When you’re living inside a system, it’s often very difficult to recognise the potential dogmas that permeate it. There are things that are open to questioning and criticism, but then there are those sacred cows that are so integral to the mythos of the prevailing wisdom that they are beyond the bounds of debate. In 2009, after writing a report for the UK Sustainable Development Commission (SDC), economist Tim Jackson found out first hand what happens when you dare to question one of those deeply entrenched beliefs.
The report was called ‘Prosperity without Growth?’, an exploration of the relationship between prosperity and sustainability, in which the question was asked, what does prosperity mean on a finite planet? A natural conclusion of that exploration was the need to look more closely at one of these systemic guiding principles, namely the idea that growth is always good. This observation was born of something that seem fairly self evident, on a finite planet there must be some limit to material expansion, right? However, in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, at a time when the UK government’s sole focus was on how to kickstart that exact growth that Tim and his team dared to question, this was not a message that was particularly well received and the report was promptly buried.
As it turned out, ideas that the government had rejected as unhelpful, a growing audience of people were crying out for. After its publication the report began to be downloaded from the SDC website in large numbers and the concepts within began to spread.
In 2010 the report was turned into a book called ‘Prosperity without Growth’ with surprising global appeal, and from that time the ideas it espouses have gained a stronger and stronger foothold in the debate about what a healthy, sustainable, prosperous economy really looks like.
We met up with Tim at his office on the campus of the University of Surrey in Guildford where he works as Professor of Sustainable Development and Director of the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity (CUSP) to chat about his work and his ideas in more detail.