PCDForum Column #18, Release Date August 15, 1991


by Paul Ekins


The prevailing prescriptions for resolving the global problems of poverty
and environmental devastation from the New International Economic Order of the
1970s, to the structural adjustment and Brundtland Commission prescriptions of
the 1980s are all variants on a single theme. Each is grounded in a faith,
embraced and propagated with the fervor often associated with religious
fundamentalists, that sustained economic growth, undifferentiated between North
and South, is the principle instrument of just and sustainable development.
Environmental issues are to be addressed primarily through technological
innovations intended to green the industrial economy to make perpetual growth "sustainable."


A simple formula, suggested by Paul and Anne Ehrlich, reveals this faith to
be nothing more than wishful thinking.


I (environmental Impact) = P (Population size) x C (per capital levels of
Consumption) x T (destructive consequence of the Technology employed per unit of
consumption).


Existing studies suggest that the ecological impact of our economic
activities may already exceed sustainable limits by more than twice. Thus to
sustain present per capita consumption at our current population size we must
immediately reduce the destructive consequences of our technology by at least
fifty percent.


Now lets look fifty years ahead. The most optimistic projections indicate
that global population (P) will double over the next fifty years. A growth in
per capita consumption of just under 3 percent, a rate most countries consider
unacceptably low, would double C every twenty-five years and quadruple it over
fifty years. Inserting these additional values in our formula I=PxCxT we see
that to pursue green growth over the next fifty years we must reduce the
environmental impact of our technology per unit of consumable output to 1/16
(six percent) of its current level to maintain a sustainable relationship with
earth’s ecology.


Now let us project another fifty years ahead. If population stabilizes at
ten billion, and output continues to double each twenty-five years to the end of
the next century, we would have a sixteen fold increase in per capita global
output by 2090. This would be well above the ten-fold increase that the
Brundtland Commission report tells us is required to eliminate absolute poverty
if current income differentials between rich and poor remain unchanged. This
would mean, however, that the environmental impact of our technology must be
reduced to 1/64 (1.6 percent) of its current level over the next 100 years.


Even though our current economy is immensely environmentally inefficient and
the potential for technological innovation is enormous, nothing in prospect
portends these sorts of technological achievements and some rich country
governments are already squealing about the costs of simply stabilizing CO2
emissions over the next 15 years. We must acknowledge "green growth"
for what it is: an article of religious faith without practical foundation put
forward by those who are determined that the environmental crisis should not
infringe either on their established lifestyles or their dominant position in
the global economic system.


Those who have looked the environmental crisis in the eye and done their
sums recognize the essential need to look beyond green growth to find more
practical strategies for sustainability. I take as a given the desirability of
stabilizing population levels as soon as possible. Beyond this there are three
basic requirements.

  • The Northern establishment must accept that it bears primary responsibility
    for the environmental crisis and take radical action to address it though
    eliminating wasteful and unnecessary consumption, shifting to available
    technologies, such as organic agriculture and solar energy that are
    environmentally beneficial or benign, and spurring the rapid development of new
    technologies that are energy and materials conserving. It must also support the
    concessional transfer to the South of such technologies for appropriate
    development. Such steps may not lead to aggregate growth in production, but they
    can substantially enhance aggregate human well-being in both the short and
    long-term.
  • Recognizing that current structures of trade, aid and debt make Southern
    sustainable development impossible, the Northern establishment must also work
    with the South toward a wholesale reform of such institutions as the GATT, the
    World Bank and the IMF.
  • Southern elites must let their poor lead their own development process by
    allowing them equitable access to resources and political space for their
    grassroots movements.
  • Only be rejecting the myth of green growth can we get down to the serious,
    difficult, and inescapable tasks required to create a just and sustainable
    global economy.

Paul Ekins is coordinator of the Living Economy Network, 42, Warriner
Gardens, London SW11 4DU, United Kingdom and a contributing editor of the
PCDForum, which prepared and distributed this column based on his paper "A
Strategy for Global Environmental Development."

David C. Korten


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