The freedom to achieve social recognition at the expense of child labour in the supply chain, or to find meaningful work at the expense of a collapse in biodiversity, or to participate in the life of the community at the expense of future generations, may well be others. The freedom endlessly to accumulate material goods may simply be inaccessible to a world approaching 10 billion people.
This is the most important lesson that sustainability brings to any attempt to conceptualise prosperity. Capabilities for flourishing are a good starting point from which to define what it means to prosper. But this vision needs to be interpreted carefully: not as a set of disembodied freedoms, but as a range of ‘bounded capabilities’ to live well – within certain inevitable limits.
These limits are established in relation to two critical factors. The first is the finite nature of the ecological resources within which life on earth is possible: the regenerative capacity of our ecosystems, the available resources, the integrity of the atmosphere, the soils and the oceans. None of these is infinite. Each stands in a complex relationship to the web of life on earth. We may not yet know exactly where all the limits lie. But we know enough to be absolutely sure that, in most cases, even the current level of economic activity is destroying ecological integrity and threatening ecosystem functioning – perhaps irreversibly. To ignore these natural bounds is to condemn our descendants – and our fellow creatures – to an impoverished planet.
The second limiting factor on our capability to live well is the scale of the global population. This is simple arithmetic. With a finite pie and any given level of technology, there is only so much in the way of resources and environmental space to go around. The bigger the global population, the faster we hit the ecological buffers. The smaller the population, the lower the pressure on ecological resources. This basic tenet of systems ecology is the reality of life for every other species on the planet. And for those in the poorest nations. The point is that a fair and lasting prosperity cannot be isolated from these material conditions. Capabilities are bounded on the one hand by the scale of the global population and on the other by the finite ecology of the planet.
In the presence of these ecological limits, flourishing itself becomes contingent on the entitlements of those who share the planet with us, and on the freedoms of future generations and other species. Prosperity in this sense has both intra-generational and inter-generational dimensions. As the wisdom traditions suggest, there is an irredeemably moral dimension to the good life. A prosperous society can only be conceived as one in which people everywhere have the capability to flourish in certain basic ways.” 94 I EN VÄRLD UTAN BRÖD – OM FRAMTIDENS LIVSMEDELSFÖRSÖRJNING Arable land is 11 %, 1, 5 billons of 14 billions hectares, of earth surface consisting of 15-20 fertile soil. 59 Soil is on average 150 mm. Restoring of 1 mm soil takes 100 years. 60 Scale of population in relation to finite food 103 – 122 Arable land per person is around 1700 square meters, 0,17 hectares, the size of a fruit and kitchen garden. 116 Starvation and 2200 calories See The state of food insecurity in the world (fao.org) 118 I DOUGHNUT ECONOMICS: SEVEN WAYS TO THINK LIKE A 21ST-CENTURY ECONOMIST Population matters. The more of us the more resources consumed. 54 Feedback loops (positive/reinforcing or negative/balancing) are the interconnection between the basic elements. Positive feedbacks makes thing explode (population, fights interest). 115 I THE EMPATHIC CIVILIZATION: THE RACE TO GLOBAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN A WORLD IN CRISISGrowing population using up energy resources. Depletion of wood. 326 I ENERGY AND ECONOMIC MYTHS “For even though on purely logical grounds economic growth might occur even with a decrease in the rate of resource depletion, pure growth cannot exceed a certain, albeit unknowable, limit without an increase in that rate - unless there is a substantial decrease in population” 364 Substituting solar for terrestrial would be a good deal. “A highly mechanized and heavily fertilized cultivation does allow a very large population, Pi, to survive, but the price is an increase of the per capita depletion of terrestrial resourcesSi, which ceteris paribus means a proportionally greater reduction of the future amount of life (Section VIII).” 373 I A BLUEPRINT FOR SURVIVAL “The combination of human numbers and per capita consumption has a considerable impact on the environment, in terms of both the resources we take from it and the pollutants we impose on it.” 2 “It should go without saying that the world cannot accommodate this continued increase in ecological demand. Indefinite growth of whatever type cannot be sustained by finite resources. This is the nub of the environmental predicament. It is still less possible to maintain indefinite exponential growth —and unfortunately the growth of ecological demand is proceeding exponentially (i.e. it is increasing geometrically, by compound interest).” 3 Governments need for growth 6 Conditions for a stable society: 1. minimum disruption of ecologcial processes 2 Maximum conservation of matter and energy 3 populations in which recruitment equals loss 4. A social system in which the individual can enjoy, rather than fell restricted by the first three conditions. 8 Stabilising population. Idea of optimum size. “The two main variables affected by population numbers, as opposed to per capita consumption, are the extent to which the emotional needs and social aspirations of the community can be met (i.e. the complex of satisfactions which has come to be known as the quality of life), and the community's ability to feed itself.” Carrying capacity. 13 “While they cannot grow indefinitely, populations can remain above the optimum—indeed above the sustainable maximum—for some time. The fact that the global population, including that of Britain, is above both levels, means only that our numbers are preventing the optimisation of other values. It means that while most people receive the bare minimum of calories necessary for survival, a large proportion are deprived of the nutrients (especially protein) essential for intellectual development. They are alive, but unable to realise their full potential —which is the grossest possible waste of human resources.” 13, 14 I ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS – PRINCIPLES AND APPLICATIONS Optimal scale and fair distribution replaces growth (and full employment) as a goal in ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS – PRINCIPLES AND APPLICATIONS. See THINKING IN SYSTEMS – A PRIMER on setting goals of a system 223 When does growth become uneconomic? How are we going to deal with overpopulation, inequitable distribution and involuntary unemployment? 226 I THINKING IN SYSTEMS – A PRIMER Poverty and population growth, “When someone tells you that population growth causes poverty, you’ll ask yourself how poverty may cause population growth.” 34 A system with a stock with one reinforcing loop and one balancing loop – Population and Industrial Economy. 42 “In fact, just about any long-term model of a real economy should link together the two structures of population and capital to show how they affect each other. The central question of economic development is how to keep the reinforcing loop of capital accumulation from growing more slowly than the reinforcing loop of population growth—so that people are getting richer instead of poorer.” 50 Both systems, population and economy, share the feedback loops structures. have one important thing in common: their feedback-loop structures, “Both have a stock governed by a reinforcing growth loop and a balancing death loop. Both also have an aging process. Steel mills and lathes and turbines get older and die just as people do.” Balancing feedback loop is in the end entropy. 51 World3, Limits to growth found growth to be a leverage point. Not only population but economic growth. “Growth has costs as well as benefits, and we typically don’t count the costs – among which are poverty and hunger, environmental destruction, and so on – the whole list of problems we are trying to solve with growth! What is needed is much slower growth, very different kinds of growth, and in some cases no growth or negative growth.” Political leaders are pushing the lever in the wrong direction! 146 Growth is also goal of cancer and of every living population. 161 “Actually it’s the goal of every living population—and only a bad one when it isn’t balanced by higher level balancing feedback loops that never let an upstart power-loop-driven entity control the world. The goal of keeping the market competitive has to trump the goal of each individual corporation to eliminate its competitors, just as in ecosystems, the goal of keeping populations in balance and evolving has to trump the goal of each population to reproduce without limit.” 161, 162 I DANA (DONELLA) MEADOWS LECTURE: SUSTAINABLE SYSTEMSPopulation growth and poverty. 24.53