Pathways to Sustainable Development

When analysing the relation of economic growth and sustainable development, three aspects should be distinguished: 1. The growth discourse; 2. Growth politics and a specific economic ideology; 3. The real impacts of economic growth. Ad 1: The discourse claims that the central factor for social, economic, political and environmental progress is economic growth – it is assumed to create wealth, and provide the necessary means for social and environmental purposes. Thus the focus of politics, it is assumed, should be on enhancing growth. The optimal growth rate is assumed to be the maximum possible rate. Ad 2: Different growth policies can be legitimated by the growth discourse, based on different economic and political ideologies. For instance, Keynesian policies try to stimulate growth by strengthening the demand side of the economy, increasing salaries, redistribution measures and public investment. Neoclassical economics demands the lowering of social and environmental standards, and leaving the regulatory function to the market. Ad 3: The EU council has called for “sustained and sustainable growth” – leaving the latter undefined. The “inequation of sustainability” has been developed to assess the sustainability of the growth according to selected minimum conditions. Sustainable development policies need to get rid of the growth fetish, to define social, economic and environmental criteria for sustainable economic development in their own units of measurement. Following these lines of thought (i.e. with growth explicitly no policy objective, but a more or less relevant side effect) scenarios indicate the possibility to reduce environmental, achieve full employment, eradicate poverty and contribute to gender equality. In these calculations economic growth the dependent variable (rebound effects included).

Estudios De Economia Aplicada, 2003

Those of us who work in the field of development do welcome with open arms the August 2003 symposium of Estudos de Economia Aplicada, dedicated to sustainable development. As Antonio Pulido (2003) indicates, the concept poses a central challenge for the profession. In this comment I discuss two issues. The first one is conceptual and refers to whether the notion of sustainable development is still relevant. The second one is methodological, with very important implications for empirical work. The World Development Report for 2003 is titled Sustainable Development in a Dynamic World: Transforming Institutions, Growth, and Quality of Life. Already in 1992, the World Development Report had been dedicated to the same topic: Development and the Environment. This confirms the significance of the theme. However, during the last few years, the idea of sustainable development has lost some ground, not necessarily because it has become irrelevant, but because first, it has been superseded by or incorporated into another notion; and second, because it has been made part of a series of objectives. The other notion is the concept of propoor growth. This is an idea that development economists, and in particular multilateral organizations such as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, began using a few years ago. It suffers, however, from the same problem the concept of sustainable development does, namely, that although it is a very appealing term in populist circles, there is no consensus concerning its definition (Asian Development Review 2000; Cord et al. 2003; Quibria 2003). When a concept cannot be defined properly, it becomes useless for purposes of serious economic policy analysis. In fact, Pulido resorts in section 2 of his paper to discussing the concept that we all, as economists, use, namely, plain growth. The origins of the interest in pro-poor growth lie in the attempt to understand the empirical significance and factors behind the variable impact of growth on poverty reduction. Pro-poor growth has been broadly defined by a number of international organizations as growth that leads to significant reductions in poverty. Then the questions that arise are: what is a significant reduction in poverty?; or, how much must the poor benefit for growth to be considered pro-poor? In this respect, two definitions of pro-poor growth have emerged. First, growth is pro-poor when the Artículo recibido en octubre de 2003. Aceptado en noviembre de 2003.

Annals Economy Series, 2013

Economic growth and Sustainable development concepts have emerged at different moments in history. However, at this time, they are related to each other more than ever, because at one point, one of them evolution determined the other's birth, preventing humanity to destroy itself. This paper intends to present some conceptual delimitation, evolution of the concept of economic growth, but also several theories and models of economic growth that was the subject of specialists' researches. Like any economic phenomenon, growth brings some benefits and some costs. When these costs threaten the future of humanity, some solutions need to be found, no matter how hard ware them to implement, to remove unwanted effects. In this light, the paper deals with the concept of sustainable development, with this emergence and evolution, but especially with the link between sustainable development and economic growth.

Inequalities in Sub-Saharan Africa: Multidimensional Perspectives and Future Challenges, 2025

This chapter critically examines the intricate relationship between economic growth, poverty, and inequality in Africa, questioning the sustainability of past growth patterns. Despite economic growth in many African countries over the past thirty years, poverty reduction has been limited, particularly for the poorest populations. This raises concerns about the long-term sustainability of Africa's economic expansion and its ability to achieve key development goals. The non-inclusiveness of economic growth in Africa is a central issue, with gains often unequally distributed and captured by those at the top, exacerbating ecological pressures. High inequality is identified as a major factor hindering the translation of economic growth into poverty reduction. Using the Growth, Inequality, and Poverty (GIP) framework, this chapter highlights inequality as a key variable. The analysis indicates that Africa's economic growth has not been inclusive, with a significant portion of the population remaining at the bottom of the global income distribution. The top 1% of earners in Africa have captured a substantial share of total growth, further explaining why growth in Africa has been less inclusive compared to the global situation. Some of the world's most unequal countries are in Africa, particularly in Southern Africa. The weak relationship between economic growth and poverty can be attributed to high initial levels of inequality. The chapter explores the reasons behind non-inclusive growth, including historical, institutional, and structural factors such as the legacy of colonialism and dependence on natural resources. The patterns of economic growth and the quality of employment are also crucial, with growth in labour-intensive sectors being more effective in reducing poverty than capital-intensive sectors. The quantity of employment creation has lagged behind economic growth, indicating a weak correlation between employment growth and GDP growth. To achieve socially and environmentally sustainable growth, the chapter suggests prioritising policies that build social and economic inclusion, such as social protection and progressive taxation. Alternative approaches to economic growth are considered, including green growth, degrowth, and post-growth models. These approaches emphasise the need to rethink and reshape growth in line with social and environmental imperatives, using alternative indicators beyond GDP to measure progress towards sustainable development goals.

The greatest challenge of the century is to meet the needs of current and future generations, of a large and growing world population, while at the same time ensuring the sustainability of the natural environment. The current development model places unsustainable pressures on the natural resources—forests, land, water and the atmosphere—and causes an increasing frequency and intensity of natural and humanitarian disasters. The paper agrees with increasing evidence that business-as-usual is not an option, but it takes issues with many of the suggested policy responses. Human wellbeing is inseparably linked to economic growth, and economic growth inevitably has environmental implications. While it is impossible to decouple these linkages, countries can promote more sustainable development pathways by altering these linkages. To this end, they have three principle policy levers, which will need to complement each other: Efforts to promote more inclusive economic growth, efforts to increase resource-efficiency, and efforts to address and harness demographic changes. The paper has important implications for the discussions on sustainable development goals and the post-2015 development agenda, which takes place at the United Nations.

Encyclopedia of Sustainable Management, 2020

Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks, 2017

In Paris, on 14 December 1960, the member governments of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development signed a convention which opened with the commitment "to achieve the highest sustainable economic growth and employment and a rising standard of living in Member countries" (OECD 1960, Article 1a). In the midtwentieth century this prioritization of economic growth was still novel for governments but has since become the norm, not just for members of the OECD, but for virtually all governments around the world. The dominant belief is that ever-expanding economic output can provide the means to tackle most if not all of the problems confronting society, such as unemployment, poverty, and environmental degradation, and provide funding for transit, education, health, the arts and more. Indeed, without growth, the concern is that these problems and funding requirements will only get worse. So the pursuit of economic growth provides a compelling narrative for all those interested in economic policy and the future direction of society. About a quarter of a century after the OECD Convention, the World Commission on Environment and Development (1987) questioned whether and under what conditions economic growth could be sustained. The Commission envisaged a future characterized by sustainable development rather than unrestrained economic growth. While sustainability has not replaced growth as the order of the day, at least as far as governments are concerned, it has entered the vocabulary of public discourse where a key division exists between those who think that growth and sustainability are perfectly compatible and those who think that a choice must be made between them. Nourishing this ongoing debate is rich intellectual discussion around the relationship between economic growth and sustainability dating back at least as far as Mill (1848 [1970]). In 1972 the discussion entered public and political discourse with the publication of The Limits to Growth (Meadows et al. 1972) which posited a conflict between growth and sustainability. Their simulations of the world system suggested that if trends continued, economic growth would seriously deplete the world's

Working Papers, 2008

Models of economic growth are typically based on the use of one or more stocks of productive assets to create goods for utility-generating consumption. The roles played by man-made capital, natural capital and human capital have been explored, often separately, in the ...

The world's natural resources are being battered on all fronts. Human activities which consume such resources need to be reconsidered in a way which will allow the regenerative capacity of these assets to function. In view of the potential danger of the concept of sustainable development (SD) becoming an empty catch-phrase of contemporary environmentalism, a thorough analysis and discussion of the concept is therefore required. A distinction is made between sustainable growth and sustainable development. In the general debate sustainable growth is often used by politicians and developers as synonym for sustainable development. It is argued, however, that this is either a misunderstanding based on a superficial knowledge about the meaning of the sustainability concept or simply that it is cynically used to make the traditional growth philosophy more 'digestible' in an age of increasing environmental concern. Except from the concept of industrial ecology, present environme...

Sustainable Development, 2004