Ellen Macarthur Foundation. Rethink the future

Point of View: Professor Tim Jackson's take on prosperity

• by Tim Jackson
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• 11 Jan 2011
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“The global economy is almost 5 times the size it was half a century ago”, says Professor Tim Jackson of the University of Surrey, economics commissioner on the Sustainable Development Commission and advisor to the United Nations Division of Economic and Social Affairs. Questioning the traditional “bigger = more prosperous” equation, he emphasises the “urgent need of a renewed sense of shared prosperity” in the context of our finite resource world.

Every society clings to a myth by which it lives. Ours is the myth of economic growth. For the last five decades the pursuit of growth has been the single most important policy goal across the world. Economic growth is supposed to deliver prosperity. Higher incomes should mean better choices, richer lives, an improved quality of life for us all.

But things haven’t always turned out that way. Growth has delivered its benefits, at best, unequally. A fifth of the world’s population earns just 2% of global income. Inequality is higher in the OECD nations than it was 20 years ago. And while the rich got richer, middle-class incomes in Western countries were stagnant in real terms long before the recession.

But fairness (or the lack of it) is not the only reason to question economic growth. The global economy is almost 5 times the size it was half a century ago. If it continues to grow at the same rate it will be 80 times that size by the year 2100. This extraordinary ramping up of global economic activity has no historical precedent. It’s totally at odds with our scientific knowledge of the finite resource base and the fragile ecology on which we depend for survival. And it has already been accompanied by the degradation of an estimated 60% of the world’s ecosystems.

A world in which things simply go on as usual is already inconceivable. But what about a world in 2050 where 9 billion people all aspire to the level of affluence achieved in the OECD nations? Such an economy would need to be not 80 but 200 times bigger than it was 50 years ago by the end of this century.

For the most part, we avoid the stark reality of these numbers. The default assumption is that – financial crises aside – growth will continue indefinitely. Not just for the poorest countries, where a better quality of life is desperately needed, but even for the richest nations where the cornucopia of material wealth adds little to happiness and is beginning to threaten the foundations of our wellbeing.

The reasons for this collective blindness are easy enough to find. When growth falters – as it has done recently – politicians panic. Businesses struggle to survive. People lose their jobs and sometimes their homes. A spiral of recession looms. Questioning growth is deemed to be the act of lunatics, idealists and revolutionaries.

But question it we must. Prosperity for the few founded on ecological destruction and persistent social injustice is no foundation for a civilised society. Economic recovery is vital. Protecting people’s jobs – and creating new ones – is absolutely essential. But we also stand in urgent need of a renewed sense of shared prosperity.

For at the end of the day, prosperity transcends material concerns. It resides in the quality of our lives and in the health and happiness of our families. Prosperity consists in our ability to flourish as human beings – within the ecological limits of a finite planet. The challenge for our society is to create the conditions under which this is possible. It is the most urgent task of our times.

About the author...

Tim Jackson is author of Prosperity without Growth – economics for a finite planet (London: Earthscan, 2009). Professor of Sustainable Development at the University of Surrey and Director of the newly-awarded ESRC Research Group on Lifestyles, Values and Environment (RESOLVE), he also pioneered the development of ‘adjusted’ national accounts (‘green GDP’), is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts, an Associate of the New Economics Foundation and an advisor to the United Nations Division of Economic and Social Affairs.

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