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Testing the coalition's commitment to resourcing sustainable development
Jonathon Porritt, August 19th 2010, Leadership, Public Sector
Forgive the extended blog the other day – a bit over the top. I want to reassure Mrs Spelman and Mr Huhne that they now have two weeks respite as I’m away on holiday.
Which also means that I’ve kept Test Number 4 just about as simple as possible.
On July 27th, in response to a Parliamentary Question from Green MP Caroline Lucas, junior DEFRA Minister Jim Paice made the following commitment: “DEFRA will establish an enhanced departmental capability and presence on sustainable development”.
To put that one to the test, all we have to do is compare DEFRA’s “SD capability” on May 5th 2010 with its capability on May 6th 2011.
In the interests of proper transparency, it would therefore be very helpful if Mrs Spelman could publish what DEFRA’s total resource looked like when they entered government. I’m sure her officials should be able to help her (and possibly me too!) in unearthing those baseline figures in terms of core staff resources and other financial commitments. Including the Sustainable Development Dialogues and so on.
If that sounds just a little bit too easy, don’t forget that we’re starting from a low baseline in terms of ministerial capability. In his answer to that Parliamentary Question, Mr Paice made the following statement: “While Government has made progress, we need to take more concerted action on the carbon agenda led by DECC, and also on the wider sustainability agenda including waste, water, biodiversity, resource efficiency and other areas which DEFRA leads on.”
Unfortunately, Mr Paice, that’s not the same thing as sustainable development. You seem to have omitted vast chunks of what falls within this territory, as you would probably have spotted had you had a chance as yet to look at ‘Securing the Future’. There’s no reference here to anything to do with health, education, economic policy, international development, social services, governance and so on. Oh dear!
In my last blog, I referred to the paper from Andrea Ross, and there’s a very helpful paragraph in there that I think will help you to understand why sustainable development is so much more than the sum of its constituent parts – including straight environmental issues and climate change.
“As a ‘whole systems’ concept, sustainable development must not be too closely linked to one particular concern, including environmental protection, human rights or climate change. Consequently, sustainable development cannot be an effective champion for any of its component parts on their own. These concerns need their own champions. Instead, sustainable development is most appropriately viewed as providing the forum or ‘table’ to which important and more concrete objectives and values can be brought. Used in this way, sustainable development can offer a framework for decision-making which ensures that these objectives and values have influence in the decision-making process.”
In other words, “whole systems” not disaggregated bits of greenery.
Coalition cuts could achieve much more with 3D leadership
Stephanie Draper, August 18th 2010, Leadership, Public Sector
The first 100 days of the UK coalition government have made it clear that this government is going to cut, and cut in a big macho way, but is it really going to ‘cut it’ from a sustainability point of view?
I would suggest not. The sort of leadership that is going to take us towards a sustainable future looks further, engages widely and is authentic (connected to people’s core values) – the characteristics of 3D leadership, as we call it at Forum for the Future. And that is not the sort of leadership that we are seeing.
If the proposed higher cuts in Defra (the Department for Food and Rural Affairs) and the axing of the Sustainable Development Commission are anything to go by, it is difficult to see how the Tories’ promise of ‘vote blue, go green’ will ‘be authentic’. And if the rumours in The Times this week are true - that the Treasury is "planning to axe hundreds of millions of pounds from Britain's renewable energy and nuclear clean-up budgets" then we can ask serious questions about whether the coalition is ‘looking further’ or taking a shortsighted approach. But it is the lack of the systems thinking that underpins what we mean by ‘engaging widely’ that is the real missed opportunity.
The coalition promised a ‘root and branch’ review of what government is there to deliver and I was mildly hopeful. This was a chance to look at the whole system of public services, what we receive and how, and to find efficiencies by preventing problems rather than fixing them.
It hasn’t really panned out that way. Instead we have the Ministry of Justice proposing court closures one day and Defra talking about selling off nature reserves the next. You can’t look at the whole by asking each department to cut on its own. Prisons are being thought about separately from education; health separately from housing, education, nature... and so it goes on. Yet all these things are intrinsically linked. The ring-fencing of the NHS, although welcome, is symptomatic of this end-of-pipe approach. It shows that the government is not thinking about how to provide health – through good housing, fulfilling work, education and indeed a high quality natural environment - but how to deal with illness.
I fear that this reductionist approach is only going to lead to more end-of-pipe solutions with prevention continuing to be the poor relation of cure. We will have a smaller deficit, but we will have missed the chance to actually become more efficient. It is invariably more cost effective to prevent a problem than solve it – as the Stern review showed in relation to climate change. This is a big missed opportunity.
By engaging widely through a real root and branch approach we might spend less and get more, rather than spending less and getting less. This would mean that instead of asking people what they think we should cut and asking departments to find their percentage, you would ask them what they want delivered and rebuild public services on the basis of the things that society needs and wants. It would take a bit more time, but would certainly lead to a better outcome. That’s a big part of 3D leadership, and we will need more of it if we are going to get a good outcome from all these cuts.
Image used courtesy of Flickr under Creative Commons guidelines
Sustainability leadership - a labour of love
Sara Parkin, July 23rd 2010, Forum founders, Leadership
In my experience, pregnancy and child birth are quicker and less painful than writing a book, but the feeling when holding your new baby in your hands – whether it is your own flesh and blood or the product of sustainably managed forests – is remarkably similar. Both are a labour of love.
Next week sees the publication of my new book The Positive Deviant: Sustainability leadership in a perverse world. Born of my experience in setting up and developing the Forum’s Leadership in Sustainable Development masters, the book is largely in response to the very many people who have said ‘oh my, I wish I had the chance to do that course before I started work’.
The basic idea is that between the covers of the book, readers will find sufficient knowledge, ideas, and tools to build up their own sustainability-literate leadership personality and get started on Monday. For those already knowledgeable there are new angles, ideas, and ways of thinking that will help you be ever more confident in your leadership, but the main message is that none of us can know it all; we just need to know enough to ensure that more often than not we are deciding for rather than against sustainability.
The odd title of the book comes from my other major theme, that of leadership strategies for anyone with sustainability as an objective. As well as exploring the many byways and odd highway in leadership development over the last half century or so (and offering a robust critique of business schools and corporate responsibility on the way) I conclude that a new 21st century approach to leadership is needed if it – as all leadership must be from now on – is to be sustainability-driven. We can’t wait for the right international treaties or co-ordinated national government initiatives – all that looks further away than ever. So doing the right thing for sustainability despite the perversity of the world around us – the wrong institutions, policies, processes and legions of uncooperative people – has become the best strategy from now on.
Since floating the idea that sustainability-literate leadership will, almost by definition, have to operate positive deviant strategies I have been delighted to discover that there are lots of people who feel the same way. In their reflections on leadership, this year’s Forum students even found several when they were out on placement. There has been talk of striking a black and yellow badge (to match the cover of the book) with the letters PD, so positive deviants can identify each other and so collaborate on ways to clamber over or round the barriers to shifting to a more sustainable way of doing things.
Now the book is out the next labour of the author starts: selling the thing. If you are quick, you can still get the special 25% discount off the cover price of £24.99 up to noon on 28th July. You can order through the Forum website (see the promotion in the left hand column of our home page) or via the Earthscan website directly, using the FF25 voucher code. After the 28th you can still get a 20% discount using the code FF20.
I’m donating my royalties back to Forum for the Future so we can train up more positive deviants amongst our students and partners.
SARA PARKIN
Whistling in the wind? I don't think so
Martin Hunt, July 12th 2010, Futures, Innovation, Leadership
How a Canadian mountain resort became a model of sustainability
Let’s face it, very few of us like Monday mornings, but the beginning of last week was truly a depressing wake-up call for me. I contemplated hiding away under my quilt as the alarm clicked in and BBC radio reeled off the latest on government spending cuts and potential job losses. As the commentators considered what cuts of 20% here and 40% there might mean, I thought of our construction partners as Building Schools for the Future was shelved, and wondered about the prospects for colleagues in local authorities striving to implement low-carbon infrastructure.
But thankfully, my day did get better. I’d organised a Forum network seminar with Ken Melamed, the Mayor of Whistler, to talk about how the Canadian mountain resort community is implementing an ambitious plan to achieve a prosperous and sustainable future. For those of you who don’t know, as well as co-hosting the recent Winter Olympics, Whistler is seen as an exemplar in terms of community planning, with a systems-led approach to sustainable development at its core.
A decade ago the Natural Step framework (http://www.forumforthefuture.org/projects/the-natural-step) was used to inspire, align and guide the community toward a shared vision of sustainability and success. Ken talked about how Whistler2020 (www.whistler2020.ca) lays out a vision, prioritised strategies and action planning process – guiding strategic planning and actions over time. There is also regular and transparent reporting on progress. Drawing on local and external knowledge, Whistler2020 informs decision-making, optimises use of limited resources and provides a framework for aligning community efforts in a common direction.
Today, Ken talks about Whistler2020 being a ‘living’ plan, driving ongoing progress, and being informed by community members, including local businesses. And this long-term plan is leading to significant change on the ground. We heard about how they used the Winter Olympics and Paralympics as a vehicle to accelerate the journey the community is on. This allowed them to complete 30 green building projects, to showcase clean technologies and green building techniques, to pilot a hydrogen-fuelled bus transit scheme, and to create hundreds of low-impact, affordable homes.
But the key message for me was the role of strong and pragmatic leadership through good times and bad. It’s clear from talking to Ken that he knows that Whistler is on a journey and it’s taken a lot of time to get all the necessary stakeholders on board. Barriers have had to be overcome, cynics convinced and some trade-offs made. But at the same time, Whistler has not waited for national government to legislate or tax, or for consumers to demand change.
Where feasible they have adopted innovation and piloted new ideas. The community has experimented with new ways to finance projects for the long term, and has restructured the municipal government around five strategic priorities. They have a plan that is now city-led, but community-owned. It is proving to be workable and Whistler’s approach is now being adopted by much larger towns and communities across Canada.
True, Whistler has some way to go before it is truly sustainable, and still faces significant challenges as a tourist destination. But there is a clear appreciation that uncontrolled growth is unsustainable, and that adding value and doing more with the community’s existing infrastructure and resources is the way forward.
Some may argue that Whistler is different from many of our communities here in the UK, but I believe that there are many lessons that we can learn about long-term planning, community engagement, innovation and implementation. Perhaps most importantly, I get the impression that Whistler will not be diverted from the long-term path it has set, and will continue to demonstrate the strong leadership and clear sense of direction which many of our partners should aspire to, even in the most testing of economic times.
I felt a lot better Tuesday morning.
End of the beginning for the class of 2010
Celia Cole, June 23rd 2010, General, Leadership
We know it's coming. The signs are everywhere. Excitement. Stress. Anxiety. Exhaustion. The clock is ticking down the last six weeks and we Forum scholars are left wishing we could squeeze just a few more hours into the day, a few more days into the week.
I knew it was coming when talk of the 'j' word (job) crept into seminars, discussions and to-do lists. Preparations for life after Forum and our Masters in Leadership for Sustainable Development began with a fantastic career session: a professional life coach helped us identify the necessary ingredients for personal success and how to plot the journey ahead of us. CV sessions and job advice have since followed, and now it's down to us.
I knew it was coming when, despite having only just settled into a manic and creative month on The Guardian Environment Desk, I was already walking away from the final placement of the year. But what a year of placement experiences: from food self-sufficiency in Middlesbrough Borough Council, to sustainable planning in the Environment Agency, to the plight of hill sheep farmers' at Friends of the Earth, and sustainable food chains behind Sainsbury's, I have learned an incredible amount. When you add my five placements to those of the other eleven scholars, we have generated 60 months of shared experience, invaluable knowledge and lifelong learning.
I knew it was coming when the evenings and weekends started to disappear. It is June, which is crunch time for delivering our completed sustainable business plans. Combined with a personal leadership analysis and reflection on our year's learning, these form the equivalent of a masters dissertation and, I would argue, are more valuable. Each business plan aims to tackle society’s sustainability woes (or improve a few of them at least!) And, to top it all off, just a few days before we graduate we'll present these business plans before a 'dragon's den'!
I knew it was coming as we waved goodbye to our tutors at the end of our second and final teaching module at the Leadership Trust. Six of the most enlightening and enjoyable days of the course were spent at this centre for leadership excellence in Ross on Wye; practising, studying, and reflecting upon our personal leadership development. And the experience helped us scholars bond as a team.
I knew it was coming this side of Easter when one big test could be ticked off. It was my turn, with fellow scholar Sol, to plan the post-placement event after a month working within in the business sector. Drawing together sustainability professionals from Unilever, BP, Bupa, BT, Sainsbury's and others, the event focused on how sustainable goods and services could be consumed by the mainstream citizen, and in particular, how reusable water bottles and car club memberships could move from a niche to a mainstream market.
I knew it was coming when the final schedule arrived, and time no longer seemed indefinite. Core seminars in science and technology, ethics and values, people and community, and economics, are tailing off. Our ever impressive list of speakers, from social entrepreneurs to political experts, continues, but not for long. A new addition to the timetable has arrived; graduation.
I knew it was coming when it felt like I'd been here before; next year’s applicants have been welcomed, the interviews conducted and our successors announced.
So, we know it's coming. We're very aware. But it's not quite over yet. Ahead lie hours of business planning, big discussions on sustainability, even bigger debates on leadership, one or two essays, a few thousand words, plenty of reflections, an inevitable panic and certainly one large celebration.
We can see the end but the journey is far from over. In fact, come July, the real journey we have been preparing for will finally begin.
Can the creative industries seduce us into sustainability?
Jonathon Porritt, June 16th 2010, Business, Futures, Innovation, Leadership
Shock them? Seduce them? Educate them? All of the above? When it comes to getting people to accept the reality of climate change (and the urgent need to be doing something about it), politicians have got themselves into a bit of a pickle by depending too much on the science.
Scientists would love to think that evidence alone would be sufficient to guarantee people’s buy-in. To their growing horror, however, people’s scepticism about climate change has deepened even as the evidence has hardened.
Bottom line: science alone is not enough. The truth has not set us free. And nor will it.
This is where the Creative Industries can play a vital role. When it comes to shocking, seducing and educating, there’s no limit to the creativity that can be brought to bear on influencing people’s attitudes and behaviour.
Delighting people with new designs for everyday appliances; inspiring them with spirit-lifting music; building empathy with brilliant documentaries; ‘selling’ sustainability through viral marketing; fashioning fair-trade clothing; creating a new ‘app’ to help people make better use of public transport – or even their legs: there’s a wealth of ways to mobilise the talents and resources of all the different sectors that make up the Creative Industries.
But these are not industries that see themselves at the cutting edge of today’s sustainability agenda. Indeed, it’s probably fair to say that the majority of the very large number of SMEs involved have very little awareness of their own sustainability-related performance. Let alone what they should be doing about it.
So Forum for the Future and the Creative Industries knowledge transfer network are setting out to address this. Today we’re launching a nationwide campaign designed to make the sector champions of a sustainable future.
We’ll be working with the industries to examine how the UK’s creative businesses can use their skills to tackle issues like energy, climate change and social justice and help other sectors innovate. We want to inspire them with new business opportunities and also help them understand the rewards they can reap by improving their own sustainability performance.
Lord Puttnam, the distinguished film producer, will give a keynote speech at our launch event in London where some of the sector’s leading lights will take part in a round-table debate on how the Creative Industries can lead us to a sustainable future. We’ll follow it up with regional workshops where professionals from different parts of the sector can collaborate on how to turn these ideas into reality.
The Creative Industries are a vital part of the UK’s economy, generating almost £68 billion in 2007, and have huge power to change our world for the better. But it’s going to be difficult to ask them to play their part in shocking, seducing and educating the general public unless they first get their heads around the basics.
The round-table debate takes place on Wednesday June 16th and will be streamed live from 4pm at www.creativeindustriesktn.org/live/
Transcripts of the debate and a video of its highlights will be posted after the event on a website where industry professionals can follow the project and debate the issues it raises. http://creativeindustriesktn.org/beacons/pg/groups/689/sustainability/
For more information on the project click here.
Follow the leader
Ryan Lewis, May 7th 2010, General, Leadership
I am a leftie, and more than that, I am an extreme leftie. So far left I am nearly off the spectrum. So what does that mean? Do I have pictures of Lenin hanging on my bedroom walls? NO! Do I want the state to control everything? NO! Do I carry a little red book with me at all times? NO! Because my declaration of leftism has nothing to do with my political persuasion, and it is in no way an indicator of how I voted at the general election, rather, my penchant for the left is indicative of the type of leader I am - at least that’s what I was told at the Leadership Trust last week.
As a Forum for the Future scholar I have been on a journey for the last nine months to discover, analyse, and decipher what type of leader I am and, more importantly, what type of leader I can become within the sustainable development movement. So what does it mean to be a leftie leader? Well, to give you a very brief overview, there are two types of leader at either end of the spectrum: those on the right who lead with their heads over their hearts, and those, like me, on the left, who lead with their hearts over their heads. Where one places oneself on the scale, by answering a series of revealing questions, reflects how likely one is to be a controlling, maybe even sadistic leader (far right) or to be a self-destructive and non-committal leader (far left). These, of course, are the extremes and most people find themselves hovering somewhere around the mid-point.
I was not surprised to find myself on the left. I know in my heart of hearts (proof in itself) that I am a leftie with a tendency to lead with my gut and to do what feels right.
When asked to rate me as a leader, however, nearly all of my fellow Scholars placed me on the right of the spectrum. I was perceived as someone who leads with their head rather than their heart. The conclusion of my peers can be interpreted in two ways: either, I am suitably convincing in making heart-felt decisions seem the logical and rational thing to do or, I flip-flop between the two styles of leadership, confusing those around me. To be honest, the latter is the far more likely explanation!
Understanding how you lead others, and how others perceive you to lead, is vital to becoming a good leader - irrelevant of your style. Taking part in the leadership exercise analysis at the Leadership Trust has also made me think about how I want to be led. A particularly relevant question given the recent general election. I must confess, however, that after diligently watching all three of the televised debates, I am still uncertain as to the type of leader Messrs Brown, Cameron and Clegg want to be.
I have studied the manifestos of each of the main parties as a part of the Masters course but I fear they could all turn out to be nothing more than Trojan horses with which to crash open the doors of No. 10. I have witnessed how vulnerable all leaders are in the monetary and media-saturated democracy in which we live. And I have watched as they have shown their true colours as followers, not leaders.
I now find myself asking what do I really want from the future leader of this country? As a wannabe leader in sustainable development, I have begun to realise that any leader whose aim is to create a more sustainable and fair future for the UK, and indeed the world, is going to have to use their heart and their head in equal measures. I hope that whoever ends up in Number 10 realises this too: good leadership, at every level, requires both heart and head.
Green issues are sidelined as the Big Party Circus rolls on
Jonathon Porritt, April 29th 2010, Forum founders, General, Leadership, Public Sector
In the first in a series of blogs in the run up to the general election, Jonathon Porritt considers the (lack of) climate change and sustainability policies of the three main parties and the unknowing support for the Green Party's wider policies.
It’s certainly a more exciting election than any I can remember for years. But it’s a bit of a nightmare from a sustainability point of view.
The party manifestos themselves are OK – a considerable improvement on the 2005 manifestos. Out of the three major parties, you’d have to put the Liberal Democrats way out in front (as usual), if only because of the way in which they spread the ‘green content’ through the entire manifesto rather than having the usual ‘green section’ with everything else around it pretty grey and grim.
But beyond the manifestos, there’s been next to nothing on either climate change or wider green issues. The parties had a brief moment set aside to go through their green motions, but without any seriousness of intent whatsoever. Gordon Brown was there to launch a separate Labour green manifesto, but devoted almost all of his entire speech to yet another lacklustre rant against David Cameron. It’s never been his strong suit, as we all know, and Labour’s whole election campaign has made that very clear all over again.
We shouldn’t be too surprised at this, simply because it has always been like this. It could have been different this time around, given all the serious political interest in climate change over the last few years. But then Copenhagen crashed, scientists started messing up all over the place, and our wretched rightwing media seized their moment to intensify their promotion of the near-bonkers babbling of Nigel Lawson, Ian Plimer et al. And all that pretty much blew any prospect of climate change featuring in any serious way in this election.
Happily, beyond the Big Party Circus, there’s an astonishing foment of political activity going on elsewhere, touching on every conceivable aspect of sustainable development territory. I’ll be focusing on one or two of these over the next week or so.
If your principal concern is about policies, instead of personalities and presidential debates, then the Vote for Policies initiative has thrown up some fascinating findings. If you go onto their website you’ll be asked to compare policies in nine main areas without being told which political party they come from – and then you are asked to ‘vote’ for the policy you prefer. The parties those policies belong to are then revealed to you.
It’s highlighted the general popularity of Green Party policies. At the last count, it was ahead on 26%, with Labour on 19%, the Lib Dems on 18%, Conservatives on 16%, and UKIP and BNP bumping along at the bottom.
What’s astonishing me, looking at voters’ preferences, is how well the Green Party did on other policy issues apart from the environment: top on education, health, crime and welfare, and second (behind the Lib Dems) on democracy and the economy.
I’m not sure how much that will help Green Party candidates on the ground – but there could be a few surprises here too. I was in Cambridge on Tuesday, when a local poll put the Green Party’s Tony Juniper ahead of all the other parties! A win for the Greens in Cambridge would be one of the biggest election shocks of all time!
Caroline Lucas, Green Party Leader and candidate in Brighton still has the best overall chance of being the first Green Party candidate to beat our despicable first-past-the-post system. I’ll be down in Brighton on Saturday – so more on this next week!
Recognising right behaviour
Sara Parkin, April 19th 2010, Forum founders, General, Leadership
Changing behaviour is a complex thing, though it is governed by some pretty straightforward rules. First, raise awareness of the need for change; second, provide the knowledge and skills needed for changed behaviour; and thirdly, reinforce good behaviour through recognition (often enough) and reward. The rules are the same, whether you’re dealing with toddlers in a sandpit or the denizens of any boardroom.
Which is one reason why the Forum ran the Climate Change Challenge last year with the Financial Times and HP and why we hope to run a similar project in 2010.
One of the biggest incentives for right behaviour at the moment is Scotland’s new Saltire Prize. The guidelines were published last month for a £10 million prize to accelerate the commercial development of marine energy. The winner has to be able show their project will generate at least 100GWh electrical energy over two years. See Saltire website for more details.
Sustainable sources of low-carbon energy is also the objective of the Ashden Awards – Green Futures Editor in Chief, Martin Wright, is one of the judges. Here the focus is on the very local.
Also looking local for right behaviour, but not only in the realms of energy saving, is another Scottish venture, the St Andrews Prize for the Environment. As a Trustee, I’ve seen an eclectic group of finalists this year – an innovative method for removing arsenic from water (a lethal problem in Bangladesh, for example), a heroic and long-term campaign to save the golden lion tamarind monkey from extinction, and the Nuru Light offering a ratio of 35 hours of light to a 20-minute session on the battery recharging bicycle.
Incentivising right behaviour inside companies and organisations is not a novel concept, nor are prizes for good ideas for solving environmental problems. But we really can’t have enough of them right now. Beating the recession and the consequences of unsustainable development will depend on a logarithmic increase in examples of right behaviour from which we all can learn.
So if you have any bright idea about prizes Forum for the Future should be thinking about next, please let us know by using the comments section below. A bottle of champagne for the best.
A fair share
Helen Clarkson, February 15th 2010, General, Leadership, Public Sector
Peter Mandelson’s famous statement that Labour is “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich” has come back to haunt the party and will no doubt be wheeled out again in the coming election campaign.
A new report notes that 13 years of Labour rule have done little to reverse the huge growth in the gap between rich and poor that developed under Margaret Thatcher’s Tory government in the 1980s.
The National Equality Panel (commissioned by Harriet Harman MP) published its report 'An Anatomy of Economic Equality in the UK' in January. It contains some worrying facts and figures about the distribution of wealth in the UK, with the panel finding “deep-seated and systematic differences in economic outcomes” between and within social groups.
The report contains startling statistics about the growing gaps in earning and income inequality and their scale compared with other developed nations. It also shows a persistent gender gap, with women being on the whole better qualified than men up to the age of 44, but with a median hourly pay of 21% less than men. It points to continuing ethnic inequalities, finding that Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslim men and Black African Christian men are paid 13-21% lower than White British Christian men with the same job and qualifications. And it reveals that the richest 10% of UK population has more than 100 times the total household wealth of the poorest 10%.
Why does all this matter? Mandelson qualified his statement by saying Labour was relaxed about the rich “as long as they pay their taxes”. But the figures in the NEP report debunk the myth of ‘trickle-down economics’: the idea that if those at the top of the pile become ‘filthy rich’ those further down will also reap the benefits. Instead what it shows is that as the rich become richer, the wealth remains largely at the top and the rungs on the social ladder move further apart.
This has important consequences for society. In their 2009 book The Spirit Level (out this month in paperback) authors Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett have made a compelling case that more equal societies fare better than more unequal ones. Across a wide variety of indicators of social wellbeing including physical and mental health, obesity, violent crime rates and teenage births, they show that, once a country has reached the level of GDP which lifts it out of poverty, what matters is not how much wealth there is in that country but how it is distributed.
There is a clear parallel with the depletion of our environmental resources. Just as in the UK we see wealth concentrated in a small section of society, so on a global level the rich use far more than their fair share of available environmental resources such as carbon, water, and food. We are only beginning to start thinking – largely through the climate debate – what the long-term implications of that unfair distribution might be, and how that will impact on all of us.
At Copenhagen this theme was taken up by the G77 nations. But once again we saw world leaders seemingly ‘intensely relaxed’ about attaching more importance to protecting their national economies than the global need to reduce carbon emissions dramatically, for the benefit of all.
If we are to start thinking about truly sustainable development, where the needs of the present are met without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs, then we need to start taking these issues of distribution more seriously. We need to let the idea of trickle-down economics go for good. That requires a level of bravery and leadership that we haven’t seen in our politicians for many decades. And more importantly support from an enlightened public. Redistribution has fallen out of favour in recent decades - the question is how we’re going to bring it back?
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