Environmental Engineering Reference
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particularly Serge Latouche who, together others has questioned the veracity of 'Third
World development', and in the process has fashioned the emergent theories of
decroissance (sustainable degrowth) and post-development. For Latouche (1997) any
economic or political system predicated on growth is problematic. The fetishization
of technological innovation and creativity and a business ethics exalting an egotistical
will to power, is close to totalitarianism because it inhibits any fundamental questioning.
Thus, 'there is no alternative' as UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher often repeated.
For Latouche, though, the idea that growth will lead to greater affluence for all
is both a misnomer and an ideological mask for increasing incidence of social and
economic inequality and widening income disparities. In most development models
inequality is actually a necessary precondition for accumulation, for profit. In addition,
ecologically it is an impossibility for there are not only limits to growth but limits to
what the planet will provide for over time. Consequently, for Latouche, downscaling
is a necessity but this downscaling, or in French decroissance , also means progress
but progressing backwards , for which the nearest words in the English language seem
to be sustainable degrowth , or perhaps the phrase 'prosperity without growth', which
is the title of Tim Jackson's (2009) book of the same name and which outlines very
similar ideas to Latouche.
Downscaling, however, only makes sense in a non-growth society. It could start
with calling a halt to those activities whose environmental impact brings no satisfaction
- for example, reducing the amount food travels from producer to consumer,
relocalizing the economy and curbing advertising. The disposability of certain products
could be questioned and reversed by their being reused or in the future not produced
at all. Mindsets, work patterns, workloads and social expectations will need to
change, too. An ethics of voluntary systems of co-operation will need to be developed
that will challenge and ultimately transcend the psychological bases for growth,
production, material wealth and their links to social status and conceptions of personal
worth. There are resonances here with the ideas of the Ghandhian economist J.C.
Kumarappa (Govindu and Malghan, 2005) as well as more obviously E.F. Schumacher
(1974) who stressed the importance of the freedom and autonomy of the individual,
economic decentralization and good meaningful work for all. Quality will transcend
quantity, voluntary simplicity will transcend addictive consumerism, co-operation
and conviviality will transcend competition, and sanity will overcome the lunacy of
continual economistic growth. This does not mean the end of profit or the market,
but it would mean the end of its overweening dominance. Degrowth would not just
be a policy for the global North. It would also apply to the South. Latouche (2004)
writes:
if there is to be any chance to stop Southern societies from rushing up the blind
alley of growth economics. Where there is still time, they should aim not for
development but for disentanglement - removing the obstacles that prevent them
from developing differently. This does not mean a return to an idealized version
of an informal economy - nothing can be expected to change in the South if
the North does not adopt some form of economic contraction. As long as hungry
Ethiopia and Somalia still have to export feedstuffs destined for pet animals in
the North, and the meat we eat is raised on soya from the razed Amazon
rainforest, our excessive consumption smothers any chance of real self-sufficiency
in the South.
 
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