The Poverty of Growth by Olivier De Schutter

The Poverty of Growth Reviews

• 
  Venky

  The obsession of the global economy with Gross Domestic Product (GDP) received a rude jolt in a meeting organised by an expert with the objective of convincing a cross section of the British audience to vote to stay within the United Kingdom in the run up to Brexit. When the speaker informed the attendees about the loss of GDP in the event Britain voted “leave”, a livid woman stood up and shouted “That’s your bloody GDP! It’s not ours!”. In The Poverty of Growth, Belgian legal scholar specialising in economic and social rights and the former United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food from 2008 to 2014, Olivier De Schutter articulates on how an inveterate predilection towards ‘growth’ to the exclusion of a plethora of other social and civic issues, causes more regress than progress.
  
  De Schutter begins his slim albeit arresting work by highlighting the inadequacies surrounding the conventional definition and comprehension of the term ‘poverty’. Ignoring the fundamental understanding of the phenomenon, poverty is provided a money-centric label. Adopting what is known as the Cost of Basic Needs (CBN) approach, individuals are deemed poor if they exhibit an incapability to meet the costs of a basket of food and non-food items considered essential for an active participation in society. Thus, a person earning a particular number (equivalent in dollar terms) – or lower – daily is identified as being ‘poor’.
  
  This definition by concentrating purely on absolute numbers, completely ignores ‘relative’ realities. In the words of the sociologist Peter Townsend, poverty is when people “…lack the resources to obtain the type of diet, participate in the activities and have the living conditions and amenities which are customary, or at least widely encouraged or approved in the society to which they belong.” An emphasis on growth or ‘growthism’ as economist Jason Hickel ruefully terms it, fails to take a multidimensional view of poverty.
  
  Growth provides no indication about the actual ‘distribution’ of wealth. Thus, the staggering data on inequalities both between and within nations. The ‘Great Acceleration’, the outcome of relentless growth also means environmental degradation due to rampant exploitation of resources fueled by a frenzied act of consumption. Impoverished people find themselves, front and center of this ecological devastation. Located in extremely vulnerable geographies, it is the poor who serve as the frontispiece of any natural disaster, whether it be landslides or flooding.
  
  ‘Going Green’ is used often as a powerfully viable antidote to counter the growth skeptics. But as De Schutter writes, such an argument may be a mere euphemism for escapism. Three factors that reveal in stark fashion a yawning chasm between consumption and technological advances, bear monument to this fact:
  
  Rebound Effect: Increased efficiency may lead to increased consumption since the goods/services would be cheaper. Dissemination of enhanced technologies lead consumers to increase carbon footprints in other domains thereby neutralizing the reduction in carbon footprints in some other domains. E.g., increasing air travel and at the same time using public transport for own use.
  Lock-in Effect: Enhanced technology fostering exacerbated status quo. E.g., substitution of Kerosene or Aviation Turbine Fuel by more eco-friendly substitutes leading to increased air travel and consequently a raft of new airports. This results in more GHG emissions courtesy construction. Growing use of Electric cars and lesser recourse to public transport or bicycles etc
  Middle Class Effect: When average per capita income reaches an inflection point, people can afford to spend beyond necessities. Such an increased consumption leads to increased resource requirements and thus increased exploitation of limited resources.
  De Schutter also bemoans the “commodification of life” that occurs because of growth. Relying on the work and words of the economist Robert Heilbroner, De Schutter illustrates how even intangibles such as personal relations now have a price attached to them. Thus, we can pay for surrogate mothers to deliver babies, less fortunate ones amongst us to stand for us in long queues, drive in fast lanes reserved for pooled cars and even “offset” the brazen pollution of environment by buying carbon credits under a ‘cap and trade’ scheme.
  
  So, what is the substitute for growth, if at all there is one? De Schutter lays out a few alternative scenarios that can be employed in lock-step with growth.
  
  Concentrated Transition to Renewables in the Energy Sector
  
  The transition towards renewables has a great potential to not only halt environmental destruction but also to generate meaningful employment. The quality of such employment is also appreciable, and women can be more purposefully represented.
  
  Buildings
  
  Insulating buildings and relocation of slum dwellers to more meaningful settlements not only reduce energy consumption from 30% to around 80%, but also accords employments to millions of people mired in poverty.
  
  Sustained Fight against Inequality & redefining work
  
  Reducing working hours and instituting a system whereby the state acts as an employer of last resort by providing opportunities for all those willing and able to work but are unable to obtain a meaningful job are also some of the measures that may be instituted to complement and supplement the need for growth. Work also needs to be given a democratizing attribute, a feature that allows bottom-up conveyance of ideas, suggestions, and requirements. Only when workers are granted an equal or near equal say in the running of an organisation, would the ever-widening divide between accretions to capital and returns to wages be reduced, if not eliminated.
  
  The Poverty of Growth is more a manifesto than a jeremiad. At a time when the most relevant people in the form of policy mavens seem to have lost focus regarding priorities, processes, and people, De Schutter’s work comes as a timely wakeup call that exhorts the shrugging off lethargies and imbibing the qualities of purpose, motive, and motivation in the formulation of economic, social, and civic polity.
• 
  Richard Derus

  Rating: 3* of five
  
  The Publisher Says: How do we combat poverty and rising inequality? In our age of impending climate catastrophe, the conventional wisdom around GDP and economic growth is no longer fit for purpose; a rising tide sinks all boats.
  
  Oliver De Schutter argues that we must rethink the fight against poverty. The quest for economic growth not only clashes with the need to remain within planetary boundaries, but in fact creates the very social exclusion it is intended to deteriorating human rights, widening the gap between the richest and the poorest, and merely modernising poverty without eliminating it.
  
  The Poverty of Growth makes a clarion call to social movements, trade unions and environmental NGOs alike to forge a new pathway towards a 'post-growth' development, and a narrative of progress that is no longer orientated around wealth and profit.
  
  I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
  
  My Review: I reached the end of Part 3, realized I was *dreading* Part 4, and stopped reading.
  
  Well-sourced, tediously written klaxon of warning that was meant to be...and presented as...a clarion call drawing attention to a different approach to the process of running an economy. It does the depressing, and depressingly common, leftist thing of assuming you will agree that this solution is THE solution. That feels like bullying to me, no matter if the arguments and solutions presented make their case or not. (I think a little more "not" in this case.) I do not expect this book to convert even those on the fence, still less those not terribly interested in making changes but aware there's a problem.
  
  You could easily feel differently.
  
  
  Pluto Press offers the ebook for 1¢ so go get one.
• 
  not xarnah

  read for ANT374 - this is my dream reality too but too bad