Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • Global cities
    • Strategic autonomy
    • War in Ukraine
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter
  • Membership

Achieving Earth for all

Jayati Ghosh 14th July 2022

Because the changes to achieve sustainable wellbeing for all are so big, they require determined social movements.

Earth for All,Club of Rome,wellbeing,health,Limits to Growth,sustainable
No more time to wait (FooTToo/shutterstock.com

In 1972, the United Nations held its first-ever environmental summit in Stockholm. In the run-up to the event, a group of scientists wrote The Limits to Growth, a report for the Club of Rome which became an unlikely bestseller. The authors argued that Earth’s finite natural resources could not support ever-increasing consumption and they warned of likely ecological overshoot and societal collapse if the world did not recognise the environmental costs of human activity. Failure to change course would mean declines in per capita food and energy supplies, increasing pollution, lower standards of living and the possibility of dramatic population collapses by the middle of the 21st century.

In the decades that followed, the report’s startling conclusions were probably more criticised than commended. Many brushed them aside as a doomsday scenario which human ingenuity and technological progress would render moot. But The Limits to Growth did not provide a single forecast. Rather, the authors explored several alternative paths based on different human strategies and recent research by Gaya Herrington has shown that three of the four scenarios they outlined align quite closely with empirical data.

This is deeply worrying, because two of these three scenarios suggest a major collapse by mid-century while the third entails a smaller decline. Herrington argues that ‘humanity is on a path to having limits to growth imposed on itself rather than consciously choosing its own’.

Five initiatives

But all is not lost: the fourth scenario, which involved significant economic and social transformations, allows for widespread increases in human welfare within Earth’s natural boundaries. This is the motivation behind Earth for All, a new report produced by the Club of Rome’s Transformational Economics Commission (of which I am a member) and a team of computer modellers.


Become part of our Community of Thought Leaders


Get fresh perspectives delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for our newsletter to receive thought-provoking opinion articles and expert analysis on the most pressing political, economic and social issues of our time. Join our community of engaged readers and be a part of the conversation.

Sign up here

The report’s authors argue that achieving wellbeing for all on a (relatively) stable planet is still possible but will require major changes in economic organisation. In particular, it calls for five major initiatives to eliminate poverty, reduce inequality, empower women, transform food systems and overhaul energy systems by ‘electrifying everything’.

To flesh out these aspirations, the report advocates specific and interlinked strategies for achieving each one. Of course, this will require significant new investments, led by massive increases in public spending. Higher taxation, especially of the extremely wealthy and of large firms, must therefore be an important part of the agenda. Restricting the wealth and consumption of the super-rich is also important for limiting carbon-dioxide emissions and unnecessarily wasteful consumption.

In addition, creating global liquidity (such as by issuing more special drawing rights, the International Monetary Fund’s reserve asset) and dealing with the sovereign-debt overhang would give developing-country governments more fiscal space.

Global food systems are clearly broken. They currently create unhealthy and unsustainable patterns of production and consumption, as well as enormous waste, and must be upgraded accordingly. Regulation of markets for the public good will be critical in this process. More systematic and effective regulation is necessary, not only with respect to food but also in markets for goods and services, finance, labour and land, and to those connected to nature and the environment.

The regulation we need demands democratisation of knowledge and wider access to new technologies, as well as recognition and dissemination of traditional knowledge. Giving women and workers more power is essential, not only for making societies happier, healthier and more just but also for stabilising population numbers.

Tipping points

Furthermore, the Earth for All report contains the results of a global modelling exercise which focuses specifically on two scenarios. The first, ‘too little too late’, is our current trajectory, in which governments and international institutions talk a lot about sustainability and climate change but produce little transformative action.

This scenario points to growing inequalities and declining social trust, as people and countries turn against one another in competing for resources. Without sufficient collective action to limit the immense pressure on nature, Earth’s life-supporting systems (such as climate, water, soil and forests) will keep deteriorating and some regions will come close to or even cross irreversible tipping points. For many people already living in poverty and for many other species, what is effectively hell on Earth awaits.

But in the second scenario—‘the giant leap’—policy-makers seek to implement the five major shifts and do a much better job of increasing wellbeing. That means ensuring dignity (so that everyone has the means to live in security, health and safety), nature (a restored and safe environment for all forms of life) and connection (a sense of belonging and institutions that serve the common good). It also means ensuring fairness (providing justice in all its dimensions, with much-reduced gaps between richest and poorest) and participation (actively engaged citizens rooted in communities and economies).


Support Progressive Ideas: Become a Social Europe Member!


Support independent publishing and progressive ideas by becoming a Social Europe member for less than 5 Euro per month. You can help us create more high-quality articles, podcasts and videos that challenge conventional thinking and foster a more informed and democratic society. Join us in our mission - your support makes all the difference!

Become a Social Europe Member

Political will

Achieving all this will not be easy, of course. Widespread, sustainable gains in wellbeing require active governments that are willing to reshape markets and pursue long-term visions for societies. This in turn requires political will and a sea-change in governments’ perceptions—unlikely without significant public pressure and mass mobilisation. But, given our proximity to so many tipping points, the default option is terrifying: environmental devastation, extreme economic disparities and fragilities, and potentially unbearable social and political tensions.

So, Earth for All is not just a report: it is a call to action. Because the necessary changes are so big, they require determined social movements with broad participation. History shows that inertia and defeatism can become self-fulfilling. But it also shows that governments ultimately must respond to popular pressure—or be replaced by it.

Republication forbidden—copyright Project Syndicate 2022, ‘Achieving Earth for all’

Pics 4
Jayati Ghosh

Jayati Ghosh is professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is co-chair of the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation and a member of the UN secretary-general’s High-Level Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism and the World Health Organization's Council on the Economics of Health for All.

You are here: Home / Ecology / Achieving Earth for all

Most Popular Posts

Russia,information war Russia is winning the information warAiste Merfeldaite
Nanterre,police Nanterre and the suburbs: the lid comes offJoseph Downing
Russia,nuclear Russia’s dangerous nuclear consensusAna Palacio
Belarus,Lithuania A tale of two countries: Belarus and LithuaniaThorvaldur Gylfason and Eduard Hochreiter
retirement,Finland,ageing,pension,reform Late retirement: possible for many, not for allKati Kuitto

Most Recent Posts

Nagorno-Karabakh,European Union,EU,Azerbaijan,Armenia Azerbaijan exploits vacuum on Nagorno-KarabakhGeorge Meneshian
Abuse,work,workplace,violence Abuse at work: who bears the brunt?Agnès Parent-Thirion and Viginta Ivaskaite-Tamosiune
Ukraine,fatigue Ukraine’s cause: momentum is diminishingStefan Wolff and Tetyana Malyarenko
Vienna,social housing Vienna social-housing model: celebrated but misusedGabu Heindl
social democracy,nation-state Social democracy versus the nativist rightJan Zielonka

Other Social Europe Publications

strategic autonomy Strategic autonomy
Bildschirmfoto 2023 05 08 um 21.36.25 scaled 1 RE No. 13: Failed Market Approaches to Long-Term Care
front cover Towards a social-democratic century?
Cover e1655225066994 National recovery and resilience plans
Untitled design The transatlantic relationship

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

WSI European Collective Bargaining Report 2022 / 2023

With real wages falling by 4 per cent in 2022, workers in the European Union suffered an unprecedented loss in purchasing power. The reason for this was the rapid increase in consumer prices, behind which nominal wage growth fell significantly. Meanwhile, inflation is no longer driven by energy import prices, but by domestic factors. The increased profit margins of companies are a major reason for persistent inflation. In this difficult environment, trade unions are faced with the challenge of securing real wages—and companies have the responsibility of making their contribution to returning to the path of political stability by reducing excess profits.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ETUI advertisement

The future of remote work

The 12 chapters collected in this volume provide a multidisciplinary perspective on the impact and the future trajectories of remote work, from the nexus between the location from where work is performed and how it is performed to how remote locations may affect the way work is managed and organised, as well as the applicability of existing legislation. Additional questions concern remote work’s environmental and social impact and the rapidly changing nature of the relationship between work and life.


AVAILABLE HERE

Eurofound advertisement

Eurofound Talks: does Europe have the skills it needs for a changing economy?

In this episode of the Eurofound Talks podcast, Mary McCaughey speaks with Eurofound’s research manager, Tina Weber, its senior research manager, Gijs van Houten, and Giovanni Russo, senior expert at CEDEFOP (The European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training), about Europe’s skills challenges and what can be done to help workers and businesses adapt to future skills demands.

Listen where you get your podcasts, or for free, by clicking on the link below


LISTEN HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

The summer issue of the Progressive Post magazine by FEPS is out!

The Special Coverage of this new edition is dedicated to the importance of biodiversity, not only as a good in itself but also for the very existence of humankind. We need a paradigm change in the mostly utilitarian relation humans have with nature.

In this issue, we also look at the hazards of unregulated artificial intelligence, explore the shortcomings of the EU's approach to migration and asylum management, and analyse the social downside of the EU's current ethnically-focused Roma policy.


DOWNLOAD HERE

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us

RSS Feed

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube