“
continue polluting while trying to offset the damage through some face-saving corporate philanthropy exercises. We would be fools to assume that we can simply pay our way out of this mess. Nature cannot be bailed out, as if it were a financial market. We need to stop breaking things in the first place. But for this, we need a new development model. We have designed an economic system that sees no value in any human or natural resource unless it is exploited. A river is unproductive until its catchment is appropriated by some industry or its waters are captured by a dam. An open field and its natural bounty are useless until they are fenced. A community of people have no value unless their life is commercialised, their needs are turned into consumer goods, and their aspirations are driven by competition. In this approach, development equals manipulation. By contrast, we need to understand development as something totally different: development is care. It is through a caring relationship with our natural wealth that we can create value, not through its destruction. It is thanks to a cooperative human-to-human interaction that we can achieve the ultimate objective of development, that is, wellbeing. In this new economy, people will be productive by performing activities that enhance the quality of life of their peers and the natural ecosystems in which they live. If not for moral reasons, they should do so for genuine self-interest: there is nothing more rewarding than creating wellbeing for oneself and society. This is the real utility, the real consumer surplus, not the shortsighted and self-defeating behaviour promoted by the growth ideology. The wellbeing economy is a vision for all countries. There are cultural traces of such a vision in the southern African notion of ‘ubuntu’, which literally means ‘I am because you are’, reminding us that there is no prosperity in isolation and that everything is connected. In Indonesia we find the notion of ‘gotong royong’, a conception of development founded on collaboration and consensus, or the vision of ‘sufficiency economy’ in Thailand, Bhutan and most of Buddhist Asia, which indicates the need for balance, like the Swedish term ‘lagom’, which means ‘just the right amount’. Native Alaskans refer to ‘Nuka’ as the interconnectedness of humans to their ecosystems, while in South America, there has been much debate about the concept of ‘buen vivir’, that is, living well in harmony with others and with nature. The most industrialised nations, which we often describe in dubious terms like ‘wealthy’ or ‘developed’, are at a crossroads. The mess they have created is fast outpacing any other gain, even in terms of education and life expectancy. Their economic growth has come at a huge cost for the rest of the world and the planet as a whole. Not only should they commit to realising a wellbeing economy out of self-interest, but also as a moral obligation to the billions of people who had to suffer wars, environmental destruction and other calamities so that a few, mostly white human beings could go on
”
”