Goodbye to Universal Development and Call for Diversified, Democratic Sufficiency and Frugality. The Need to Re-conceptualising Development and Revitalising Development Studies

Abstract

There is need for a new development concept that allows for the expected global population of 9–11 billion by 2050 to live within the ecological finite world. Since the concept of development became the Western countries’ mantra of human progress and modernisation, promising the undeveloped Third World countries materialistic welfare similarly to the developed countries, the poorest countries keep falling further behind in poverty. Rapidly growing emerging economies, however, that all together contain more than half of the world population, now adds up to existing mass consumerism and demand changing the established North–South hegemonic world order based on the linear concept of development. This creates two new scenarios. One is the rapidly growing challenges to the global ecosystems, including greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that with the expected global population by the middle of this century ‘probably will exceed all possible measures of available resources and assessments of limits to the capacity to absorb impacts’ [UNEP, 2011, Decoupling Natural Resource Use and Environmental Impacts from Economic Growth, Nairobi: UNEP.]. The second scenario is the changing world order promoted by the rapid economic growth of new emerging economies. Democratically sharing future room for development within a finite ecological planet calls for radical new thinking about development in terms of sufficiency, frugality and sustainability. The interdisciplinary approach of development studies can play a pertinent role in the necessary redefinition of development in rich and poor countries. This, however, implies that the economics of the re-conceptualised development takes its point of departure in the realities of an ecological finite world.

Keywords:

• new development concept
• development studies
• emerging economies
• consumerism
• ecological economics

Notes

¹The first periodical on development studies, Economic Development and Cultural Change, was established in 1952.

²Norwegian scholars in development have provided excellent overviews of development theories and the role of development assistance since the World War II. See Stokke (2009). For a comprehensive collection of original texts on development (in its many versions) and its critiques from the development epoch until today, see Bull and Bøås (2010).

³I use the concept of neo-liberal economics as defined by Harvey (2005). I am, however, aware that many economists working according to this paradigm do not consider themselves as neo-liberal economists.

⁴As shown by Palat it is notably China, India and East Asia that has grown rapidly while the rest of the major regions in the Third World has fallen further behind. However, this growth has been followed by increasing inequalities within these countries and subsequently the rise of a great spender consumer class (Palat, 2009).

⁵Democracy comes from the Greek word demokratia combined by demos: people and kratein: govern, meaning peoples right to govern and as such pursuing equity in opposition to the power of money.

⁶What is easy is of course only the simple idea of development that since the start of industrialisation has been pursued through burning of fossil fuels, that is reflected in the accumulation of GHG in the atmosphere. The actual principles on what, when and how to measure and count is obviously complicated and prone to difficult political compromises due to historically vested interests.

⁷The IPCC states in their Fifth Assessment Report that the accumulation of GHG in the atmosphere is happening much faster than anticipated and the possibility of remaining within a 2°C average temperature increase is highly doubtful.

⁸Aram Ziai has edited a good collection of articles giving an overview of post-development theories, including Nustad's (Ziai, 2007).

⁹Schumacher was actually the one who in 1955 invented the term Buddhist Economy, see Schumacher (1973).

¹⁰The emerging economies that have experienced rapid economic growth have done so with little considerations of the ecological consequences and with growing internal inequalities as a result (Palat, 2009).