Sustainability depends on breaking free of our consumerist fixation

Professor Tim Jackson is like the small boy who shouts out that the emperor is wearing no clothes. The Hans Christian Andersen fairytale, which highlights how easy it is to get hooked on a belief system even in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence, is particularly apt for our times.

What the professor of sustainable development at the University of Surrey is seeking to do is expose the notion that our wealth and happiness are predicated on continual economic growth. He is convinced our consumerist fixation with accumulating products and services is fuelling our fears and anxieties, rather than bringing us the contentment we hoped for, and that we are so addicted that we cannot bring ourselves to admit it. Furthermore, he warns that unless we find a new sustainable economic model to guide us, we are heading for environmental and social catastrophe.

Jackson says it is about time we go beyond the traditional language of economics and recognise that any measure of the health of our society must include the ability to give and receive love, to contribute usefully to society and have a sense of belonging and trust in the community.

But Jackson is scathing about the prime minster David Cameron's desire to create a happiness index. He points out that such a measure was put in place by the last government and that the Office of National Statistics has been measuring wellbeing since 2005. He also insists that it is pointless to have such a measure unless it becomes a strategic tool for changing government policy and is seen as a real challenge to the primacy of growth.

A few years ago, during the economic boom, Jackson may have been the subject of ridicule, but times have changed. With the global economy still in the doldrums and the looming multiple threats of climate change, water scarcity, loss of biodiversity and the degradation of resources, Jackson's views are increasingly seeping into mainstream discourse and gaining attention in business and political circles.

In private, some business leaders recognise the value of his argument for radical change but say it is too soon for them to be able to articulate this in public because shareholders and other stakeholders could not stomach the scale of the necessary transformation. However, Jackson, economics commissioner on the government's soon to be defunct independent environmental watchdog and advisory body, the Sustainable Development Commission, has no such qualms.

In his influential book, Prosperity Without Growth, he states: "The starting point must be to unravel the forces that keep us in damaging denial ... the profit motive stimulates a continual search for newer, better or cheaper products and services. Our own relentless search for novelty and social status locks us into an iron cage of consumerism. Affluence has itself betrayed us."

So, if the ecological and social dangers are so apparent, why are we not prepared to see that the emperor is indeed naked? Jackson believes the core reason is a belief that our so-called "civilised society" is predicated on our current form of capitalism. Yet, paradoxically, the existing system has been destroying the very sense of social cohesion that will be essential if, as he predicts, the world is heading for darker times.

"There is a real fear around shifting from our existing economic system because people believe it gives us social organisation, a sense of freedom, and the ability to be nice to each other," says Jackson. "Growth is seen as a social lubricant that allows us to be socially responsible.

"But by behaving as we do, we are heading for resource scarcity, which is actually the point at which our civility is really put to the test; then it will matter whether we have strong social norms that are able to support us in acting as moral beings rather than barbarians."

If systemic change is to be feasible, Jackson says it will require a fundamental shift not only in the way politicians regulate markets and consumer behaviour, but also in the way business operates. He cautiously welcomes recent announcements by major companies, such as Unilever and Procter & Gamble, that show a commitment to reducing the material impacts of their products. But he says it is misguided to believe the economy can continue to grow without breaching ecological limits, or running out of resources, because companies cannot reduce their ecological footprints nearly fast enough to justify continued expansion.

"While individual companies are making these commitments, at the country level, we do not see any of that progress, with efficiency always being outweighed by scale and, in areas like iron, steel, bauxite, cement, and phosphates, extraction levels are moving faster than GDP," says Jackson.

Where he is more cynical is around announcements by leading companies who say they are committed to changing consumer behaviour by helping their customers to lower their ecological footprint through the use of their products. "The trouble with this is that the relationship with consumers has been mishandled in the past in the interests of the company," says Jackson. While corporate social responsibility has already been through several iterations, Jackson believes that businesses need to go through a much deeper level of reflection about their very purpose and how they operate in the world if they are going to start being part of the solution, rather than part of the problem.

"If we are going to be able to create a new economic vision, companies will need to rethink every aspect of their operations; their bottom lines, ownership structures, demands on financial returns, how they raise capital," says Jackson. "For example, an ethical company would say it should only take a fair share of the planet's resources and campaign on this. Obviously there is a question of whether less responsible companies would take resources from under their noses, but that is where a company should be engaging in the political arena and lobbying for frameworks that make fair shares make sense.

"Rather than just putting an emphasis on technological efficiency, companies need to be asking questions about the ultimate service they are providing and what is the least carbon- and resource-intensive way of providing it. There will undoubtedly be hot spots; places where products are profitable and its very difficult to reduce their footprint. Companies will need to think whether they can afford to carry on producing these goods.

"They also need to start being a lot more proactive with engaging with investors, such as the way that Aviva Investors, the global asset management business, is looking at creating a more sustainable stock market. Companies will need to engage with shareholders on agreeing lower rates of return in exchange for more socially responsible products. Triodas bank is already an example of how this can be done.

"The problem for executives is that this sort of thinking challenges their own internal logic and incentive structures. At the same time corporate leaders can foresee collapse all round if action is not taken, so they have a perfectly legitimate role in challenging shareholders."

Jackson says that even visionary business leaders who can see well into the future are being stymied in their actions by their fiduciary obligations, short-term timeframes under which investors work, as well as cultures of indifference and sheer inertia within the companies themselves. This means that relying on large public companies as the only force for change would be a mistake, argues Jackson, who says it is important to also look at the growing social enterprise sector.

While this is currently too small to make a serious impact, Jackson says it has the ability to turn into a mass movement and that it illustrates that there are other ways of creating value. "Big companies are reliant on institutional investors on a punishing schedule which leads to ruthless behaviour. This form of capitalism with this structure and incentives will never deliver sustainability," says Jackson. "But there are lots of interesting small-scale initiatives forming that treat the rights and responsibilities of shareholders differently, where profits can be distributed in different ways and held by community interests. They can act both as vehicles for local savings and for the transition of communities.

"It is important for government to have a clear role here to provide underwriting for institutional investors in this sector in order to allow it to flourish and scale up, while at the same time regulate the mainstream capital markets that are sucking capital into high-return short-payback conditions. There is an entirely prudential case for doing that, which comes right out of the financial crisis which showed the brittleness of the capital markets."

Jackson keeps coming back to the role of government in creating the right conditions for creating a sustainable future but recognises that it is deeply conflicted; it continues to rely on the mantra of growth, while also recognising the need to focus on social and ecological protection.

Even though time is short to deal with the many ecological and social challenges, Jackson says it is important for government to step back and build the intellectual argument for change. and to articulate what a new economic model would really look like. This is because only a tiny minority of people have any understanding of the concept of systemic change and there is currently very little idea of the route map from the current system to a new economic, social and political structure. Jackson recognises that there is a huge abyss that separates the two and that the distance that needs travelling can actually engender so much fear that it actually acts as a brake on change. So he acknowledges there is an important task ahead of showing that it is possible to build a safe bridge that can traverse the abyss.

"The difficulty for most people is that they don't believe there is a complete system which we can jump ship to," he says. "So it is imperative that we are able to give indications of what it would look like and to create a spectrum of strategic interventions that develop resilience and create a vision of a sustainable future."

Is he confident of success? "It's incredibly tough and there is no guarantee that we can get across the abyss. It's possible that conditions are moving too fast in the wrong direction and we will hit the buffers. If one works in this field, one has to acknowledge that.

"The alternative to disaster is to create a clear roadmap to getting to this new territory – it entails being more sensitive, open and transparent about environmental limits, a stronger sense of social justice, fixing the basic aspects of an economic system that is now demonstrably broken in its own terms and a shift in the underlying sense of what the good life means and the consumerist base of modern society."

Prosperity Without Growth is published by Earthscan
You can see Tim Jackson's speech at TEDGlobal here

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