The Institute for Global Prosperity’s Founder and Director Prof. Henrietta Moore writes about the impact of using prosperity “league tables” that aim to tell us who’s getting it right for their citizens, in the face of global challenges such as climate change, and how different understandings of prosperity give us an alternative way of understanding life for communities across the world.
“But there's a serious problem in seeing our world in this way. There's an uncomfortably close correlation between these supposedly more sophisticated measures and old-fashioned GDP. Perhaps more troubling in the context of a planet threatened by climate change is the reinforcement of a belief that some countries have "made it", while others need to catch up."
“In truth, many of the world’s most “prosperous” countries are its least sustainable. Since the 70s, humanity has been in “ecological overshoot”, with annual demand on resources exceeding what the Earth can regenerate each year. Today, humanity uses the equivalent of 1.7 Earths to provide the resources we use. This applies to the vast majority of today’s wealthy countries.”
Read the full article on the Guardian Global Development Website