CASSE Position Supplement for equity and justice

Whereas

1)the present distribution of global resources is grossly inequitable; and

2)as a result, a majority of the world’s population lives at a level of consumption at which their living conditions, health and well-being are unacceptably low; and

3)the acute financial pressures on poor households, by forcing them to adopt unsustainable productive practices for their own survival, contributes substantially to the environmental unsustainability of the global economy; and

4)the proportion of the benefits of global economic growth accruing to the poorest people is minimal; and

5)environmental problems generally impact first and worst on the poorest; and

6)the process of commercial globalisation has created a situation in which people in poorer countries are critically dependent on continued over-consumption among the better-off for their livelihoods; and

7)considerable political and financial pressure continues to be exerted, directly and indirectly, on the governments of developing countries to pursue policies which further increase such dependency;

Therefore, in endorsing the CASSE position on Economic Growth, we take the further position that

1)ensuring that the living standards of all people are raised to a level which would be considered acceptable in the developed world is a moral imperative; and

2)it can also contribute substantially to the achievement of environmental sustainability; and

3)further growth of the global economy does not represent an effective means of achieving this goal within the constraints of environmental sustainability; and

4)reducing the scale of the US and Western European economies as envisaged in the CASSE position on growth requires prior or simultaneous measures to reduce the dependency of poorer countries and people on them; and

5)reducing the scale of the global economy requires deliberate measures to effect a major redistribution of resources from rich to poor between and within countries if it is to be consistent with this objective; and

6)this in turn requires fundamental changes in the global economic system, and in the policies promoted and pursued at the national level; and

7)major efforts should be devoted to the elaboration of alternative models of development, targeted explicitly on the eradication of poverty and the rights to health and education, within the limits on global economic activity implied by environmental sustainability, as a matter of extreme urgency; and

8)the adoption and implementation of credible and legitimate measures to achieve these objectives at the global level requires a fundamental reform of the system of global economic governance; and

9)such reform should seek to ensure both conformity with principles and standards generally accepted democratic at the national level and a time-horizon in decision-making commensurate with giving appropriate priority to issues of environmental sustainability; and

10)these measures would make an appropriately scaled steady state global economy the best option for poverty eradication as well as environmental sustainability.