| | |||
| ||||
| | | ||
The 1972 UN Declaration - oops, forgot the economy. This was a contribution from James Greyson to the United Nations Economic and Social Council Forum on scaling-up and accelerating sustainable development. The main contribution to this forum is here. 21st February 2008: This forum's topic of integrating economic, environmental and social goals seems to be exactly the right place to look for policies to match the scale and speed of global problems. Should this integration follow the path of recent decades, of balancing a bit less growth against a bit more environmental and social protection? Or could a far more ambitious integration be available, where the three goals are aligned in a win-win-win strategy that allows sustainable development to finally happen? This vital question of integration can be traced back 15 years before the Brundtland Report to the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm. The conference Declaration (http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?DocumentID=97&ArticleID=1503&l=en) covers all the themes of sustainable development (although the term was not yet in use). Some of the language is more ambitious than today, speaking for example of 'halting' the discharge of toxic substances and the 'elimination' of all weapons of mass destruction. However there is a large omission - the responsibilities of nation states are stated but those of the market are not. So problems caused by commercial activity became not a problem for the market but for States. This transfer of responsibility from polluters to governments persists today. Businesses and consumers today remain responsible for their impacts only to the limited extent that responsibility has been handed back to them by government The 1972 Declaration unintentionally blocked the integration of economics with the environment and society. Economic and social development were declared 'essential' for the improvement of quality of life (principle 8) whilst environmental policies having economic consequences should not 'hamper the attainment of better living conditions for all' (principle 11). This prioritisation of economic development remains to this day and has been highlighted by our colleagues Glenn Okun and Joseph A. Giacalone. Hence national success continues to be measured primarily by economic growth, which includes every sort of economic activity including damaging activity and the costs of coping with damage. Current economics says little about sustainable development; in fact it suggests that 'any economic development is good development' Our colleague Teresa Flores offers us the key to integrating goals, to making development really mean sustainable development. She refers to the potential of a circular system of resource flows which was published more than 40 years ago by the American economist Kenneth Boulding (http://earthmind.net/__docs/boulding-1966.pdf). Circular economics is a national goal in China but is globally misunderstood as a technical goal for efficiency and recycling. In fact Boulding explained that circular economics covers all the issues today called sustainable development. Conventional linear economics uses prices that neglect the costs of preventing damage, with free extraction and dumping. Linear economics defines today's world of competing to grab what you can with resources and time running out fast. Since the 1972 Declaration the role of global markets in global problems has become more evident. Nation states should now return responsibility for market-led problems back to the market, where it belongs. Markets should be switched from problem-makers to problem-solvers, uniting business, consumers and governments in a vigorous planetary survival pact. Whereas linear economics destroys the physical basis of future economic growth (not least by destabilising the climate), circular economics offers the possibility of continuing economic growth. Governments have wasted decades trying to impose top-down limits on economic activity (such as emissions caps). They could instead agree a new world Declaration which reshapes all economic activity towards the circular system, so integrating economic, environmental and social development. Circular economics can be achieved with just one new economic instrument, which would operate within markets and address all aspects of sustainable development. A second instrument can be used to reverse the legacy of ever increasing weapons spending. I'll outline these in part II of this e-discussion on policy initiatives. Meanwhile I'll gladly email the background paper to anyone who contacts me. It's being published by a NATO Science Programme. See also: Want a world that works? Return to: top of page, home page, BlindSpot reviews, BlindSpot tools. | |
blindspot.org.uk