In this article we highlight the key issue that the pursuit of continuous economic growth and achieving sustainability are incompatible. We also highlight the sustainable economic models that can replace it.
The drive to grow GDP is so embedded in out cultural thinking, just suggesting that economic growth must come to an end causes many, especially in the business world, to regard you as a heretic. The idea that a society can thrive and provide for the needs of its citizens without perpetual growth in GDP seems inconceivable to many. How can jobs be created, taxes raised and pensions provided if there is no growth in GDP they ask aghast?
Such thinking is set against the reality that continuous economic growth drives the destruction of our environment and widens the gap between rich and poor. This used to be a position only ever voiced by environmental and social activists, but not any more.
Nobel Prize winning economist and former chief economist of the World Bank Joseph Stiglitz warns that unless the obsession many world leaders have with gross national product (GDP) comes to end, there will be little chance of fighting the triple-threat of climate destruction, financial inequality, and the crises of democracy now being felt around the globe.
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is dedicated to providing the world with objective, scientific information on climate change. The one thing this organisation has never been accused of is being radical.
But our current situation is such that even this cautious organisation is calling for revolution, saying “limiting global warming to 1.5°C would require rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society”.
“The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.”
― Albert Einstein
Once we are willing to accept that economic growth and sustainability are incompatible, we can embrace economic models that are compatible with sustainability.
- The Mondragon Corporation is a federation of worker cooperatives based in the Basque region of Spain. Since 1956 it has been providing sustainable jobs and fair wages and now employs over 74,000 people. It provides an alternative model to the corporate one that currently dominates our economies.
- The Circular Economy is a systemic approach designed to end the ‘take-make-waste’ way our economy currently functions. It creates new systems that keep resources in continuous use rather than producing waste. It provides an alternative model of manufacturing and consumption that does not destroy our environment.
- The Wellbeing Economy is an economic model focused on delivering social and ecological wellbeing. It provides a model and framework for redesigning our economies so they deliver social and environmental improvements rather than damage.
These three examples are all economic models that create jobs, raise taxes and support pensions without the inequality and ecological destruction that go hand in hand with growing GDP.
We need to change the goal of our economies to increasing ecological and social wellbeing and not increasing GDP. Such a paradigm shift can only happen if the leaders in our societies - those with influence over policy, laws, organisations, budgets and investments - think and act in tune with nature rather than continuing to be driven by our culture’s incessant demands that we plunder our planet’s resources in pursuit of economic growth.
But breaking through this cultural conditioning isn’t easy. Especially when it is built into the very fabric of our society and it constantly pours into our minds in a myriad of different ways. Trying to think in tune with nature in our culture is like trying to listen to a softly-spoken person in a noisy room where the music is way too loud. The insistent drumbeat of economic growth drowns out almost anything else.
We need our leaders to be acting within the reality the economic growth and sustainability are incompatible, as only then can those leaders truly bring about the rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society the IPCC calls for.
As leader for sustainability we need to be adding our voices to the growing chorus calling for an end to the obsession we economic growth. We need to be challenging the unfounded assertion that ever increasing GDP is a good thing, presenting the evidence that it is not and championing the alternatives.
If you would like a detailed explanation of why economic growth and sustainability are incompatible and why the pursuit of GDP has failed to deliver on its promises, Graeme Maxton’s Kicking the Growth Habit article for The Secular Heretic is a great introduction in a 20 minute read. Graeme Maxton was previously the Secretary General of the Club of Rome and is now an Advisory Board Member on the UNECE Energy Pathways Project.
Natural Change was created by WWF and Dave Key in 2008 to provide a leadership programme that could catalyse the sustainability paradigm shift in thinking the climate and biodiversity crises demand.
We can’t learn to swim without getting into the water and we can’t learn to live in harmony with nature without connecting to it. It is the unique way wild places stimulate our minds and bodies that enables assumptions to be challenged, different patterns of thinking to be established, fresh perspectives to be gained and new insights to emerge.
If you want to catalyse a sustainability paradigm shift in your own thinking, then our Natural Change: Leadership in the Climate Emergency; and Sustainability Team Development retreats are for you.
Header Photo by Bluehouse Skis on Unsplash
Morag is a specialist in behaviour change and learning for sustainability with over twenty years’ experience, and is Director of Policy for Scottish Renewables. As policy officer with WWF Morag led the Natural Change Project. She has advised the Scottish Government on sustainable development, climate change and education, and worked as a learning for sustainability adviser to UNESCO.