Economic Growth needs to go hand in hand with happiness or wellbeing - otherwise it is a rather hollow achievement.

Edited by Simon - 06 Dec 2006 at 10:36am

It seems to me that all the alignments we appear to be making support the continued economic model of ever increasing growth.  There is a delusion taking place and it has massive implications. This is based on the assumption that is that there is such a thing as ‘green growth’ or ‘sustainable growth’.  Sustainability and growth are very different and in a finite system growth is bounded or else it destroys.

 

Efficiency and performance are important and in reality have in the future to be linked to sustainability not growth.  In Tony Blair's and Jan Peter Balkenende's letter to Matti Vanhanen in October they say that climate change and fuel security are the two most important issues facing the EU.

 

They go onto state; 'We are faced with a shared dilemma, both here in Europe and elsewhere in the world. To ensure well being for a growing world population with unfulfilled needs and rising expectations, we must grow our economies. Should we fail, conflict and insecurity will be the result. To grow our economies we will continue to need energy. Much of that energy will be in the form of fossil fuels. The logic of this dilemma is that we must treat energy security and climate security as two sides of the same coin’. 

 

Gordon Brown was also recently crowing about the unexpectedly high level of growth over the past year 2.75%.  A 2.75% growth is a doubling of our economy every 25 years.  Surely our politicians understand the relationship between percentage growth and exponential growth? The constant emphasis on economic growth just perpetuates the myth in the public’s mind that the only measure of success is how the economy is growing.  It might be very welcome for big business and the finance institutions but the reality is that this is what is leading to long term deterioration of the world’s environment, depletion of resources and the ability to of the world to sustain our wellbeing.

 

The growth in world populations and the exceptional economic growth in other countries principally China and India, all wishing to have the same standard of living as the west, adds to an already strained environmental system.  Does every politician think that the world can sustain this, or I am just cynical again and think that the retention of power is what matters?

 

Where is the leadership?  Why is it not possible for strategic thinkers to see that the old concept of continual growth is one of the major problems the world faces?  A system can not keep growing in a finite environment particularly one of dwindling resources principally oil which has underpinned the rapid growth in the west over the past hundred years (including food production).  Conflict occurs when aggressive competition for scarce resources takes place as ‘the’ solution for the feeling of insecurity.  The mantra of growth is fast becoming a delusive and hollow bawl of an economic system that is not sustainable in a ‘one living planet approach’, to quote David Miliband.

 

Mr Milliband gave a very interesting speech at the TUC conference on September 12^th where he spoke about technological innovations as the major solution to our problems but left out the most important issues and that is changes in the complex systems that underpin our social and economic life. 

 

The change here links to the emergence of new ways to look at what is a satisfying life, people starting to look for more than material acquisition. The concept of ‘wellbeing’ is gaining ground as a new measure of a successful society.  The speech also referred to energy but made no mention of ‘peak oil’ and how we will cope with the diminishing of this finite resource that underpins our whole social and economic infrastructure.  There is also a growing awareness that in fact there might be no substitute for oil as the development of mass bio-fuels would probably cause more damage then be a benefit to humankind.

 

I don’t think it is a case of abolishing markets but there has to be a radical systemic revision of how markets currently function.  The global ‘neo-liberal’ free market is a creation, not something that has been discovered.  We have to look at the development of different types of markets; differentiate between the local, national and global.  Sustainability at the local level will involve food production and increased local supply chains etc. It will not be possible to the run the current model in a world of diminishing resources. 

 

There is a growing recognition that people are starting to think about the local a great deal more than was the case 10 years ago. It is clear that government understands the need to free up the system at the local level and I hope that this continues but we escape from the reductionist managerialism that controls our interactions.

 

I just hope there is a genuine recognition that in a finite world continuous growth can never be achieved without adverse costs. This was recently outlined in the work of New Economics Foundation and Global Footprint Network http://www.footprintnetwork.org/gfn_sub.php?content=overshoot.

 

There is also an interesting presentation by Professor Albert Bartlett on the arithmetic of steady growth, continued over modest periods of time, in a finite environment. This should be viewed by all that think growth is something which can continue indefinitely http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/lectures/461. 

 

As Russell Ackoff said ‘The appropriate end of a social system is development, not growth. Our society doesn’t yet understand the distinction between them. You can develop without growing, and you can grow without developing.’

Alister
Yes, absolutely, the communities in south west could unilaterally make a statement about what it thinks is important, about what should be pursued.  But as we know the RDA is accountable to central government not to local democratic processes so that will be problematic. 

We need clear leadership for the future and that is currently lacking. It is a business as usual approach and no radical solutions are being developed to put meaning back in our actions. To quote Kennedy we need to look at why we are undertaking our activities not just chase targets.
Ian

"Gross national product measures neither the health of our children, the quality of their education, nor the joy of their play. It measures neither the beauty of our poetry, nor the strength of our marriages. It is indifferent to the decency of our factories and the safety of our streets alike. It measures neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our wit nor our courage, neither our compassion nor our devotion to country. It measures everything in short, except that which makes life worth living, and it can tell us everything about our country except those things which make us proud to be part of it."
Robert Kennedy 1968

Perhaps it is a bit post-modern but there is a strange paradox occurring that requires effective strategic direction but at the same time a freeing up from the bottom.  There has to be strong leadership and focus while at the same time a giving away of power and control. I get very concerned when we start mechanistically trying to manage a complex system from above in a reductionist and deterministic way. 

I think we have to be careful about indicators as we can get lost in the individuality of them and not the linkages.  It can be so easy to focus on the indicator and loose sight on the associated influences and impacts.  I have unease about the evidence based policy that currently pervades.  All the acquisition of evidence is underpinned by a reason, generally that of the pervading social and economic models.  As Foucault says; ‘Truth is a thing of this world: it is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint. And it induces regular effects of power. Each society has its regime of truth, its “general politics” of truth: that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true; the mechanism and instances which enable one to distinguish true and false statements, the means by which each is sanctioned; the techniques and procedures accorded value in the acquisition of truth; the status of those who are charged with saying what counts as true.’  

What is to be collected for what purpose and why? Nothing we collect is value free all the evidence and indicators we collect and use are derived from current ideas and models that are accepted as the norm.  Any policy derived from EBP (Evidence Based Policy) is underpinned by the belief that it influences behaviour in a well constructed and planned and systematically organised environment and not a complex dynamic, interactive and emergent system. We have to collect data and set indicators but must understand how and why they are being derived and used. We would have to change what the RES is if we are going to look at new ways to question what is happening and find new ways of doing things.

There is an increasing amount of work being undertaken looking at the complex notion of wellbeing and it would be good for our region to be a leader in this area.

Here are a few:

http://www.neweconomics.org/gen/well-being_current.aspx

http://www.happyplanetindex.org/

http://www2.defra.gov.uk/research/project_data/More.asp?I=SD12005&M=CFO&V=USF

http://www1.eur.nl/fsw/happiness/

http://www.resurgence.org/2005/bakshi228.htm

http://www.youngfoundation.org.uk/index.php?p=330

http://www.cepr.org/research/networks/enable/summary_new.htm

It is going to be difficult to achieve the changes required as we like to work in comfortable functional boxes when in fact the meaning to our lives is derived from interplay of different situational circumstances. 

Even the construction of this debate-site is tailored towards a silo based methodology when in fact all the topics are closely related and can and should not be taken in isolation. 

The approach of joining things up is emerging in all fields and can be seen in public service delivery through the Local Area Agreements. I sit on an LAA Management Board which is trying to deliver from the perspective of the individual and the community. There is a major learning and development exercise require that runs counter to the current Cartesian approach that we have been living under for hundreds if not thousands of years.  I blame it on the Greeks!

Take Care