A yet in fieri, imperfect reflection: “What is so crucial about growth, that makes it so indispensable to society despite its impossibility?”
by Tsilla Boisselet. Licensed under Creative Commons 4.0
(note to the prospective reader: this is a transparent sharing of some of my reflections. I by no means believe I am providing any definitive answer hereby. I would instead invite an open conversation with you, so that together we could grow ever closer to a shared, affordable and sustainable, path forward)
A mapping exercise on why growth remains a core slogan
…and…. Is it possible to map strategic ways out?
How to lay down the underlying logics and dependencies and discuss about strategy in a visual way?
Defenders of the Nature, or alarmed researchers on the impact of biodiversity loss make their voices loud to preserve resources that are essential to many human activities – or hold an intrinsic value that needs to be preserved as such. But investments are still low and actions reflect the place environment holds in priority ranking – certainly not the top ranks, for citizens and governments alike, despite some changing. There seem to be more important issues to tackle, like ensuring economic growth. “Green” will not pay the bills, will it? Moreover, it seems essential at first look that economic growth makes environmental policies (among others) even possible, by providing capital and financial resources, or even security for basic needs, that allows to free the mind for environmental issues, still often seen as luxury concerns. Even SDGs place goal nr 8 – sustained economic growth, as a suitable essential factor for a better future.
In the perspective of the present crisis, even fundaments of this credo in economic growth seem to shake. Is this the right time to question it and discuss alternatives not only as a theory, but as a strategy ?
Let's start by analysing a few myths:
- Large groups, large producers have more power, have all advantages so we ought to imitate them
- More CO2 means plants grow better
- More technology is better
- Small producers, big producers, consumers, all distributers … all have the same interests
- « others » are evil and liars
- Climate change is global warming. It just means that it will get a bit warmer (2 degrees? Pah, like 35 instead of 33 in summer? Ridiculous! Who cares!)
The starting point is represented by the critical reading of several articles on the environmental aspect of the economic logic of growth, GDP and affluence. And a bunch of myths that have already been debunked, but still stick (e.g.: Industrial agriculture feeds the world - Industrial agriculture is the only way to avoid famine - The productivist model brings prosperity to those who follow it - Taking care of the environment is something we cannot afford to do – or sthg we do once all the rest has been done - More is better - We need to preserve our way of living at all costs - Consuming will save the world, if the world consumes « green things » - Personal initiative is central (vs systemic transformation))
Let's get started with the productivity paradox: I will proceed in a visual way.
What are the questions we ask? With what means do we analyse it?
Here are a few references:
The usual question: Is this farm (system) profitable?
The usual answer: look at the indicator
On farm level, (extended to globalized context)
Efficiency/productivity = Yield/unit input
Or
profitability=benefits-costs
If the numbers are right, (the balance on the benefit side),
it is profitable/efficient/productive
→It is suitable
→push planning, innovation, investments towards intensive, industrial agriculture
The next question: Is this system still profitable if those costs are to be included?
→push planning, innovation, investments towards intensive, industrical agriculture:
- Intensification (surface and human productivity increase)
- High yields at low prices, use of « enhancers » (fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides,..)
- Focus on « cash crops » and « high performing » varieties
- Function based on large, increasing monocultures with low personal, high technology management
→Landscape simplification, natural space fragmentation
→On the long run, on large scale → (what we observe)
- « cash crops » are often high-calory-low nutrients;
- High amounts of additives (pesticides, hormones,…) to increase productivity
→effects on health = cost
- Landscape simplification, monoculture and intensive agriculture
→effect on environment, loss of environmental services =cost
- Low prices → rebound effect
→waste increase = cost (and overall efficiency loss)
Is this system still profitable? Playing with numbers…
If, as growing evidence shows, the health, environmental and other costs increase, the system might not be as profitable as it seems, two answers are possible: change system, or follow the logic, and diminish costs. It is important to keep in mind that some costs are often not directly accountable/accounted for, as they are hidden (indirect, only after some time, etc.). Often, they are carried by other places or times, or measurable only on a larger scale. However, there is here a good motivation to deliberately shift the highest costs (towards society in general, other countries or simply, more vaguely, the future…) to keep the balance positive.
Strategy, with such a perspective, remains a shell trick with numbers, depending on what to include and monetize in which way.
...and, more importantly, framing the conversation in this form has perverse effects:
⇒The connection between profitablity and suitability seems established (although not proven)
⇒A blindness is induced for mechanisms that modulate long term sustainability, including: backfiring mechanisms of soil fertility or pollinator loss, investment race, price fluctuations, etc.
⇒At managerial level a desperate search is triggered for a way to reduce costs or increase gains at any cost (!!), because it is still the only metric.
This is, thus, a wrong challenge: balancing benefits and costs.
This overly simplified representation is misleading, as it represents a farm as an independent system, influenced only by what is quantifiable financial gains and losses. The profitability, and suitability depends on an accounting system and allows high costs in one domain to be acceptable if balanced by gains in others, as they are measured all by the same metric. No question about unaffordable/unacceptable consequences, quantifiable but irremediable (irreplaceable) losses…
Shifting from : «Is this system profitable?» to «Is this system suitable/affordable?» Decoupling profitability from suitability/affordability
First of all, the factors are intertwined: certain practices increase or decrease costs, health is a gain or a cost depending on the practice; environmental degradation causes a loss in environmental services, different inputs can improve or worsen health impacts, etc.
Second, some costs are often not directly accountable for, as they are hidden. On a global scale, it is not honest to hide or dismiss them to promote the very same system causing them. → the inter-dependence of the different factors is not shown, even if it’s essential to really evaluate the losses and benefits on a global scale.
So, even if including costs in the balance is a useful step, it is still not helping to draw solutions and strategies, or understand what is missing in the equation.
Therefore, finally, non directly quantifiable costs as cultural heritage, biodiversity losses are arguably not meant to be counted in financial costs, or balanced against them, as high profit could justify these losses. If financial costs are the only metrics, a balance can justify irremediable health, cultural or natural losses, if the profit is high enough.
Just by looking at a balance, it is nearly impossible to draw a strategy or a way out of the industrial, latifundist agricultural logic.
Even well-meant actions of lowering the environmental impact, using less harmful pesticides, or campaigns to reduce waste can loose their potential impact if they are not part of a whole strategy that includes acting on the very causes of those effects.
It can nevertheless serve as one instrument of measure for some factors, debunk some myths about cost effectiveness, and give an incentive for a new way of looking at things...
...And this, I believe, prompts us to a new question
«Is this way of working still efficient/profitable when we compute the results by taking into account real costs on society?»
And I put emphasis on society here, for a farm cannot be responsible individually for this kind of complex, holistic effects and for the consequences on health and the environment. It is time to reframe the question about production models towards the society as a whole.
...So how can we go further, and where should we look for new means of understanding the way of functioning of our productive systems?
How can a world with finite resources grow indefinitely? Physically, mathematically or biologically it is clearly unachievable, but it still remains a scope. What is so crucial about growth, that makes it so indispensable to society despite its impossibility? Why is it so difficult to conceive a way of functioning that changes this logic? While it is still understandable to imagine the motivations for industries, firms or big companies to follow this credo, it is less obvious why citizens, or governments would support it. Even the sustainability goals include growth in their objectives (SDG nr 8).
I decided to map the intrinsic logic of the hegemony of growth, in particular from a state’s/government’s perspective. The aim is to visualize the dependencies in place, show some consequences of certain choices and doctrines, define hurdles toward a sustainable future, and to present a document to discuss possible paths.
The map shows straightforward need chains between stakeholders, practices and concepts with a logical link. We can base this links on the point of view of the government. So, the government needs voters among the citizens to get to power and to pay taxes.
Citizens of working age are either workers or unemployed, almost all citizens are consumers.
The government ensures social services as healthcare , unemployment benefits and other benefits. It needs a budget, payed partly by taxes from citizens.
Industry does production, with capital and workers, using technical and natural resources.
It also pays taxes. Capital can be a firm per se and could pay taxes from capital (or not).
Consumers consume a generic production produced by a generic term called industry.
This is overly simplified, because industry is not one big logical entity. It does not differentiate between life essentials and other consumptions. Consumers can also consume from own production, small local private producers, big producers, public producers, national and foreign producers, industry that delocalizes a part of production. This change in description will be crucial to develop an alternative strategy. But anyway, the logic demands an increased production within a quantifiable market! (free production of goods and services is not quantified!!) → draw fluxes!!
There is big interest to increase capital from industry/capital side (how to show this on the map?).
Government has interest to keep income coming and voters. What is the government’s logic?
Logic of growth from government’s perspective:
Government needs income – from taxes (1). Taxes come from working citizens and industries (some part also capital) (2). Unemployed citizens receive additional social services (unemployment)(3). So Government needs working citizens at producing industries (4).
Additionally, citizens are also consumers; working citizens have more income and can curb consumption and therefore curb production.
An additional interest of the government is to keep industry’s capital within the own borders, to benefit taxes (?). So it has interest to keep up production and consumption, so capital would not move abroad.
A crisis shifts the working citizens into the unemployed fraction, reducing the state’s income and increasing its spending.
A demographic crisis or simply demographic transition increases the share of non-working population and the corresponding social expenses (3b).
As for now, the only strategies left are to cut social services to reduce costs, and to raise consumption, give tax cuts to capital to keep it within borders. Increasing pensioning age, or shifting response to crisis towards individual initiatives are other responses to the same logic and vision of the reality.
However, industry needs resource, technical as well as natural resources: an ever-growing consumption from an ever-growing production means an ever-growing taping into the natural resources (5). This seemingly small detail on the map is however an essential point to show the dependency of the whole from those resources!
Indeed, natural resources still are, however, according to the liberal logic, abundant, and “free”, even more since the blind reasoning between productivity and GDP assigns them a neglectable share in “richness production”…
Now, even if this point is rather easy to make, it shows the vicious effects of reasonings based on pure GDP accounting.
But the logic behind keeping a sufficient share of the population working instead of being a cost to society, and to keep capital from industry within its borders obliges governments to embrace this futureless logic. There are therefore other dependencies to debunk to imagine a system working in a different way.
Is there another strategy that a government can embrace without compromising its primary mission, and to keep its society “within the donut”?
As a map is only a model, it is lacking a lot of information. Thus, to make it useful, it needs to contain all the useful, relevant information for strategy.
So the first steps towards strategy is to question the rightful place of all present elements on the map (maturity), and then decompose elements into what is meaningful for the question, and add maybe missing parts.
First, where does the flow start, what is the original source? What is the driver?
What are the assumptions that need to be mapped better in order to be challenged in a constructive way?
The threat of moving capital outside borders; the cost/expense logic of a state; the quantification of income and services, not accounting for “free” services; the definition of working; the lack of ultimate explicit goal (the government is merely a accountant of expenses and costs?), the flow of gains (where does the state place its ”gains” and “losses”; how can a state be rich and so many within be poor?); the complexity of industry and capital (obligations towards capital, towards an international banking/trust/grading system); the flow of energy/material/chem.elements/social well-being or whatever is useful to picture the real exchanges (does it trade capital investments against social welfare, trading efficiency with environmental preservation) ; where to show the underlying doctrines? Where do they play? Name them and show them on a map to walk the strategy path…
Can we show on the map that the “ever lasting growth” is not only breaking environmental sustainability, but not even up to the promise of guaranteeing social well-being??
Should it all be the consumers’ responsibility? What motivates a shift in businesses taking actions? What can policy makers change? What do consumers or voters accept?
In a Government’s perspective, choosing between priorities, to satisfy not only voters but also a wide range of other stakeholders, is a difficult balance exercise.
In the first map we drew, the government’s role was shown from the regulative side of citizens’ income and own balance between expenses and income, but in a system out of its control.
However, a government is also able to take decisions, maintain order and meet goals.
Digging deeper into the government’s role and its legitimacy, the growth logic tells to prioritize income-bringing activities [for the one applying it], whatever the environmental cost, which can also cause important social costs. Especially if the cost cutting logic suppresses social services, social troubles are very likely – as reality already shows. As crisis come and go, and growth without regulating elements causes inequalities, the government can choose to maintain order through increasing police controls and repression, or smoothing discourses. The alternative is to place regulating mechanisms to counter accumulation, promote redistribution and thus lower inequalities, which smoothens tensions. Same applies to regulating the relationships among members of the society.
But the real question is: who sets the goals? Following fear-induced decisions imposed by its potential « capital shifters » , as suggested in literature, does imply the goals are set by owners of the capital. If so, capital is governing and government is maintaining the order and buffering the costs where possible, shifting them to its citizens.
Does the government have other resources? Who is it officially representing?
It can take decisions: so it’s its responsibility if certain paths are followed over others. It has the power to decide to tax, privatize, nationalize, prioritize expenses, invest in infrastructure, subsidise certain stakeholders to achieve goals.
However, a government is also able to take decisions, maintain order and meet goals.
Digging deeper into the government’s role and its legitimacy, the growth logic tells to prioritize income-bringing activities [for the one applying it], whatever the environmental cost, which can also cause important social costs. Especially if the cost cutting logic suppresses social services, social troubles are very likely – as reality already shows. As crisis come and go, and growth without regulating elements causes inequalities, the government can choose to maintain order through increasing police controls and repression, or smoothing discourses. The alternative is to place regulating mechanisms to counter accumulation, promote redistribution and thus lower inequalities, which smoothens tensions. Same applies to regulating the relationships among members of the society.
But the real question is: who sets the goals? Following fear-induced decisions imposed by its potential « capital shifters » , as suggested in literature, does imply the goals are set by owners of the capital. If so, capital is governing and government is maintaining the order and buffering the costs where possible, shifting them to its citizens.
Does the government have other resources? Who is it officially representing?
It can take decisions: so it’s its responsibility if certain paths are followed over others. It has the power to decide to tax, privatize, nationalize, prioritize expenses, invest in infrastructure, subsidise certain stakeholders to achieve goals.
Environmental management can be drawn from government’s perspective: the government needs voters to get to power and to pay taxes. Specific, targeted taxes are not well defined or less spread, or even inexistent.
For environmental issues, the connection between voters and their needs are not clear: status, romantic nostalgia, general well-being, cause to defend, or research specialty. To simplify, we call it fulfillment, to differentiate it from survival needs. This class of voters might not be a majority, but since this movement is gaining momentum, it is somehow important to care for the environment (i.e. natural resources) to get these voters satisfied.
So nature conservation and sustainable practices – which might be financing research projects - would be a response. This needs some form of technical resources to implement.
It also depends upon a budget, handled by a ministry of environment from the government, financed partly by taxes.
But if global voters care for nature per se is still relatively low, taxes are low and budget is low, too. Practices are likely not much developed.
Are there current practices that base their investment of people, time, finances on other logics?
Let’s take the example of public, universal health care system. As previously, the government needs voters to get to power and to pay taxes
Voters need to survive, hence their need for health. Health itself is sustained by healthcare in form of treatment, facilities and preventive care.
All those need a budget, handled by a ministry of health from the government, payed partly by taxes from voters. For treatment, natural resources might be used. Technical resources are needed for treatment, facilities and preventive care.
These links are very strong, as they are linked to survival feeling (and reality), unlike environmental causes, that are more perceived as a noble initiative. As fulfilment can be reached by many other means, it can be reasoned that, unlike health (survival), caring for the fulfilment of its citizens is not a government’s priority role.
What makes this system a good (or bad?) choice, and why would a government choose a public, universal healthcare system, while other countries’ governments choose the logic of growth for the same human activities? What is the strategy behind? Is it a different context? A different reasoning about the same situation? Are there just different stages of maturity of the system? Is a system under development more able to develop under a private individual management, and a public universal healthcare system a sign of a mature stage, where a though of global efficiency, standard service, where error is not expected? On the other hand, is maximizing efficiency not the logic of growth, leading to poor resiliency and a wild running logic of a physically impossible path?.....?
But as a system matures, disruption comes when “war” happens … because of limitation of resources. “Salvation” comes from a groundbreaking change in either techniques or practices, or both. It is an uncertain path, as it is not possible to predict future changes. Nevertheless, it is possible to predict certain shortages and the need for a new way of functioning.
What if the links and the flows changed? From universal to private or the opposite?
How to draw the strategy?
But as a system matures, disruption comes when “war” happens … because of limitation of resources. “Salvation” comes from a ground breaking change in either techniques or practices, or both. It is an uncertain path, as it is not possible to predict future changes. Nevertheless, it is possible to predict certain shortages and the need for a new way of functioning.
Starting with survival (“essential”) activities, the provision of food could be a candidate, too. Why is healthcare imbedded in a wide network of public providers, guaranteeing a service geographically uniform and covered, with a common standard, and not food? Food is mostly provided everywhere, with a “standard” defined by chains of providers and national or international laws.
The government’s responsibility in a universal healthcare system is to make sure anyone who needs that care gets it.
Is it the government’s role to make sure ppl CAN BUY food of DO HAVE food? Is it the government’s role to make sure farmers (some farmers? The farmers with the loudest voice?) have an income or do produce to feed all citizens in a healthy way? Financial social services or coverage of material needs? Not to say that these are mutually exclusive, but the prioritization draws the path and the consequent choices.
If we change the questions (doctrine/imperatives) , and re-orient the fundings, we can also change the attractive/promoted gains
Example of reaction: “the farmers need income”+ “logic of growth provides income” + “growing GDP is necessary to keep capital and get a good grade in international credit system” → keep increasing productivity, increasing GDP, compensate price decrease with destruction of produce, subsidy farmers to compensate for losses in income.
...and produce a different response (example): “the farmers need income” + “all people need to eat sufficient, healthy food” + “resources are what they are, they need to be preserved for long term” → focus on needs (nutrition), acknowledge limitations, regulate, organize production and distribution on the long term
This is probably a good moment to loop, and invite you to read again my last post
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