What sort of growth do we really need?

This blog post was published on April 23, 2013 at 01:36 pm GMT

David Siu - Creative Commons

I recently took part in a short online debate about growth, responding to a piece by Rita Klapper and Paul Upham (the full debate can be found here). These are my thoughts, which can be read as a stand-alone piece though they respond to Rita and Paul’s interesting essay and, in particular, their concluding proposition that ‘growth’ is not something we should take at face value.

Why is growth such a problematic concept? After all, economists, politicians and business people talk about it all the time. To begin with, it’s because (despite appearances to the contrary) we really do lack an adequate vocabulary to tackle a phenomenon that’s so elusive, multi-layered, paradoxical and all-pervasive. Tim Jackson highlighted a good example in his (2011) study, Prosperity Without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet. The French have at least got a term for slowing things down (‘decroissance’), whereas those working in English have to make to with the clumsy improvisation, ‘de-growth’ (OK, there’s ‘downsizing’ and ‘downshifting’, but the point still stands). Furthermore, the few words that we have at our disposal are shackled to, and frequently undermined by, misleading metaphors.

The images available – biological archetypes of growing organisms (like baby elephants) and evolutionary pathways – are particularly potent and need careful handling. Researchers have an important role to play here, challenging cruder examples of determinism and applying strong pinches of salt where necessary. But that’s not going to be enough. The destructive manifestations of economic growth that overshadow us today are a product of deeply-rooted cultural factors (with the possible exception of Rita’s collectively-minded Finns), underpinned by increasingly globalised economic and financial institutions. Fritz Schumacher’s inspirational (1973) Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered left one key question unanswered: how you deal with the dynamics? I’m not sure we’re much closer to understanding, for example, how today’s visionary start-up can avoid becoming tomorrow’s destructive corporation; issues like this should be at the heart of our research agenda. In his review of Jackson’s book, the solar energy entrepreneur Jeremy Leggett writes:

‘And for what it’s worth, as a creature of capitalism – a venture-capital-backed energy ­industry boss, a private equity investor, and an Institute of Directors director of the month – I am convinced that capitalism as we know it is torpedoing our prosperity, killing our economies and threatening our children with an unlivable world.’

Leggett thinks Jackson is good at, ‘showing the generalities of the escape route’, but there’s still plenty for the rest of us to tackle when it comes down to the details. Having said that, there are some great examples of experiments in alternative approaches to growth. For example, I recently attended a local entrepreneurs forum in Totnes (the Transition Town that has become known for its successful campaign against a Costa coffee outlet). As well as having a chance to mix with some really inspiring people, we heard about their local economic blueprint, part of a national pilot that is developing interesting new ways to conduct economic evaluation.