Doughnut of social and planetary boundaries monitors a world out of balance

Post-growth: the science of wellbeing within planetary boundaries

There are increasing concerns that continued economic growth in high-income countries might not be environmentally sustainable, socially beneficial, or economically achievable. In this Review, we explore the rapidly advancing field of post-growth research, which has evolved in response to these concerns. The central idea of post-growth is to replace the goal of increasing GDP with the goal of improving human wellbeing within planetary boundaries. Key advances discussed in this Review include: the development of ecological macroeconomic models that test policies for managing without growth; understanding and reducing the growth dependencies that tie social welfare to increasing GDP in the current economy; and characterising the policies and provisioning systems that would allow resource use to be reduced while improving human wellbeing.

Imperialist appropriation in the world economy: Drain from the global South through unequal exchange, 1990–2015

Unequal exchange theory posits that economic growth in the “advanced economies” of the global North relies on a large net appropriation of resources and labour from the global South, extracted through price differentials in international trade. Past attempts to estimate the scale and value of this drain have faced a number of conceptual and empirical limitations, and have been unable to capture the upstream resources and labour embodied in traded goods. Here we use environmental input-output data and footprint analysis to quantify the physical scale of net appropriation from the South in terms of embodied resources and labour over the period 1990 to 2015. We then represent the value of appropriated resources in terms of prevailing market prices. Our results show that in 2015 the North net appropriated from the South 12 billion tons of embodied raw material equivalents, 822 million hectares of embodied land, 21 exajoules of embodied energy, and 188 million person-years of embodied labour, worth $10.8 trillion in Northern prices – enough to end extreme poverty 70 times over. Over the whole period, drain from the South totalled $242 trillion (constant 2010 USD). This drain represents a significant windfall for the global North, equivalent to a quarter of Northern GDP. For comparison, we also report drain in global average prices. Using this method, we find that the South’s losses due to unequal exchange outstrip their total aid receipts over the period by a factor of 30. Our analysis confirms that unequal exchange is a significant driver of global inequality, uneven development, and ecological breakdown.

The Gargantuan Lie That is Collapsing The World’s Climate

Thinking we have time left to address climate change, or that “Net Zero by 2050” will save us, is driving us toward full social collapse in ways that become more obvious with every new broken temperature record.

‘Self-termination is most likely’: the history and future of societal collapse

An epic analysis of 5,000 years of civilisation argues that a global collapse is coming unless inequality is vanquished

RETRACTED ARTICLE: The economic commitment of climate change

Global projections of macroeconomic climate-change damages typically consider impacts from average annual and national temperatures over long time horizons1–6. Here we use recent empirical findings from more than 1,600 regions worldwide over the past 40 years to project sub-national damages from temperature and precipitation, including daily variability and extremes7,8. Using an empirical approach that provides a robust lower bound on the persistence of impacts on economic growth, we find that the world economy is committed to an income reduction of 19% within the next 26 years independent of future emission choices (relative to a baseline without climate impacts, likely range of 11–29% accounting for physical climate and empirical uncertainty). These damages already outweigh the mitigation costs required to limit global warming to 2 °C by sixfold over this near-term time frame and thereafter diverge strongly dependent on emission choices. Committed damages arise predominantly through changes in average temperature, but accounting for further climatic components raises estimates by approximately 50% and leads to stronger regional heterogeneity. Committed losses are projected for all regions except those at very high latitudes, at which reductions in temperature variability bring benefits. The largest losses are committed at lower latitudes in regions with lower cumulative historical emissions and lower present-day income.

Toward a New Global Security Paradigm. Task Force 06: Strengthening Multilateralism and Global Governance

Amidst increasing global connectivity and accelerating global change, the global security framework has become insufficient, contributing to a crippling dysfunctionality in international cooperation. The current security framework, focused almost exclusively on a narrow notion of military security, is insufficient to address escalating ‘threats without enemy,’ such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution, which increasingly endanger the lives and dignity of all populations. This policy brief recommends a global social-ecological security framework, rooted in the science informed understanding of social and biophysical realities, to address the evolving needs and challenges of the 21st century. Our recommendations to operationalise this paradigm include: a reinvigorated commitment to multilateralism and peace as a pre-requisite; public participation in shaping the new inclusive international governance framework; development aid and green finance as key levers; a focus on building resilience (especially food security); and, strengthening anticipation of and response to interconnected global shocks. We propose a G20-initiated formation of a high-level working group to catalyse the creation of this new framework. Such a process must involve relevant stakeholders, leveraging new possibilities afforded by technological tools (such as AI). Implementing this ambitious agenda will be challenging, but continuing on a business as- usual trajectory is a ‘lose-lose’ spiral likely to trigger social and ecological crises. Bold leadership from the G20 is needed more than ever to reinvent multilateralism and thus ensure sustainable well-being for all.

Sustainable Development Goals

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015. It is built around 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets that represent an ambitious plan for achieving sustainable development and serves as the basis for countries to shape their national policies and priorities. At the heart of the agenda is the recognition that truely sustainable development must combine economic growth and poverty alleviation with strategies that improve health and education, reduce inequality, while addressing climate change and protecting nature. Thus, the interlinked nature of the SDGs calls for an integrated approach to policy decisions. As the international statistical standard for measuring the environment and its relationship with the economy, the SEEA is well positioned to support integrated policies based on a better understanding of the interactions and trade-offs between the environment and economy. Progress toward the 17 goals and 169 targets of the 2030 Agenda are monitored through 244 indicators, entailing the collection of substantial amounts of data. The UN Statistical Commission (UNSC) has encouraged the Inter-Agency and Expert Group on SDG Indicators (IAEG-SDGs), the body tasked with developing and implementing the global indicator framework for the 2030 Agenda, to consider existing standards and frameworks that can improve SDG monitoring, including the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA). System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA). Recently, the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), UN Environment and the UN Statistics Division brought a proposal on upgrading the status of Indicator 15.9.1 to the tenth meeting of the IAEG-SDGs, where the group agreed to the proposal and reclassified the indicator from Tier III to Tier II. The United Nations Committee of Experts on Environmental-Economic Accounting (UNCEEA), an intergovernmental body established by the UNSC to provide overall vision, coordination, prioritization and direction in the field of environmental economic accounting and supporting statistics, has assessed that currently 40 indicators for nine Sustainable Development Goals can be informed by the SEEA. The SEEA is particularly well-suited for deriving ratio indicators that compare environmental and economic information.

The Divide — Jason Hickel

The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions Penguin Random House UK, 2017

Halfway to 2030, world ‘nowhere near’ reaching Global Goals, UN warns

The world is “woefully off track” to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by the 2030 deadline, top United Nations officials said on Monday, as ministers and policy makers gathered in New York to examine how countries can get back on track and make the transformative development agenda a reality.

What Humanity Needs To Flourish In The Next Decade

We are headed toward a world of productivity without prosperity, execution without verification and capacity without constraint. But this outcome is not inevitable.

What Humanity Needs To Flourish In The Next Decade

We are headed toward a world of productivity without prosperity, execution without verification and capacity without constraint. But this outcome is not inevitable.

Daniel Christian Wahl: “Bioregional Futures: Reconnecting to Place for Planetary Health” - The Great Simplification

In the past century of abundant energy surplus, humanity’s globalized, large-scale approach to problem-solving

The myth of catch-up development: trends in core–periphery inequality from 1960 to 2023

The conventional narrative in international development holds that poorer countries are “catching up” with richer countries through the process of capitalist growth. This paper assesses this claim ...

Safeguarding human health in the Anthropocene epoch: report of The Rockefeller Foundation–Lancet Commission on planetary health

Far-reaching changes to the structure and function of the Earth's natural systems represent a growing threat to human health. And yet, global health has mainly improved as these changes have gathered pace. What is the explanation? As a Commission, we are deeply concerned that the explanation is straightforward and sobering: we have been mortgaging the health of future generations to realise economic and development gains in the present. By unsustainably exploiting nature's resources, human civilisation has flourished but now risks substantial health effects from the degradation of nature's life support systems in the future.

On the relevance of post-growth in China

Post-growth refers to approaches prioritizing human well-being and ecological sustainability over gross domestic product expansion as a primary objective of economic policy. While it is widely discussed in the global north and generally targeted at high-income countries, its relevance to China remains underexplored and largely absent from academic discourse. This Perspective discusses China’s position in a possible global post-growth transition and explores convergence and difference between post-growth principles and development priorities in China. We consider how China’s concepts of ‘high-quality development’ and ‘ecological civilization’ could integrate post-growth principles, and vice versa. Understanding China’s context is crucial for a collaborative, effective approach to sustainability and global equity.

Metrics for biodiversity and health policy integration

Despite over a decade of progressive commitments from parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), integrated biodiversity and health indicators and monitoring mechanisms remain limited, hampering achievement of the sustainable development goals and improvements in health and well-being. Adoption of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (2022) and the Global Action Plan on Biodiversity and Health (2024) provide a renewed entry point to shape the way governments approach health and wellbeing and address the environmental burden of disease. This is a critical opportunity that scholars at the health-environment nexus should not miss. This Perspective outlines building blocks to mobilize the field, starting with essential terminology and a scope of metrics needed by governments. We then evaluate elements to be considered in the construction of integrated metrics, including concepts, overarching challenges, a review of scientific hypotheses from an ecological perspective, as well as a set of principles and characteristics for indicators. To raise awareness across parallel communities of practice working at the health-environment nexus, we then briefly examine four approaches to integrated metrics developed by: conservationists, Indigenous scholars, One Health experts, and planetary health experts. We conclude with actionable steps to enhance governance, mobilize funding, and apply integrated indicators in national and global strategies. A broad science community is needed to support national governments to meet global commitments to address biodiversity loss and the environmental burden of disease concurrently. The overall aim of this paper is to contribute to addressing biodiversity loss by effectively linking policy and transdisciplinary practice at the health-environment nexus.