Growth is defined in economics as the annual percent change of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and measures economic activity, and the economic value of the economy’s biophysical throughput (that which enters and leaves the economy), rather than the well being of the planet, the biosphere and its human population. The economic value of a rainforest, therefore, is measured in the wood it provides for profit.
Growth in nature is defined in quite a different way, referring to an increase in quantity over time, either physical (e.g., growth in height, growth in an amount of money) or abstract (e.g., a system becoming more complex, an organism becoming more mature).
Economics has the same root as ecology, and comes from ‘oikia’, the green word for home or household, and our household is the earth. These have become separated, however, and green economics puts them back together. Growth in nature occurs when the tree lives, grows and reproduces more trees, sustaining and providing a habitat for more animals and organisms taking in carbon as it goes.
In fact, growth in conventional economics means exactly opposite to growth in nature. Mainstream theories of growth are based on the idea that more growth and more development will enable more wealth to be created. Kuznet suggested that a period of hardship has to be endured by less developed countries during the take off phase before reaching the nirvana of mature growth. W. Rostow suggested that economies develop from primitive societies, towards a take off situation such as the newly industrialising countries, and then to the Nirvana of a stage of ‘high mass consumption. ’
In order to maintain this growth, one school of thought argues that it becomes necessary to have international mass production leading to ‘efficiencies’ ‘economies of scale’ and very large partner corporations trading with each other and within different branches of the same firm. They can produce vast global volumes of goods for a world market very cheaply. However, although the prices of these goods are very low, the human and environmental costs are, in many ways, the highest they have ever been of any economy. They are felt worldwide and are particularly expensive in social and economic terms. For example in production in China with very poor human rights conditions; IT in India and agriculture in Brazil, oil in Khazakstan and in Nigeria: countries with truly awe inspiring conditions of insecurity, regular kidnapping and horrific economic conditions of corruption, environmental degradation and human unhappiness. Far from improving well being, the mainstream economy leads to enormous inequalities and unhappiness.
What some Greens are saying is that, like it or not, we do all need to do things differently and take responsibility for our own economic effects and to share our resources out much more evenly. This means accepting our personal responsibility, slowing down our lifestyles and looking at our requirements with a view to the long-term, instead of the current desire for ‘now, now, now’. What is particularly interesting for the UK is that it comes out third highest in terms of GDP in Europe but bottom of all industrialised countries in terms of the happiness of its young people in a UN survey done last year, showing that very high rates of economic growth have nothing to do with happiness or well being.
There are other options for assessing the health of our society that are not wholly dependent on GDP. These include examples such as the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI), which looks at health care, safety and the cleanliness of the environment, painting a startling alternative to the GDP model, and the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare, an individualised system that can take the welfare of an entire population into account. While these show us the deficits of a system, green economics puts ecology and economics back together and acknowledges that the stage on which all economic activity takes place is a very fragile and finite earth.
Lower growth economics have been around for a while (t is often overlooked that John Stuart Mill wrote about a ‘steady-state economy’ in the 1860s), but are now coming of age. These concepts acknowledge that we live on and within the earth and its systems and no one is immune or above this – even the most erudite economists or economics modellers. Unlimited growth in a finite planet is not possible, and a nonsense. Don’t let other parties hoodwink the electorate into thinking its possible.
GPI: www.rprogress.org/sustainability_indicators/genuine_progress_indicator.htm
ISEW: community.foe.co.uk/tools/isew/
www.greeneconomics.org.uk
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