‘What use is growing the global economy when it is burning the planet and funnelling the majority of its wealth to the super-rich?’ This question encapsulates the priorities that the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Olivier De Schutter, has pursued since starting his second term in 2023, priorities premised on a belief that the traditional model of growing the economy first and then redistributing wealth is ‘no longer fit for purpose.’
In his latest report, presented in July to the Human Rights Council, De Schutter contests the longstanding premise that poverty would be eradicated through the trickling down of economic prosperity derived from constant growth, arguing instead that such growth only favours a minority.
What are the problems with growth?
Economic growth throughout the second half of the 20th Century, from post-war industrialisation to the rise in global trade and technological developments, resulted in improved living standards, reduced poverty, and strengthened social protection. When the World Bank first established the poverty line in 1990 (at $1.90 per day), 1.9 billion people fell below the threshold. As of 2022, 712 million were estimated to live under the $2.15 poverty line.
Notwithstanding this undeniable progress, there are two important caveats: first, those benefits have not been shared equally around the world. With many countries still under colonial rule, or seeking to stabilise their economies following recently gained independence, economic transformation was initially concentrated in the Global North. The legacies of this are still evident today, notably in the form of foreign debt (countries in Africa spend more on servicing debt than on healthcare). Despite some reforms (e.g. the IMF’s 2010 quota reforms to improve inclusivity), international financial institutions still reflect post-colonial dynamics and distributions of power, as evidenced in their asymmetries in influence and decision-making. Second, over these decades, and mostly propelled by the rise of neoliberal economic models, and trade liberalisation efforts in the Global North, the idea has become ingrained in the international community’s collective and institutional mentality that economic growth equals human progress.
Yet De Schutter has countered the idea that economic growth is a ‘magic wand for ending poverty.’ He is right: despite widespread economic growth, income and wealth inequalities have risen in most countries.
States need revenue to fund public services and social protection systems, and therefore to realise human rights, particularly economic, social, and cultural rights. However, economic growth has proved insufficient to tackle either poverty or inequalities within countries. The former Special Rapporteur, Philip Alston, noted after his visit to the UK in 2018 how the world’s fifth largest economy had one-fifth of its population living in poverty. After visiting Spain in 2020, he highlighted the ‘shockingly high’ inequality in the EU’s fourth-largest economy. Additionally, there is a clear link between economic inequalities and the realisation of civil and political rights: economic power translates into political clout, enabling powerful economic actors to influence policymaking, thereby systematically undermining democracy and facilitating social exclusion.
If not growth, then what?
In his latest report, De Schutter calls for ‘abandoning growthism’ and transitioning ‘to a post-growth development trajectory,’ focused on realising human rights and not on increasing production and consumption.
De Schutter is part of a rising chorus of voices pushing for a reversal of ‘growthism,’ an end to relentless material consumption and economic expansion, and a focus instead on human relations, values, and minimising harm to others and the environment. Despite having gained traction in Western circles since the 1970s, the foundations of this movement can be traced back to communal and Indigenous traditions, such as Buen Vivir in Latin America, Ubuntu in Africa, and eco-Swaraj in India; traditions that contest capitalist and pro-growth frameworks.
Economist Kate Raworth, author of ‘doughnut economics’ (the theory that economies are like a ring doughnut, with the outer rim representing an ecological ceiling, the inner one a minimum social foundation, and the space in between being what economies should inhabit in order to be ‘ecologically safe and socially just’), has also rejected the idea that continuous economic growth will eradicate massive inequalities, defending instead the balance between social and ecological boundaries.
For decades, neoliberalism has embraced the idea that green growth is compatible with minimising environmental harm and degradation. In contrast, opponents of ‘growthism’ (also known as proponents of ‘post growth’ theory) argue that the decoupling of economic growth from environmental pressures is not happening at a speed or scale large enough to have a significant environmental impact. ‘Green’ products (electric car batteries, solar panels) still rely on the extraction of minerals and resources, and their supply chains are plagued by human rights violations, including child labour and exploitation, modern slavery, discrimination, and attacks against Indigenous Peoples.
Bringing human rights into the equation
Post-growth and other adjacent theories shine a light on the forces fuelling inequalities and poverty, and posit a concrete alternative: to shift the focus from growth to the fulfilment of universal human rights. Human rights economies can provide guidance to direct such a shift. With this in mind, De Schutter made a number of proposals in his latest report: stimulating socially and solidarity-oriented enterprises that address community needs, instead of pursuing ever-growing profit; strengthening democratic governance across workplaces and introducing measures to enable workers to achieve real work-life balance (e.g. by establishing job guarantees that foster social inclusion, or by reducing working hours); combating consumerism by banning planned obsolescence; and, most importantly, allocating resources to healthcare, education, or housing. Raworth’s doughnut can be a useful tool as it mirrors the human rights economy: the space between the ecological ceiling and the social minimum is where the human rights economy can be the lever, by providing social protections and access to basic needs.
To institutionalise human rights economies, a change is needed in the public financing paradigm. Redistributive policies, progressive taxation, inheritance and wealth taxes, must be accompanied by international cooperation that makes global taxation fair, fights tax evasion and corruption, and enables lower-income countries to collect revenue. To effectively counter inequalities between countries, tax justice initiatives like the UN Tax Convention currently being negotiated, or a proposal by the Brazilian G-20 presidency for a global billionaire tax, should be further advanced and agreed upon multilaterally. The international financial system must also be reformed to make it truly democratic and representative. A much-needed step to achieve such as new consensus would be to revamp the Bretton Woods institutions’ quotas and voting rights, which disproportionately favour rich countries of the Global North. A first move could be to do away with the practice of the World Bank and IMF always being led by an American and a European, respectively.
Stimulating human rights economies is also a matter of environmental and intergenerational justice. Profit-driven economies exert an untenable degree of environmental pressure through the depletion of resources and disposal of waste from and into the Global South (in what some call ‘waste colonialism’). The ‘hamster wheel’ of demand-production-consumption is not only exhausting planetary resources and increasing emissions today, but is also mortgaging the future of coming generations. The Maastricht Principles on the human rights of future generations call for a decoupling of human development from overconsumption. With the wealthiest 1% being responsible for more carbon emissions than the poorest 66%, pursuing a more egalitarian, distributive economic model is a matter of social justice for both current and future generations.
What lies ahead?
De Schutter advocates for a change not only in the paradigm of prosperity that equates unwavering growth with well-being, but also in the way progress is measured. He has called for moving beyond purely GDP-focused indicators that fail to account, for instance, for unpaid care and household work. In Our Common Agenda, UN Secretary-General António Guterres claims that GDP ‘fails to capture the human and environmental’ cost of the current model. The latest draft of the Pact of the Future calls on the Secretary-General to establish an independent expert group to develop recommendations for universal indicators that go beyond GDP.
Countries like Ecuador and Bolivia have enshrined in their Constitutions the notion of Buen Vivir (‘good living’), translated as the right to a good life and the rights of nature, into a guiding framework for development. Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness Index measures progress beyond GDP, including psychological well-being, education, cultural diversity, governance, and ecological resilience. Such examples show that it is possible to change longstanding paradigms built on purely economic considerations and adopt more inclusive and fair models.
Change is undeniably needed, and human rights economies can serve as a blueprint. They may not be the panacea to human rights violations and the triple planetary crisis, but they can open a window to more imaginative approaches that go beyond gauging economic outputs. If economic growth per se cannot redress structural qualities and environmental harms, a shift away from profit maximisation toward a human rights economy is both possible and necessary.
Photo credit: mSeattle via Flickr
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