Decent Living Standards
Discussion
Tim Parrique:
- “Decent Living Standards (DLS) serves as a socio-economic benchmark as it views human welfare not in relation to consumption but rather in terms of services which together help meet human needs (e.g. nutrition, shelter, health, etc.), recognising that these service needs may be met in many different ways (with different emissions implications) depending on local contexts, cultures, geography, available technologies, social preferences, and other factors” (p.17).
Difficult here not to think of Manfred Max-Neef’s Matrix of Fundamental Human Needs or of Amartya Sen’s concept of “capabilities.” Decent living standards are not a matter of money but rather a matter of capabilities, only some of which depend on money. The pursuit of endless economic growth in nations who have already crossed the satiation threshold is a misguided development strategy. This strategy can also be counter-productive if the things we sacrifice to increase production (free time, scarce materials, a limited carbon budget) are actually much more valuable for well-being that the increase in income we get for them. A development strategy that focuses on health, conviviality, and sustainability is much more adapted to secure prosperity than a monomaniac focus on money points – or in IPCC words: “development targeted to basic needs and well-being for all entails less carbon-intensity than GDP-focused growth” (p.15).
“Equitable & democratic societies which provide high quality public services to their population have high well-being outcomes at lower energy use than those which do not, whereas those which prioritize economic growth beyond moderate incomes and extractive sectors display a reversed effect (Vogel et al. 2021)” (p.27).
This is why the authors of Chapter 5 plead for “prioritizing human well-being and the environment over economic growth” (p.17). Now, let that statement sink for a second for that it has radical implications. Prioritizing people and planet over profits means that regardless how lucrative an activity is, its raison d’être should systematically be evaluated based on its social utility and ecological sustainability. From this principle comes a corollary that is equally simple yet far more provocative: we will have to shut down a large swatch of today’s economic activities. Entire sectors like advertising, real-estate management, and financial services, products like SUVs, private jets, and personal data, should simply cease to exist. Radically reducing demand means dismantling a large part of our economy.
“These five drivers of human behaviour either contribute to the status-quo of a global high-carbon, consumption, and GDP growth oriented economy or help generate the desired change to a low-carbon energy-services, well-being, and equity oriented economy (Jackson 2017; Cassiers et al. 2018; Yuana et al. 2020)” (p.17).
So, my fundamental point is this: we should not treat demand-side strategies as mere lifestyle tweaks. They go deeper than that. To enable the radical reduction Chapter 5 talks about, and in order to secure our ability to “prosper without growth” (Jackson, 2017) or to guarantee basic needs and well-being for all within planetary boundaries, as IPCC authors would say, we need to completely rethink our economic system. We need to transition from a growth-oriented economy to a low-carbon energy-services, well-being and equity-oriented economy – a “post-growth economy” (Cassiers et al., 2018)."
(https://www.resilience.org/stories/2022-05-06/sufficiency-means-degrowth/)
More information
Source: Chapter 5: Demand, services and social aspects of mitigation [1]