Calls are coming from all directions to rethink the fight against poverty in a way that takes planetary limits into account.
Fifty years ago, a team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), at the request of the Club of Rome, presented its findings, indicating that the increase in gross domestic product (GDP) could not continue indefinitely: the pursuit of economic growth would inevitably lead to the depletion of non-renewable resources and levels of waste and pollution that ecosystems could not absorb. An increasing number of scientists share this diagnosis.
For about a decade, economists—particularly Tim Jackson, Dominique Méda, Vincent Liegey, and Timothée Parrique—have been attempting to construct macroeconomic models that take into account the imperative to slow down.
Policymakers themselves are finally beginning to grasp the challenge. Two signs, among others: the attention given to a report presented at the UN on “eradicating poverty beyond growth,” and the commitment of governments, enshrined in the pact adopted at the Summit for the Future held in New York on September 22–23, to use progress indicators that go beyond GDP.
