Report sets path to 'prosperity without growth'

The Sustainable Development Commission this week published its long-awaited on economic growth and sustainability, titled, “Prosperity without growth? The transition to a sustainable economy.”

Five years in the making and released in advance of the G20 Summit in London this week, the report outlines a 12-step plan for transitioning to a fair, sustainable and low-carbon economy.

“Faced with the current recession, it is understandable that many leaders at the G20 Summit will be anxious to restore business as usual,” said report author Tim Jackson, economics commissioner at the Sustainable Development Commission. “But governments really need to take a long, hard look at the effects of our single-minded devotion to growth — effects which include the recession itself.”

The report finds that the relentless pursuit of economic growth not only helped create the current economic crisis, but has done little to benefit the world’s poorest people while wreaking devastating impacts on the environment. Such trends can’t continue, it adds, even with the best efforts to “decouple” environmental impacts from economic growth.

Maintaining moderate economic growth of just 2 percent a year while reaching for 2050 carbon reduction targets, for example, would require achieving a carbon content of no more than six grams of carbon dioxide for each dollar spent, the report finds. That’s 130 times less than today’s average carbon intensity.

“Fundamentally transforming the foundations of the economy is the biggest contribution we can make towards building a sustainable future,” said Jonathon Porritt, chair of the Sustainable Development Commission. “The current economic crisis may be painful, but it will be nothing compared with the crises we will face if we continue to grow in a way that threatens the life-support systems on which we rely.”