. He also does not see the danger of reintroducing ableist and unjust patterns by promoting an economy that sticks with markets and wage-labor. And I suspect that not fully committing to a needs-based economy and reproducing injustices might in the long term again slide towards exploitation of natural resources. What Jakobson proposes might be the path of least resistance within the scientific community, but it does not solve the problems he identified.