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LIBRARY - M.A.P.S. Economic Agendas
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Global Economic Growth
Straining Ecosystem
From Share International March 1998 edition
The global economy has grown so rapidly in the last 50 years — from $5 trillion to $29 trillion a
year — that it poses a serious threat to the earth’s ecosystem, according to State of the World 1998, a
new report released by the Washington DC based Worldwatch Institute. “If the world economy as it is
now structured continues to expand, it will eventually destroy its natural support systems and decline,”
says Lester Brown, senior author of the organisation's 15th annual report on the health of the global
environment.
But the news isn’t all bad. If governments adopt the right policies, and businesses take advantage
of new markets, there is still time to make the transition to an ecologically sustainable economy.
“Just as the challenge is unprecedented, so too are the economic opportunities for the countries
and companies that pioneer the technologies needed to get us there,” Brown says. As an example, he and
co-author Christopher Flavin point to the $2 billion global wind-power industry, which is expanding at
25 per cent per year.
Noting that the global economy has grown almost six-fold since 1950, the report also says that the
world economy has grown more in the last seven years than in the entire 10,000 years from the
beginning of agriculture until 1950. Along with economic growth, the last 50 years has seen an
unprecedented rise in natural-resource consumption: the use of wood has more than doubled, the use of
paper increased six times, fish consumption is up five-fold, water use tripled, steel use increased
four-fold, grain consumption nearly tripled and the use of fossil fuels was up nearly five-fold, according
to the report.
But while the economy continues to expand, the resources on which it depends do not. The result,
says Worldwatch, is unprecedented stress on the global environment: shrinking forests, eroding soils,
disappearing wetlands, collapsing fisheries, rising temperatures and disappearing plant and animal
species. The limits of our current economic model are most apparent in China, says Brown. “China is
teaching us that the Western industrial development model will not work there because there are not
enough land, water and energy resources for everyone in China to consume at US levels,” he says.
Transportation provides a telling example. Three years ago, Beijing decided that auto-making would be
one of its basic growth industries over the next few decades. If China continues along this path, and its
per capital car ownership and oil use reach US levels, the Chinese alone would burn 80 million barrels
of oil per day — well beyond the current world production of 64 million barrels per day.
Brown emphasises that the report does not argue against economic growth, but rather for a more
ecologically sustainable economy; one that respects the carrying capacity of natural systems. The report
defines a sustainable economy as one that reuses and recycles materials, is powered by renewable energy
sources and is demographically stable.
Converting our existing “throwaway” economy into a reuse/recycle economy reduces both the
extraction of raw materials and the amount of waste discarded in landfills. This conversion is already
under way, Worldwatch reports: 55 per cent of US steel output is from scrap metal, and paper
companies are negotiating long-term contracts to buy local communities’ scrap paper.
Renewable energy production is also expanding rapidly. Wind generation is expanding by 25 per
cent a year. In contrast, markets for coal and oil are growing by only 1 per cent a year. Wind turbines
already generate 6 per cent of Denmark’s electricity. In the US, just three states — North Dakota,
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South Dakota and Texas — have enough harnessable wind power to meet national electricity needs.
China could double its electrical output with the same technology.
State of the World 1998 also outlines policy responses to other current environmental challenges
— protecting the world’s disappearing forests, halting the decline in biodiversity, promoting sustainable
fisheries and recycling organic wastes.
Co-author Hillary French argues that we need to redirect international private capital flows into
cutting-edge, environmental technologies that will enable developing countries to leapfrog the destruc-
tive stages of Western industrial development and move directly to sustainable economies.
“History judges political leaders by whether or not they respond to the great issues of their time,”
Worldwatch argues. “For Lincoln, the challenge was to free the slaves. For Churchill, it was to turn
the tide of war in Europe. For Nelson Mandela, it was to end apartheid. For Bill Clinton and today’s
other world leaders, the challenge is to build a new economy.” (Source: Monday Developments, USA)
