The Anthropocene: Politik–Economics–Society–Science

Maja Göpel

The Great
Mindshift
How a New Economic Paradigm
and Sustainability Transformations
go Hand in Hand
With Forewords by Simon Dalby and
Uwe Schneidewind
The Anthropocene: Politik—Economics—
Society—Science

Volume 2

Series editor
Hans Günter Brauch, Mosbach, Germany
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/15232
http://www.afes-press-books.de/html/APESS.htm
http://afes-press-books.de/html/APESS_02.htm
Maja Göpel

The Great Mindshift

How a New Economic Paradigm
and Sustainability Transformations
go Hand in Hand
Maja Göpel
Head, Berlin Office
Wuppertal Institute
Berlin
Germany

Acknowledgement: The saying “what is now proven was once imagined” is taken from
William Blake’s “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.” The installation is by Andy Altmann
from Why Not Associates in the UK who have kindly provided a high resolution photo of it
on 6 April 2016: 22c Shepherdess Walk, London N1 7LB, UK, +44 (0)20 7253 2244;
Email: info@whynotassociates.com.
More on this book is at: http://afes-press-books.de/html/APESS_02.htm.

ISSN 2367-4024 ISSN 2367-4032 (electronic)

The Anthropocene: Politik—Economics—Society—Science
ISBN 978-3-319-43765-1 ISBN 978-3-319-43766-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-43766-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016946929

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To Frankie Moore-Lappé,
beloved heroine and friend.
The more I understand,
the closer I move to your thinking
Foreword by Prof. Dr. Simon Dalby

In December 2015, the world watched as delegates to

the Paris climate conference crafted an agreement to
attempt, finally, a comprehensive effort to tackle the
rapidly growing dangers of climate change. The
agreement marked at least some tentative innovations
in global governance. Its approach worked with what
states offered in terms of their intended contributions,
rather than trying to accomplish the traditional process
of drafting a “top-down one-size-fits-all” treaty. In
numerous side events to the main conference, corporate
actors, environmental campaigners and policymakers
compared notes on their programs and exchanged ideas
about how to construct a more sustainable world. Clearly after two decades of fairly
ineffectual efforts in climate policy, world leaders are starting to think about how to
proceed and doing so in ways that suggest, very tentatively, that traditional modes
of thinking are giving way to new ways of thinking about governance.
The Paris meetings emphasized the great difficulty that many contemporary
modes of thinking and policy analysis have in grappling with the climate question.
Conventional ideas of climate as a pollution problem, a matter for regulation and
environmental legislation, are now no longer enough to grapple with either climate
or many other sustainability issues. Discussions of earth system boundaries and a
safe operating space for humanity are now juxtaposed with the dawning realization
that at least some low-lying member states of the United Nations may be com-
pletely inundated in coming decades by rising seas. The conventional economic
development thinking of the twentieth century seems increasingly inappropriate in
the face of global change. Market-based measures may be part of the short-term
policy attempts to reduce carbon emissions and accelerate the uptake of renewable
energy systems, but clearly more is needed, much more than conventional eco-
nomics has to offer.

vii
viii Foreword by Prof. Dr. Simon Dalby

In part, this is because of the simple but profound insight that forms one of the
bases for this book that climate change and the combustion of fossil fuels that are
the primary causes of the problem are not a matter of scarcity or inadequate eco-
nomic development. Quite the contrary! The problem of climate change is a matter
of too much fossil fuel that is easy to extract from the ground and burn to power all
manner of human technologies. Applying economic reasoning premised on scar-
city, shortage and the need to massively increase human energy use and hence
produce necessities for human flourishing, to the problem of climate change, is a
major conceptual and political error. Hence, the need for a fundamental transfor-
mation of policy discourses and of their intellectual underpinnings in modern
assumptions and modes of thinking. A “mindshift” is very obviously needed.
This is obviously in part about economics, and crucially about the idea that
growth is the answer even if it is not clear what the question actually is. Maja
Göpel’s “great mindshift” is also about a recognition that humanity has, albeit
mostly inadvertently, changed its place in the planetary system by the scale and
persistence of its activities. The introduction of the controlled use of fire, agricul-
ture, the selective breeding of domesticated species, complex tools, city building,
industrialization, and now the construction of a global production and trading
system based on fossil fuels have transformed both humanity and our habitat in
fundamental ways. We have already postponed at least one, possibly two ice ages,
and hence, the rich and powerful parts of humanity have effectively taken the future
geological conditions of the only habitat we all have into their hands. All of which
has led to the increasingly wide adoption of the term Anthropocene to specify
present circumstances.
These new recognitions, of both the problem of too much fossil fuel and the
sheer scale of humanity’s actions, now require that we rethink many things. Just as
modernity required a dramatic shift in thinking as part of what Karl Polanyi termed
the great transformation to a commercial society based on the notions of interests,
economic growth and relatively unregulated markets, the new conditions of living
in the Anthropocene require new formulations and also new modes of human
conduct. If the planetary habitat for future generations is to be kept even close to the
conditions that humanity has known for its recorded history, we will have to “shift
our minds” in a new transformation that incorporates the insights of earth systems
science and numerous new research endeavours to build sustainable societies on
new principles.
Given that economic reasoning has become the way in which so much of human
activity is described, interpreted and increasingly governed, a fundamental
re-evaluation of its basic premises, of the scarcity assumption, the efficacy of
current modes of “growth” and the quest for narrowly defined efficiencies in
markets, is long overdue. Hence, this volume, which tackles these key themes
directly, is to be very much welcomed as a most useful and timely contribution to
both the critical re-evaluation of the hegemonic thought processes and policy
practices of contemporary economism as well as to new political, economic and,
crucially, ecological thinking that breaks away from the increasingly counterpro-
ductive formulations in contemporary policy. As the World Social Forum slogan
Foreword by Prof. Dr. Simon Dalby ix

has it: “other worlds are possible”. But to successfully achieve the necessary
transformations to make them we will, as this volume so clearly indicates, need a
“great mindshift” to facilitate building new institutions and modes of life for the
billions of humans who are now crowding our rapidly changing planetary habitat.

January 2016 Simon Dalby

Centre for International Governance Innovation
Chair in the Political Economy of Climate Change
Balsillie School of International Affairs
Professor of Geography and Environmental Studies
Wilfrid Laurier University
Waterloo, Canada
Foreword by Prof. Dr. Uwe Schneidewind

The twenty-first century is an age of radical change. It

presents us with challenges of a new dimension, scale
and scope. The transformation challenge of the twen-
tieth century was seen as one of primarily socio-
economic dynamics with nation states being the cen-
tral actors. We are now facing a situation where we are
aware of planetary ecological boundaries and the
global nature of the transformation ahead.
Recognizing the urgency and magnitude of this
challenge, the German Advisory Council on Global
Change (WBGU) argues in its 2011 flagship report
that we need a “Great Transformation”. Referring to
Karl Polanyi’s work, it creates a realistic vision for the twenty-first century of a
good life for 9 billion people within planetary boundaries, that is, if we manage to
accomplish a great transformation.
What we need, if we want to make this vision a real option for the future, are
concepts that capture the complex nature of intertwined ecological, social, eco-
nomic and technological transformation processes for sustainable development. The
concepts need to offer guidance and orientation to the people that are actually
engaged in the transformation process. Over the past 15 years, scientists have
developed approaches for “transition management” to meet these challenges. Many
of these approaches, originating from a diverse set of scientific communities—as
portrayed in this book—focus on greening the economy, fostering (technological)
innovation, searching for new modes of governance and understanding the dynamic
relationship between established “regimes” and pioneers working towards new
system architectures.
However, most of the scientific frameworks for sustainability transitions and
transformation research remain limited in one key aspect: not reflecting on how
deeply embedded the capitalist economic logic has become in organizing societies.
For a more adequate conceptualization of the “Great Transformation”, we need a

xi
xii Foreword by Prof. Dr. Uwe Schneidewind

better understanding of the relationship between modern capitalist societies and the
global ecological crisis. Naomi Klein, among others, has emphasized in “Climate
versus Capitalism” that the sustainability debate urgently needs to include a critical
focus on economic systems.
This is where Maja Göpel’s book comes in: (1) She demonstrates how a critical
analysis of the economic dimension facilitates a better understanding of the
transformation challenge, and (2) she clearly shows that adopting an economic
mindset is not “neutral”, simply offering objective scientific concepts, but has an
impact on how societal developments and individual aspirations are shaped, and
whether they are unsustainable. With reference to Karl Polanyi’s political economy
analysis of the “Great Transformation” of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
Maja Göpel argues for a “Great Mindshift” that can help us to steer the next “Great
Transformation” in more sustainable directions.
This book is not only a key contribution to the current transformation debate, it
is also a milestone for the Wuppertal Institute. Maja Göpel has developed a key
element of a more profound theory of transformation, which is essential for the
sustainability debate of our times.

February 2016 Prof. Dr. Uwe Schneidewind

President of the Wuppertal Institute
for Climate, Environment, Energy
Professor for Sustainable Transition Management
at the University of Wuppertal
Wuppertal
Member of the German Advisory Council on Global Change
Acknowledgement

Writing a book while having babies and switching your job into a new sector is, as I
know now, a pretty unwise idea. So these acknowledgements are also something of
an apology. My amazing family was often confronted with a person I had aspired
not to be: absent-minded, frustrated and irritable when lack of proper sleep or the
next kiddie sickness once again destroyed all routines and told my mental capacities
that there indeed are limits to exploitation. My partner Christian and my mother
Ulla deserve admiration for continued loving and granny-support, and my little
daughters Jospehina and Juna huge hugs for being so wonderful that despite all the
stress, I felt like the luckiest mother around.
So where did this unwise idea come from in the first place? In itself, it was
actually a fantastic offer and my big thank you goes to Armando Garcia Schmidt
of the Bertelsmann Foundation. As part of the jury for the Reinhard Mohn Prize on
Sustainable Development Strategies (2013) I challenged him to put more definition
behind what the foundation means when speaking of the need for a paradigm shift.
So I got a grant to write down what it could amount to and delved into transfor-
mation research while keeping my critical political economy hat on. I found great
potential for complementary insights.
My boss, Uwe Schneidewind, lent his support to developing this into a full-on
book with a scientific publisher. He enabled official working time for it, some staff
assistance and also the Open Access publication. Theresa König was fantastic in her
research and editing skills and Nikola Berger much more than a graphic designer.
I am indebted to Kate Raworth, Wolfgang Sachs, Katherine Trebeck, Paul
Raskin, Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker, Mark Drewell, Karoline Augenstein and
Alexandra Palzkill for their willingness to read comment and provide

xiii
xiv Acknowledgement

endorsements. The same holds for the three anonymous reviewers who were
extremely generous with the quality of feedback they provided.
It is to this spirit of joint inquiry for knowledge and strategies in support of
sustainable futures that I hope this book contributes.

Berlin Maja Göpel

March 2016
Contents

1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 It’s the Economy, Stupid! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2 Structure of the Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2 What Political Economy Adds to Transformation Research . . . .... 13
2.1 Digging into Societal Transformation and System
Innovation Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 17
2.1.1 Socio-technical Systems and Their Innovations . . . . . . .... 20
2.1.2 Socio-ecological Systems and Their Safe Operating
Spaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 29
2.1.3 Socio-ecological-Technical Systems and Their
Repurposing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 32
2.1.4 The Economic Paradigm Shift Behind Today’s
World: Karl Polanyi’s Heritage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 37
2.2 Summary: Paradigm Shifts and Large System Change:
Humanity’s Structured Freedom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 40
3 Why the Mainstream Economic Paradigm Cannot Inform
Sustainability Transformations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
3.1 How Mainstream Economics Views Human Needs
and Their Satisfaction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
3.1.1 What Is Utility and Where Is It Created? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
3.1.2 Is ‘Having’ Really All the Fun There Is? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
3.1.3 Checking Human Happiness and the Link with Income . . . 67
3.1.4 How Does a Homo Economicus Feel and Act? . . . . . . . . . . 72
3.1.5 Summary: Human Need Perception and Well-Being
Depend on the Processes Behind Creating Wealth . . . . . . . 76
3.2 How Mainstream Economics Views Nature
and Its Governance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
3.2.1 What Types of Capital Exist and Where Do They
Come from? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

xv
xvi Contents

3.2.2 Market Prices and the Allocation or Protection

of Scarce Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 84
3.2.3 Checking Nature’s Safe Operating Spaces for Human
Growth Aspirations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 88
3.2.4 How Does Exchange Value Governance Impact
Living Systems? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 94
3.2.5 Summary: Governing Human–Nature Relations
Successfully Depends on Understanding Them . . . . . . .... 96
3.3 How Mainstream Economics Anticipate the Future . . . . . . . . .... 98
3.3.1 Which Real Qualities of Development Lie Behind
Monetarized Predictions? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 100
3.3.2 Unveiling the Money Magic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 107
3.3.3 Summary: Opening up Mainstream Economic
Ideas Is Key for ‘Our Common Future’ . . . . . . . . . . . .... 111
4 Mapping an Emerging New Economic Paradigm in Practice . . .... 119
4.1 Pioneering Businesses: Common Good Matrix and Balance
Sheets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 122
4.2 Pioneering Civil Society: Transition Towns for Resilient
Local Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 126
4.3 Pioneering Governments: Beyond GDP Measures as
Development Frames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 130
4.4 Pioneering Governance Systems: Commoning
as a New Stark Utopia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 139
4.5 Summary: System Innovations for Sustainability
by Double-Decoupling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 144
5 How to Work a Great Mindshift for Sustainability
Transformations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 149
5.1 The Role of Mind-Sets in Unlocking Path Dependencies:
Antonio Gramsci’s Heritage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 151
5.2 Transformative Literacy: Hacking Systems
and Their Purpose. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 155
5.3 Summarizing Outlook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 162
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Wuppertal Institut . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
Wuppertal Institut’s Research Focus on Sustainability Transition . . . . . 179
About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
About this Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
Abbreviations and Acronyms

CGBS Common Good Balance Sheet

CSA Community Supported Agriculture
DMC Domestic Material Consumption
EU European Union
FAO Food and Agriculture Organization
GDP Gross Domestic Product
GNH Gross National Happiness
GNI Gross National Income
GPI Genuine Progress Indicator
HDI UN Human Development Index
IDDRI Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations
IEA International Energy Agency
IISD International Institute of Sustainable Development
ILO International Labour Organization
IMF International Monetary Fund
INET Institute for New Economic Thinking
IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
IRP International Resource Panel
ISEW Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare
ISSC International Social Science Council
MEA Multilateral Environmental Agreements
MF Material Footprint
MLP Multilevel Perspective
NWI National Welfare Index
OECD Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development
PE Political Economy
PNAS Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United
States of America
QDI Quality of Development Index
RMC Raw Material Consumption

xvii
xviii Abbreviations and Acronyms

SDGs Sustainable Development Goals

SES Socio-Ecological systems
SETS Socio-Ecological-Technical Systems
SME Small- and medium-sized enterprises
STRN Sustainability Transition Research Network
STS Socio-Technical Systems
TEEB The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity
TJN Tax Justice Network
TMC Total Material Consumption
TMR Total Material Requirement
TTIP Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership
UN United Nations
UNCTAD United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
UNDESA United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs
UNDP United Nations Development Programme
UNEP United Nations Environment Programme
UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
WBGU German Advisory Council on Global Change
WCED World Commission on Environment and Development
WEF World Economic Forum
WHO World Health Organization
WSSR World Social Science Report
WTO World Trade Organization
List of Figures

Figure 2.1 The multilevel perspective on system transformation.

Source Geels and Schot (2010: 25) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 21
Figure 2.2 The four-phase pattern of transformation processes.
Source Based on Mersmann et al. (2014: 34) . . . . . . . . . . . .. 25
Figure 2.3 Great transition scenario structure with illustrative
patterns of development. Source Based
on Raskin et al. (2002: 16) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 34
Figure 2.4 Layers of leverage in system innovations.
Source Based on Meadows (1999), illustration
from UNEP (2012: 422) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 42
Figure 2.5 The materiality of old ideas in today’s systems.
Source Own illustration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 44
Figure 2.6 Mind-sets in the multilevel perspective on transformations.
Source Own illustration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 48
Figure 3.1 Mainstream economics model of wealth and utility
production. Source Based on Ekins (1992, 2000)
and Costanza et al. (1997) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 60
Figure 3.2 A differentiated model of wealth and utility production.
Source Own illustration based on Ekins (1992, 2000)
and Costanza et al. (1997) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 61
Figure 3.3 Mainstream economics model of the economy.
Source Daly/Farley (2010: 25) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 82
Figure 3.4 The three-pillar versus embedded-system view of sustainable
development. Source Own Illustration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 88
Figure 3.5 Comparing world GDP/capita and world GPI/capita trends.
Source Kubiszewski et al. (2013: 63) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Figure 3.6 The sustainable development doughnut. Source Based
on Raworth (2012: 4) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

xix
xx List of Figures

Figure 4.1 A new development paradigm of well-being and happiness.

Source Based on NDP Steering Committee and Secretariat
(2013: 20) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
Figure 4.2 The Commons Framework. Source Based on On the
Commons (2012: 1). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
Figure 5.1 Processes of radical incremental transformations.
Source Ison 2016 forthcoming, Fig. 2.4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
Figure 5.2 Transformative Literacy—five p’s to map SETSs.
Source Own illustration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
List of Tables

Table 3.1 Mainstream economic paradigm effects on searching

for sustainable development. Source Own overview . . . . . . . .. 55
Table 3.2 Max-Neef’s matrix of fundamental human needs.
Source Excerpt from Max-Neef (1992: 206–207) . . . . . . . . . .. 64
Table 3.3 Defining Planetary Boundaries. Source Rockström et al.
(2009: 472–475) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 91
Table 3.4 Land use predictions by the UN International Resource Panel.
Source UNEP (2014: 20) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 93
Table 4.1 Four types of goods and their forms of scarcity.
Source Based on Ostrom (2009: 413) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140

xxi
List of Boxes

Box 2.1 Places to intervene in a system ranked by increasing

order of effectiveness. Source Meadows (1999: 3). . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Box 3.1 Values research—axiological aspects of scientific
paradigms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

xxiii
Chapter 1
Introduction

In the middle of the twentieth century, we saw our planet from space for the first time.
Historians may eventually find that this vision had a greater impact on thought than did the
Copernican revolution of the sixteenth century, which upset the human self-image by
revealing that the Earth is not the centre of the universe. From space, we see a small and
fragile ball dominated not by human activity and edifice but by a pattern of clouds, oceans,
greenery, and soils. Humanity’s inability to fit its activities into that pattern is changing
planetary systems, fundamentally. Many such changes are accompanied by life-threatening
hazards. This new reality, from which there is no escape, must be recognized—and man-
aged.
World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future (1987: 11).
Throughout the ages, people have said that the world is in the midst of big change. But the
level and degree of global change that we face today is far more profound than at any other
period in my adult lifetime. I call this period the Great Transition.
Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary-General, speech, Stanford University (2013).

We still aspire to fit humanity’s activities into Earth’s patterns. Most of the reports
on our progress in achieving sustainable development are devastating. In prepara-
tion for the 2012 Rio+20 summit, the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of
the United Nations (UNDESA) concluded that
The political deal that emerged from the Earth Summit in 1992 has, for various reasons,
never been fulfilled. Neither the expected outcomes—elimination of poverty, reduction in
disparities in standards of living, patterns of consumption and production that are com-
patible with the carrying capacity of ecosystems, sustainable management of renewable
resources—nor the agreed means to achieve them, have materialized (UNDESA 2012: iii).

After nearly three decades of aspiration it is not surprising that the language that
describes what it would take to turn the wheel and reach this deal has become more
radical. The terms ‘Great Transition’ or ‘Transformation’ have become common in
recent years. In September 2015, the heads of UN states adopted The 2030 Agenda
for Sustainable Development: Transforming our World (UN 2015: 2). It contains
17 newly agreed Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that map where this
transformation is supposed to lead. These cover the topics of the earlier Millennium
Development Goals like ending poverty and hunger, improving education and

© The Author(s) 2016 1

M. Göpel, The Great Mindshift, The Anthropocene:
Politik—Economics—Society—Science 2, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-43766-8_1
2 1 Introduction

health, but also encompass goals and targets for improved work situations, income
distribution, more sustainable growth patterns and city developments as well as
resource efficiency, clean energy and the protection of marine and land ecosystems.
Two of the goals also provide targets for governance improvements and the quality
of institutions and partnerships, which should help the implementation process
(UN 2015).
Some critics may lament that these goals are pipe dreams, too ambitious and
sometimes contradictory, given that the socioeconomic pledges can only be realized
if the targets for environmental protection are missed. I think that this will certainly
be the case if the spirit of transformation and radical change that UN Secretary
General Ban Ki-moon expressed in his 2014 preparatory report on reaching the
SDGs is lost. Ki-moon wrote, “Transformation is our watchword. At this moment
in time, we are called to lead and act with courage. We are called to embrace
change. Change in our societies. Change in the management of our economies.
Change in our relationship with our one and only planet” (UN 2014: 3).
It is this spirit of transformation that I want to support with this book. To me it
holds a renewed window of opportunity for the radical changes that in essence the
sustainable development agenda always held. And I want to show that radicalness
in purpose should not be conflated with a call for instant revolution, tearing down
the system or hostility to dissenting ideas. Radicalness in purpose is equivalent to
holding a vision or belief in what could be possible if X, Y or Z was to change, an
imaginary that stirs up energy, commitment—and persistence in taking the many
incremental steps required to get there.
Sociologists use the term ‘imaginary’ to capture more than ideas: it includes a set
of values, institutions, laws and symbols with which people imagine their social
whole. Without this combination of radical imaginary and persistent progress
toward it, not much transformation will happen, at least not in the direction of
sustainable development. The path dependencies that shape humanity’s activities
and development dynamics today are pushing and pulling in a decidedly
non-sustainable direction.
This is why I also want to make the case that we should not simply stick the label
‘transformation’ on any amendment to the status quo, or call each technological
efficiency gain an ‘innovation.’ If the benchmark for the changes to which we aspire
is not radically different to the one that has guided development solutions so far,
humanity will not escape those strong path dependencies. At the same time, dis-
missing the role that incremental steps play in getting there means ignoring the
insights that complex system research offers about patterns of change. So juxta-
posing the two approaches as entirely separate strategies—a practice often used to
discredit someone else’s proposals—does not help. What helps is to keep each other
challenged with respect to both the radicalness of the imagined outcomes (what do
we deem possible) and the amount of change in this direction that the next, often
little, steps could bring (what do we do to make it happen).
This book speaks to this combination under the tagline of radical incremental
transformation strategies. The purpose that these strategies should serve here is
long-term sustainable development as defined in the Rio Declaration of 1992 and
1 Introduction 3

now the SDGs. For an analytical approach it is important to make this explicit and
not conflate process-design with desired outcome. One is descriptive and the other
one normative: transformation is a qualitative degree of change that might happen
in a system, and research seeks to describe typical patterns of such change processes
so that they can be understood or at best guided. Sustainable development, on the
other hand, is one possible quality of the outcome of a transformation process, and
research supporting this normative goal seeks to identify and describe typical
design principles that characterize sustainable systems.
Today’s analysis reveals that the world is undergoing massive transformations
and that we need to change their qualities to achieve sustainable development. It
also shows that very skillfully managed transformation processes can lead to very
unsustainable outcomes and very well-designed sustainability solutions can cause
resistance or even turmoil in a system that is not ready for this change.
Since this is the thorny challenge that confronts every change agent for sus-
tainable development, the overarching goal of this book is to contribute to both
Transformation Science (understanding how transformation processes happen) and
Transformative Science (developing approaches for a furthering of transformation
processes) alike (WBGU 2011a: 342). These related and yet somewhat divergent
contributions shape the structure of the chapters: Chapters 2 and 3 provide the
backbone to a reflexive political economy understanding of transformations toward
sustainable development, Chap. 4 presents case studies of pioneering practices that
fit the remit of the suggested Great Mindshift, and Chap. 5 offers a summarizing
framework for individual ‘transformative literacy’ for those seeking to support it as
well.

1.1 It’s the Economy, Stupid!

As one can hardly hope to capture or work on all aspects of sustainability trans-
formations at once, I have zoomed in on what could be a key leverage point in
different projects and change initiatives surrounding this purpose. The idea was to
follow the dictum of Richard Rumelt, one of The Economist’s “management gurus”
and an expert on “Good Strategy/Bad Strategy” (2011). He says that a good
diagnosis, “simplifies the often overwhelming complexity of reality by identifying
certain aspects of the situation as critical” (Rumelt 2011, quoted from his blog). My
diagnosis is that the most critical aspect for turning the wheel toward fulfilling the
SDGs is changing the economic paradigm. Hence the title of the book.
But why economic thought above all? Because it informed the creation of the
practices, norms, laws, rules, business and market structures, and technologies that
delivered unsustainable development in the first place. Because governments,
ministries, international organizations, corporations and banks that move big money
around and design the rules of our markets use economic models and expertise in
their decision-making and justification of it. Economic calculations of, for example,
productivity or competitiveness have also become the most important frames when
4 1 Introduction

disputing the trade-offs behind political decisions or when justifying business

strategies. The economic paradigm is thus massively influential in what is deemed
possible and legitimate for hypothetical future development paths. Eric Beinhocker,
director of the Institute for New Economic Thinking’s (INET) research program in
Oxford, explains: “Just as abstract scientific theories are made real in our lives
through the airplanes we fly in, the medicines we take, and the computers we use,
economic ideas are made real in our lives through the organizations that employ us,
the goods and services we consume, and the policies of our governments”
(Beinhocker 2006: xi–xii).
Paul A. Samuelson, Nobel laureate and one of the most influential economists of
the twentieth century, went as far as to say: “I don’t care who writes a nation’s laws—
or crafts its advanced treatises—if I can write its economics textbooks” (Weinstein
2009 citing Samuelson). His textbook Economics was a bestseller for nearly 30 years
and translated into 20 languages.
Similarly, popular economist John Maynard Keynes shared Samuelson’s opin-
ion: “the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right
and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed
the world is ruled by little else” (Keynes 2007: 383–384). He continued to reflect on
the effects that this power of ideas has on societies and commented on his own
overturning of firm beliefs: “The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping
from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into
every corner of our minds” (ibid: preface).
It is this stickiness that most of the book seeks to highlight and understand.
Because after all, some of the most powerful current economic ideas—like ‘gain’
being the prime human motivation, ‘utility’ a good measure for well-being and
‘capital’ a useful container term for everything that might be needed in production
processes—were once radically new and far from common sense. They were
integral components of the massive paradigm shift that has been called the
Enlightenment movement. Dirk Messner, leading German transformation
researcher and president of the German Development Institute (DIE) has described
its effect as a change in the social, cultural and cognitive ‘software’ of the agrarian
societies: it changed the reservoir of ideas, norms, values and principles which
actors drew on when creating technologies, institutions, laws, business models and
individual identities (Messner 2015: 263).
Today, 250 years later, these powerful ideas and economic concepts have
become the basis of a new normal, of a civilization and development model that is
unsustainable in a world with nine times as many people as there were when these
concepts were invented. Applying them means that leaders claim progress even
when the patterns of the clouds, the oceans, the forests and the very soil are
destroyed to a degree that threatens to tip our fragile planet out of balance. In
addition, while this development model has created much material wealth, it has not
generated the maximum happiness for the maximum number of people as its
progenitors and promoters believed it would. Meanwhile, the market system that
hosts this type of civilization has become one of global reach and highly complex
1.1 It’s the Economy, Stupid! 5

feedback loops that are very difficult to change without risking collapses in wide
parts of the global economy.
Thus, a transformational 2030 sustainable development agenda needs new
‘software’ that opens up the imaginary and thus political space for radically dif-
ferent development solutions and systems. And I feel we might be at a turning
point: the first 40 years of sustainable development agenda left the economic
paradigm widely unchallenged. Instead of integrating economic, environmental and
social dimensions of development—as mandated by the Brundtland Report defin-
ing sustainable development—social and environmental concerns have been
inserted into an economic way of seeing and therefore governing the world. As a
result, quantification and marketization in the service of endless ‘growth’ has
become the dominant mode of organizing ever more areas of life. Diversified
governance solutions have been homogenized to fit in with this paradigm.
But since the consequences of accelerating natural exploitation and social
inequality have become more tangible in rich countries, an awareness of the pitfalls
of this shift is coming to the fore. Moreover, since the 2007 financial crisis hit the
‘developed world’ hard, even the deeply ‘economic’ institutions like the
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), International
Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank have begun to question some of
Samuelson’s ideas and their own established models. The World Economic Forum
(WEF) has launched a sustainability-adjusted competitiveness index and lists global
inequality as well as job-loss in rich countries through digitalized industrialization
4.0 as top topics of conversation. Former Wall Street heroes linked to George Soros
put $200 million into the Institute for New Economic Thinking and the OECD
hosted a Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social
Progress chaired by Nobel laureate economists Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen,
which has just started its second round of work.
Of course this does not mean that the people in powerful positions now know
better than the thinkers who have been challenging the mainstream economic
paradigm for decades or centuries. Nor does it imply they do better than the
practitioners who have worked incredibly hard to achieve sustainable niche solu-
tions within a system that’s pushing in the opposite direction. It does mean,
however, that the hegemony of the mainstream economic paradigm is broken. The
credibility of the trickle-down and green growth narratives that it informed is lost.
In the decades to come, the old and alternative paradigms will be struggling to fit
the shape taken by what could become the Second Enlightenment. Our task is to fill
the reservoir of social and cultural inventions with ideas, norms, principles and
values that support a de-commodified view of human needs, nature and money,
based on twenty-first century natural and social sciences that include many
non-quantifiable variables. They provide alternative meaning, legitimacy and
practice options for everyone engaging in the highly political struggles over
transformations for sustainable development. This is what The Great Mindshift
stands for.
6 1 Introduction

1.2 Structure of the Book

To support and explore the claims made in this introduction the book goes back and
forth between transformation research and the discussion of changing economic
paradigms in theory and practice. It introduces four analytical concepts and two
heuristics in order to provide some answers to the following overarching questions:
1. If the changes envisioned by the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda are
supposed to be transformational in quality, how do we work toward this quality?
2. If the transformations envisioned are supposed to support sustainable develop-
ment, what are the key leverage points to unlock unsustainable path
dependencies?
The second chapter, on transformation research in the context of sustainable
development, provides the conceptual background to my call for radical incre-
mental transformation strategies. Based on an overview of major strands of system
transformation research, I develop three analytical concepts to make the case:
Materialization of ideas: Transformation research literature describes the
transformational quality as manifesting itself in “co-evolutionary changes in tech-
nologies, markets, institutional frameworks, cultural meanings and everyday life
practices” (Geels et al. 2015: 2) and often uses the concept ‘system innovation’ to
capture it. The 2015 OECD System Innovation report defines these as “radical—
insofar as they alter existing system dynamics—innovations in socio-technical
systems that fulfill societal functions, entailing changes in both the components and
the architecture of the systems” (OECD 2015: 6).
While these definitions provide a helpful description by which to distinguish
transformational change from normal, adaptive change, they do not say much about
how the reconfiguration of these system elements is taking place. In the literature
one finds catchy terms like “innovation cascades,” “knock-on effects,” “diffusion of
new technologies” or “(re)alignments between multiple elements and interactions
between multiple actors,” all of which “changes cultural discourse and behaviour”
(Geels et al. 2015: 6). But who are the agents behind all these descriptive nouns? In
this book system innovations are understood to be driven by humans: purposefully
acting individuals who see what could be possible beyond the status quo and make
it happen.
Bringing individuals and their mind-sets into systems is an important step
toward understanding where change originates and who promotes it with what
effects. I introduce the concept ‘materialization of ideas’ to discuss this structura-
tional interplay between ideas, human behavior, collective action and institutional
design. It highlights both how the resulting systems shape reality and freedom of
agents in the future and also how the agents’ freedom to think, feel, reason and act
differently fuels the transformational phenomena that characterize system
innovations.
Repurposing systems: Most of the literature (Geels et al. 2015; Messner 2015;
WBGU 2011a: 342) states that transformation cannot be planned nor will it unfold
1.2 Structure of the Book 7

according to plan. It can primarily be diagnosed when looking back from the future.
Yet, if the sustainable development community understands that the degree of
change necessary to reach its goals cannot fall short of being transformational,
science should help the community to get a grip on which change strategies and
initiatives seem promising. If transformational change is defined as radical because
a system’s dynamics, components and architecture have been changed, two ques-
tions arise: how can a radical degree of reconfiguration be intentionally pursued?
And how can the system dynamics be altered to this degree without causing col-
lapse or rejection?
In order to answer these questions it is crucial to once again link back to
purposefully acting individuals who engage with one another and nature to produce
the goods and services they deem necessary or beneficial to their well-being. Such
engagement involves the creation of facilitating institutions and technologies that
amount to what transition research calls socio-technical systems (STS’s). Hence,
each of the systems is designed to fulfill a particular purpose, so understanding this
purpose will shed light on where to find core drivers of its current dynamics. This
also means that when the goals and ends of the system are in question, innovation
strategies should first focus on defining a new purpose, and then coordinating
updates of technologies and institutions with that purpose (Leadbeater and Mulgan
2013: 46).
The sustainable development agenda called the outcomes of the old economic
growth path into question, but most of its strategies have fallen short of defining a
new guiding purpose: they kept economic growth and tried to quickly provide yet
more of it—just with less environmental damage. Current statistics show that
simply driving the system to do more is not enough if a real change is needed, as the
following quote from UNDESA’s 2012 Back to Our Common Future report
highlights: “Even if we succeeded in pushing our technological capabilities to the
utmost, without doing something else, in a few decades we are likely to end up in a
world that would offer reduced opportunities for our children and grandchildren to
flourish” (UNDESA 2012: iii).
In the “doing something else” we find the benchmark for a transformational
agenda. It has to start with what is captured by the heuristic ‘repurposing a sys-
tem’—e.g., properly replacing the pole star of economic growth with that of sus-
tainable development. To do so one should, I argue here, check if the prevailing
mind-sets or paradigms and the models and measures they inform can guide
repurposing strategies—or also need to be shifted.
Radical incremental transformation: However, declaring a radically different
purpose and even clearly seeing which flawed assumptions and unhelpful path
dependencies stand in its way will of course not magically transform them. This
requires intense work of an often highly political character and the acceptance that it
takes time. Seeking to change a system too swiftly or too drastically is likely to
create self-defensive or destabilizing reactions. The art of system innovation
therefore entails finding the right steps and measures at the right time, and also
being prepared to deal with unexpected results.
8 1 Introduction

This is why I reject the juxtaposition of radical versus incremental change and
propose the conceptual framework of ‘radical incremental transformation.’ The
radically new purpose informs which multiple and diversified incremental inter-
ventions are necessary to unlock the path dependencies that keep the system in the
old dynamic. Often it is easier to focus energy on discontinuing a few strong drivers
or root causes and observing how this creates new dynamics that allow parts of the
system to start reorganizing. Yet, some agreement about the direction of purposeful
reorganization has to prevail for collective strategic action to take place.
The third chapter, which deals with the mainstream economic paradigm,
therefore launches straight into discussing both the root causes and the direction of
purposeful action for sustainable development. It highlights why it is important to
check for the worldviews and paradigms on which key actors and coalitions base
the narratives surrounding their collective action. While the former capture how a
person or a scientific discipline views the world, the latter captures the rationale or
stories that actors share to argue their choices and activities. The crux of the matter
is that one and the same narrative for collective action, e.g., ‘we want to achieve
sustainable development,’ can host very different ideas about how it could best be
done. These differences may emerge from interests and power games but even those
are embedded in and influenced by differences in worldviews and paradigms. These
soft factors are the source of how sense-making people believe the world works,
how it could or should therefore be governed and which role they should play in it.
From this perspective, Chap. 3 puts the second question center stage and
explains why the mainstream economic paradigm might well be the most important
lever for unlocking unsustainable path dependencies. Its main argument runs as
follows: The world started engaging with environmental problems in the 1960s.
The first big report to make global waves was the 1972 Limits to Growth issued by
the Club of Rome think-tank. The international community reacted and in 1987 the
UN-appointed World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED)
published its ground-breaking Our Common Future. The commission and the report
also carry the name of Gro Harlem Brundtland, the former prime minister of
Norway who led the work.
The report exposed many of the degrading effects that the twentieth century’s
economic development path had inflicted on the environment, while failing to
eradicate poverty. It therefore called for the replacement of this path with “sus-
tainable development,” which was defined as development which meets “the needs
of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their
own needs” (WCED 1987: 16). To that end emerged what became the infamous
“integrated perspective,” namely that “the common theme throughout this strategy
for sustainable development is the need to integrate economic and ecological
considerations in decision making. They are, after all, integrated in the workings of
the real world. This will require a change in attitudes and objectives and in insti-
tutional arrangements at every level” (WCED 1987: 55). Any negative social
consequences of the twentieth century development ideal were not really
acknowledged. The problem was put down to insufficient economic output to lift
everyone above poverty lines.
1.2 Structure of the Book 9

So what happened? Instead of a proper interdisciplinary endeavor to define a

new paradigm that captures the purpose of sustainable development holistically, the
already dominant economic paradigm became paramount. Social and ecological
dimensions were inserted into its monetary quantification frameworks. This could
not change attitudes, objectives and institutional arrangement toward sustainable
development simply because the basic ideas of that paradigm do not say much
about either human needs or the environment’s ability to replenish resources. The
chapter zooms in on a few key concepts underlying this, for example, the pursuit of
endless economic ‘growth’ to achieve development, maximizing ‘utility’ to meet
human needs and substituting ‘natural capital’ so that everything can continue to
grow in the future.
Some of the detrimental effects these concepts have on understanding how to
reach the goals of sustainable development are discussed by bringing in insights
from twenty-first century social and natural sciences as well as alternative economic
thought. Earth system sciences, ecological economics, sociology, well-being
studies, psychology and neurosciences have much to say about human needs,
nature’s laws and the impact on both of these of economic growth-driven societies.
Adding these findings to the picture shows that the paradigm and ideas that
informed the creation of unsustainable system dynamics cannot guide their
removal.
So which paradigm can achieve this? This is the key question that spans Chap. 4
and the case studies on pioneers working with different imaginaries of what the
purpose of sustainable development could mean in practice. With the intention of
investigating which key ideas or concepts a new and transformational development
paradigm could build on, I took a closer look at the following initiatives: the
Economy for the Common Good (a prominent business initiative in Germany and
Austria), Transition Towns (an urban community initiative born in the United
Kingdom), the Commoning Movement (civil society initiative spanning the Atlantic
between the United States and Europe) as well as the Bhutanese Gross National
Happiness (GNH) Framework (government initiatives that want to supplement
GDP with other performance indicators).
Although I would not venture to state that one can define a clear-cut new
paradigm or streamlining development purpose like, for example, ‘economic
growth,’ I was surprised by the common ground between theory and practice as
well as across practice examples. The worldviews of how to understand human
needs and nature’s laws and the narratives about what development should there-
fore aim to achieve are very similar. All of these movements adopt the view that
ecological systems host sociocultural systems and that economic systems are
subordinate means in successfully structuring nature–human relations. This is
radically different to the view of the mainstream paradigm that pursues the ongoing
integration of social and environmental concerns into economic governance logics
by pricing them. So I would go as far as to set one common heuristic that expresses
the radical purpose and another to capture the strategic directions that the incre-
mental steps of these pioneers are taking.
10 1 Introduction

The radical repurposing agenda could be summarized as recoupling economic

processes with human well-being and nature’s laws by making the economic
dimension the one that needs changing. Given the structural reality of today’s path
dependencies, the foremost strategy for successive change in this direction—the
incremental strategies that can achieve it—is double-decoupling:
1. Decouple the production of goods and services from unsustainable, wasteful or
uncaring treatment of humans, nature and animals (do better).
2. Decouple the satisfaction of human needs from the imperative to deliver ever
more economic output (do well).
The latter has been given much less attention because the worldview informed
by the mainstream economic paradigm cannot even countenance it.
This last argument lies at the core of the fifth and final Chap. 5, which explores
how a shift in a paradigm and the mind-sets it informs can be the mediating element
between the radical imaginary and the incremental steps toward repurposing sys-
tems. It uses the findings of the transformation research discussions to present a
framework that helps individuals hack the system they work in, identify and argue
for change strategies that work both aspects of decoupling. This framework is thus
an updating contribution to transformative literacy: “the ability to read and utilize
information about societal transformation processes, to accordingly interpret and
get actively involved in these processes” (Schneidewind 2013: 83).
Impactful repurposing strategies need to reflect on the paradigm that informed
the system’s goals and purpose. There always exist several paradigms in parallel,
but one becomes dominant. It frames the issues at stake and thus the selection of
relevant information, the legitimacy of arguments, the normative judgments of
proposed solutions, the acceptance of rules and institutions and the beliefs that
something is worth pursuing. Paradigms are the sources of systems. They function
as a reference framework for individuals wanting to do something and so shape the
mindsets of the people involved in the system.
Of course, structural path dependencies are not overcome merely by changing
the way the world is viewed. For structural path dependencies to be overcome
requires a lot of engagement, effort, persistence and struggle. It also requires
mindfulness and challenging one’s own belief systems, habits and convictions in
the search for different solutions. The SDGs capture a transformational agenda for
the entire world precisely because there is no sustainable role model to copy. The
search is on and the more freely ideas behind unsustainable solutions are reassessed,
the more creative and transformational the agenda can be. Declaring that the current
situation has no alternative or that we are simply at the end of history would be bad
news.
1.2 Structure of the Book 11

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Chapter 2
What Political Economy Adds
to Transformation Research

The continuous striving for improvements in material welfare is threatening to surpass the
limits of the natural resource base unless there is a radical shift towards more sustainable
patterns of consumption and production and resource use. Persistent inequalities and
struggles over scarce resources are among key determinants of situations of conflict,
hunger, insecurity and violence, which in turn are key factors that hold back human
development and efforts to achieve sustainable development. Business as usual thus cannot
be an option and transformative change is needed. As the challenges are highly interde-
pendent, a new, more holistic approach is needed to address them.
UN System Task Team on the Post-2015 UN Development Agenda, Realizing the Future
we Want for All (2013: 1).
Particular narratives are produced by particular actors and so co-construct particular
pathways of response. Some are dominant; shaped by powerful institutions and substantial
financial backing—these are the ‘motorways’ that channel current mainstream environment
and development efforts. But these can often obscure and overrun alternatives; the smaller
by-ways and bush paths that define and respond to different goals, values and forms of
knowledge.
Leach, Scoones, und Stirling, Dynamic Sustainabilities: Technology, Environment, Social
Justice (2010: 5).

So, if the changes envisioned by the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda are
supposed to be transformational in quality, how do we work toward this quality?
This chapter provides the analytical perspective of a system-thinking, environ-
mentally aware political economist with a sober appreciation of technological
innovation. It defines two concepts and one heuristic that lie at the core of this view:
engaging with the materiality of ideas and radical incremental transformation
strategies enables a repurposing of our current development systems. This ana-
lytical framework emerged from my transdisciplinary quest to find out why humans
collectively create societies that individually they would like to change. This quest
has always been connected with sustainable development: no one I know is not in
favor of peace, of letting nature thrive and enabling every person and animal to live
a life of dignity. So why is this not possible?
My search for answers led me to combine academia and research with political
engagement and activism. For a long time it seemed that this made me something of

© The Author(s) 2016 13

M. Göpel, The Great Mindshift, The Anthropocene:
Politik—Economics—Society—Science 2, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-43766-8_2
14 2 What Political Economy Adds to Transformation Research

an outsider: too keen on systematic and nuanced argumentation to fit into a

media-driven world of punchy slogans and easy scapegoats, but also too interested
in changing the real world to become an expert who dug deep into one scientific
discipline. Given the rapidly growing popularity of transformation research over the
last five to ten years, in particular in the field of sustainable development, my notion
of being an outsider has fundamentally changed: transdisciplinary approaches have
become the new thing for tackling the persistent problems that sustainable devel-
opment strategies face. This means that scholars not only connect different scientific
disciplines, but also integrate the insights of practitioners on the ground. The goal is
to create robust knowledge that not only refines existing theoretical hypotheses
about how humans and the world work, but also has relevance for the people
enacting change on the ground.
The term ‘transdisciplinary research’ was first introduced in 1970 by Erich
Jantsch, a Club of Rome member, to encapsulate the notion that inherited scientific
knowledge needs frequent confrontations with the ‘real world’ in order to test,
amend and form new assumptions. Only with such an approach would science
support the ability of a society to continually self-regenerate. This approach has not
been very popular in the Enlightenment-influenced sciences, however. Here, the
dominant ideal is of the positivist paradigm whose goal and premise it is that
universally true ‘laws’ governing human behavior and natural evolution can be
identified and fit into quantitative models and experiments with which future
developments can be predicted and managed. This still does, of course, require
researchers to make decisions about what they observe, how they quantify aspects
that cannot simply be tallied, and how they interpret their observations. This is why,
in scientific terms, paradigms are divided into assumptions that are epistemological
(what can we know), ontological (what can be said to exist and how we group those
things), and methodological (what guiding framework is suitable in solving a
problem). Some scientists also add axiological aspects, encompassing the choice of
relevant values. Depending on how these various aspects are defined, a single event
can be interpreted very differently. Likewise, proposed solutions for the problem
will vary significantly.
The transdisciplinary paradigm differs considerably from positivist ones in its
epistemology. For example, it does not involve the ambition of finding universal
laws that could be true forever. In its ontology it is constructivist or reflexive and
thus does not see ‘reality’ as something objective that can be observed by
researchers at a distance but instead as something intersubjectively created by
sense-making actors and thus subject to change. Meanwhile the current state of
reality will also impact the way humans—including researchers—make sense of
how the world objectively ‘is.’ As a result, no researcher or truth claim can declare
itself separated from reality. Our world, as quantum physics affirms, is constantly
evolving. German has a great word for ‘reality’ to capture this information-based
interplay: Wirklichkeit. Wirken means to ‘seem’ and ‘appear’ but also ‘have an
2 What Political Economy Adds to Transformation Research 15

effect’ or ‘operate.’ The word ‘reality’ on the other hand has its Latin roots in the
term ‘res,’ which means ‘thing,’ ‘matter.’
A reflexive research approach therefore views humans as both the object and the
subject of making history: today’s interactions do not happen in a vacuum but under
the circumstances created by us and the generations before us. As a consequence,
humans experience individual freedom within frameworks for action laden with
beliefs, norms, social roles, typical procedures, rules and distribution patterns that
are not necessarily of their choosing but still shape their sense-making and
behavior. Thus, my personal opinions and behavior are influenced by my sur-
roundings but also influence those of others with whom I am interacting, my
counterparts and observers. And humans are arguably the only species on the planet
that can apply reflexivity in order to discover, assess and creatively work with or
against the frameworks for action that we encounter.
This point was foregrounded in parts of the 2013 World Social Science Report
(WSSR) with the introduction of the concept of ‘futures literacy’:
The complexity of these processes of transformation raises a number of questions, most
notably about people’s capacity to imagine futures that are not based on hidden, unexamined
and sometimes flawed assumptions about present and past systems. ‘Futures literacy’ offers
an approach that systematically exposes such blind spots, allowing us to experiment with
novel frames for imagining the unknowable future, and on that basis, enabling us to critically
reassess actions designed in the present (ISSC and UNESCO 2013: 8).

Not everyone within the transformation research community works with a

transdisciplinary approach and reflexive paradigm. The community combines a
wide array of scientific disciplines and is still sorting out where exactly paradig-
matic agreements lie. So within this book I pulled together the work of leading
scholars who do at least reject the positivist epistemology and ontology that one
finds in the mainstream economic paradigm and its methodological individualism.
In this paradigm, humans do not reflect on more than the costs and benefits of the
choice set with which they are confronted. So each person in their economic system
behaves similarly (representative actors), regardless of where they happen to live.
This is very convenient because individual behavior assumptions are aggregated
into extrapolations of how the system will work as a whole and what knock-on
effects it will have—e.g., the prediction that markets will balance themselves.
However, even within allegedly objective, positivist/standard economics, it has
been recognized that such additive approaches risk a fallacy of aggregation, ending
in incorrect predictions. For example, American economist Alfred E. Kahn warned
of The Tyranny of Small Decisions as early as 1966. He stressed that market
equilibrium theory must remain cautious about the reliability of its methodological
individualism: small decisions by rationally calculating actors may well lead to
misallocation effects on the macro scale that produce outcomes which the same
individuals would not choose (Kahn 1966: 23). One prime example of this tyran-
nical effect in natural sciences is the way that climate change results from the
cumulative effect of what seem to be negligibly small entities of additional CO2
emissions made on the individual scale.
16 2 What Political Economy Adds to Transformation Research

The tyranny of small decisions makes perfect sense to those who conduct the
complex system research used both to examine the Earth’s ecosystems and in social
sciences. Here the main thrust of the research lies in understanding relations
between single elements and the dynamics of the whole in order to understand why
single elements behave the way they do and how this might change. As a result, the
emphasis when searching for sustainable development solutions is less on
improving single technological products or economic incentives, and more on
understanding the dynamics of wider socio-technical or socio-ecological systems
(STS or SES) before thinking about which interventions could improve
sustainability.
Most reflexive transdisciplinary methodologies work with what has been called a
problem-driven approach. The research is designed around a specific problem or
challenge that scholars seek to address or produce answers for. Collecting infor-
mation about its emergence, including talking to people, allows mapping which
actors, but also which institutional, technological, economic, environmental, and
socio-cultural conditions are relevant factors of its persistence. From this infor-
mation one can draw a system that is relevant to dealing with the challenge. Often
this system will cut across official demarcations of organizations, sectors, disci-
plines or even nations.
The 2015 OECD System Innovation report explicitly defines ‘system innovation’
as a way of analyzing and innovating that will transgress the boundaries of
established containers: “The appeal of system innovation today is closely linked to
the pressing issue of meeting the ‘grand’ or global challenges of today. These
global challenges require policy actions across technological, economic and social
structures and boundaries, as well as national borders” (OECD 2015: 8).
Returning to the Brundtland Report, we realize that this is not really a new insight: The
integrated and interdependent nature of the new challenges and issues contrasts sharply
with the nature of the institutions that exist today. These institutions tend to be independent,
fragmented, and working to relatively narrow mandates with closed decision processes…
The real world of interlocked economic and ecological systems will not change, the policies
and institutions concerned must (WCED 1987: 17).

It seems that such structural change implications were among those demands
considered too radical at the time and that they thus need persistent reiteration. The
transformation and system innovation discourse brings the need for encompassing
structural change to the forefront and to the titles of flagship reports, while slowly
delegitimizing the narrow emphasis on adaptive market magic, money printing and
technological breakthroughs.
To me, this is part of the window of renewed opportunity for sustainable
development. The rapidly growing transdisciplinary transformation research com-
munity could become instrumental in helping to use this window strategically. It
promises the most telling insights into how the infamous integration of ecological,
social and economic dimensions of development can be achieved in practice.
2.1 Digging into Societal Transformation and System Innovation Research 17

2.1 Digging into Societal Transformation and System

Innovation Research

I begin with a few definitions from influential sources that illustrate what trans-
formation research leaders say about the challenge of turning development toward
sustainability. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), for
example, foresees “the altering of fundamental attributes of a system (including
value systems; regulatory, legislative, or bureaucratic regimes; financial institutions;
and technological or biological systems” (IPCC 2012: 5).
The primarily European Sustainability Transition Research Network (STRN),
founded in 2005, says in its mission statement that “incremental change in pre-
vailing systems will not suffice. There is a need for transformative change at the
systems level, including major changes in production, consumption that were
conceptualized as ‘sustainability transitions’” (STRN 2010).
The German government’s Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU)
published the report A World in Transition: A Social Contract for Sustainability in
2011 and defined its viewpoint as follows: “This major transformation will require
technological advances, new concepts of welfare, diverse social innovations, and an
unprecedented level of international cooperation” (WBGU 2011b, 1).
My contributions to the field focus on concepts that foreground mind-sets
because these will inform the purpose that the technological advances, new con-
cepts and innovations of all kinds will serve. And I argue for a Great Mindshift
because I feel that willingness to reassess old assumptions and convictions for their
validity seldom involves the degree of radicalness required. The definition of
transformation proposed by the Stockholm Resilience Centre comes closest:
“Transformation or transformability in social-ecological systems is defined as the
capacity to create untried beginnings from which to evolve a fundamentally new
way of living when existing ecological, economic, and social conditions make the
current system untenable” (Stockholm Resilience Centre 2012). To create untried
beginnings we need new social imaginaries, sets of ideas including values, insti-
tutions, laws and symbols through which people imagine their social whole and
envisage how alternative systems would differ from the current situation—and the
courage to let go of that to which we have grown accustomed.
In order to develop my foundational analytical concepts of how to achieve the
large system change to which the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda aspires, I
will first present a selection of popular transition research concepts from three thick,
multi-scholar reports that are also seeking answers to this question. They are all part
of the rapidly growing community adopting systemic and transdisciplinary
approaches. At the same time, they differ with regard to certain basic ideas and
departures for research design and can be systematized as examples of ‘the three
camps’ within transformation research, distinguished by the disciplinary homes
from which the new agenda is approached: innovation management, natural sci-
ences, and political economy.
18 2 What Political Economy Adds to Transformation Research

The three camps are certainly not the only possible systematization of the field;
they are simply one way of approaching issues discussed within the community
itself. Transition scholars should not be upset to come across categories that they
reject but are instead invited to read what follows in the spirit of cultivating
awareness about framing effects that emerge when we (including myself) choose
the lenses and terms with which we decipher the world.
The first camp of transition research tends to contain social scientists with an
evolutionary economics or innovation management background. They are primarily
interested in understanding how technological advances change the way commu-
nities and societies organize themselves and which potentials for sustainable
development emerge from that. Their main unit of observation is the STS. The
second camp is deeply rooted in natural and earth systems sciences and argues that
new knowledge of Planetary Boundaries and ecosystem services needs to be the
reference frame for the identification of solutions to sustainable development. Their
main unit of observation is the SES. Political economists who engage with the
systems frameworks highlight the need to understand unsustainable structural dri-
vers embedded in current economic processes and the effects of increasing mar-
ketization and commodification on systemic governance proposals. They would
apply these to both the socio-technical and socio-ecological relations and thus I
grouped them into socio-ecological-technical systems (SETS).
In line with these different views, the descriptions of transition processes also
vary. Scholars with an evolutionary economics, innovation and management
background tend to speak of repeated learning cycles in which the results of pilot
projects and niche innovations are monitored for their effect and the most con-
vincing ones, i.e., the most resource-efficient, become part of a transformed system.
More recently, aspects of interest and power have been taken into consideration, but
agency remains a less important variable, as the following characterization of “main
features of system innovations” shows: “(1) disrupting or complementary types of
knowledge and technical capabilities; (2) fundamental changes in consumer prac-
tices and markets; and (3) novel types of infrastructures, institutional rules and skill
sets” (OECD 2015: 6).
Scholars with a natural science background will tend to search for dynamics,
feedback loops and tipping points in the reproduction circuits of ecosystems and
develop extraction or pollution targets and principles to help societies stay within
safe operating spaces. Often less attention is paid to the question of how the gov-
erning frameworks and economic processes needed to stay within the boundaries can
be implemented. One important contribution toward this has been the concept of
‘pathways’ to show that there are multiple possible solutions to governing a safe
operating space and that each one implies different distribution and participation
patterns. Here the power relations and interests behind the emergence or mainte-
nance of one pathway in particular receive explicit attention (Leach et al. 2010).
Finally, political economy approaches are making their way into the transfor-
mation research community. Traditionally they do not have a strong track record in
ecological literacy or the relational innovations that technology breakthroughs
might engender. The sub-camps that engage with transition research mostly consist
2.1 Digging into Societal Transformation and System Innovation Research 19

of ecological economists and behavioral economists. They place their chief

emphasis on understanding the emergence and perpetuation of capitalist economic
path dependencies that keep on pushing SETSs out of sustainable development
paths (Göpel 2016). Political economists tend to reject win–win narratives and
argue that both transformational changes and the status quo involve winners and
losers, and that these should be exposed.
Thus, while all researchers foresee that transition or transformation will involve
discontinuities in the current systemic setups and dynamics, their notions of where
transformational changes originate differ. The typical terms for explanations thus also
differ: ‘diffusing technologies’ or ‘disruptive innovations’ tend to be socio-technical
terms, ‘feedback loops’ or ‘tipping points’ stem from a socio-ecological view, and
political economists speak about ‘struggles’ and ‘structural crises.’
Some scholars explicitly prefer the term ‘transformation’ to the evolutionary
term ‘transition’ because it makes the conflicting aspects of change more clear. But
when it comes to defining what constitutes a transition versus what constitutes a
transformation, the quotes above demonstrate that there is not much difference.
Here, I use the terms interchangeably and wish to map the commonalities rather
than the differences between the camps. Each of the three larger studies reviewed
here can be roughly grouped into one of the camps. My own bias in what I select
will be that of an environmentally aware political economist who appreciates the
potential of technological breakthroughs.
Given its conceptual leadership in the field, I start by reviewing the 2010 book
Transitions to Sustainable Development: New Directions in the Study of Long Term
Transformative Change edited by John Grin, Jan Rotmans and Johan Schot. It was
the first conceptual milestone of the STRN network mentioned above. This network
and its annual International Sustainability Transitions conferences have been the
epistemic community development locus for the STS camp.
Its work has influenced my second example: the SES-driven WBGU and its 2011
flagship report to the German chancellor, the transition viewpoint of which is cited
above. Here the starting point is less an understanding of transitions as such and more
the avoidance of disastrous climate change (one important Planetary Boundary),
which is deemed only possible with a great transition. To this end the report has a set
of recommendations for policy and science at its core. The Stockholm Resilience
Centre cited above is a strong convening player of this camp; the biannual
Transformations and Resilience conferences are key exchange platforms.
The third study I will examine was published in 2002 as the outcome of longer
discussions of the Global Scenario Group convened by the Stockholm Environment
Institute and the Tellus Institute in the 1990s. The report, Great Transition: The
Promise and Lure of the Times Ahead defines transitions as “complex junctures, in
which the entire cultural matrix and the relationship of humanity to nature are
transformed” (Raskin et.al. 2002: 3). It states that the world is in transition to a
planetary phase and sketches six possible development pathways for the future that
combine narratives with quantitative data. The scenarios differ according to the
degree of change in human values, paradigmatic thinking and therefore policies
20 2 What Political Economy Adds to Transformation Research

adopted; economic thinking plays a central role. Discussions of The Great

Transition continue online at http://www.greattransition.org.
Please bear in mind that naturally I can only present selective reviews that are
mere snapshots of hundreds of pages. They will not do justice to the entire work but
instead provide an insight into the core concepts and basic assumptions underlying
these hallmark publications and their respective camps, at best triggering an
appetite for more.

2.1.1 Socio-technical Systems and Their Innovations

The goals of STS thinking as developed in the STRN community could be sum-
marized as follows: how can we understand innovations systemically—and apply
this knowledge for sustainability purposes. It fits firmly into what I call the reflexive
ontology. The status quo of our world is viewed as a constant reproductive process
in which “internal dynamics, external influences and the resulting feedback loops
keep on rearranging the ordering” (Grin et al. 2010: 6). Technologies are therefore
not viewed in isolation but in conjunction with the social practices, norms, and
institutions that enable or hamper their use and influence choices between the
options on offer. Meanwhile, adopting certain technological solutions rather than
others will also influence which institution, infrastructures or business models seem
promising and sensible to make good use of.
The diversity of energy systems highlights these co-evolutionary properties. The
availability of resources on a particular territory and in geopolitical relations with
potential delivery partners will make some fuels and raw materials for harvesting
technologies more desirable then others. The availability of investments depends on
the desirability of proposed solutions, while existing market and ownership structures
will play an additional role in these judgments. Meanwhile, knowledge about the
negative pollution effects and risks of some fuels compared to others will impact
citizen opinions, while consumer acceptance of technological solutions depends on
consumer budgets and habits. Policymakers navigate this set of information and
preferences in order to shape governing solutions that find support from lobbyists and
voters—which will in turn impact geopolitical relations and investment expectations.
Breaking out of a particular system of energy supply therefore depends on changes in
all of these dimensions rather than only in the availability of alternative technologies.
The highly political battles over the ongoing renewable energy transition in
Germany and the fierce opposition of powerful incumbents of the fossil energy
system are good examples of this. Transitions are therefore always “intrinsically
social, full of uncertainties, ups and downs, twists and turns” and should best be
viewed as a dynamic, multidimensional, multi-actor and multilevel challenge that
cannot be planned and predicted in a linear manner (Grin et al. 2010: 6). In order to
get a grip on how to meet this challenge, the 2010 book provides some key
conceptual frameworks of the STRN community and I picked out the two most
popular ones to make my case. They seek to explain and improve understanding of
2.1 Digging into Societal Transformation and System Innovation Research 21

processes of transformation and thus can be applied for many outcome goals of
transformations, like moving toward a safe operating space or institutionalizing a
Second Enlightenment with a new economic paradigm.
The STS transition research community was born in the Netherlands when
professors Jan Rotman, Johan Schot and John Grin combined their respective
research backgrounds for a programmatic approach toward understanding larger
system changes. These scholars primarily study medium-sized systems, often on a
sectoral basis like energy. The duration of transformational changes in these sys-
tems is estimated to take about 40–50 years (Grin et al. 2010: 3–7). One of the key
iconographic outcomes of this endeavor is the Multilevel Perspective
(MLP) presented in Fig. 2.1. It was developed by Jan Rotman and his student Frank
Geels and highlights the interplay between different societal subsystems across
space and time. It differentiates qualitative levels of resistance to intentional and
spontaneous change in order to identify multiple upward and downward causalities
of influence behind large system change processes. It is important to note that these
are functional scale levels and do not represent spatial or geographical hierarchies.

Fig. 2.1 The multilevel perspective on system transformation. Source Geels and Schot (2010: 25)
22 2 What Political Economy Adds to Transformation Research

Figure 2.1 shows that the most innovation-friendly level is the niche or micro-
level where small units or ‘situated groups’ experiment easily with alternative
solutions, as long as the degree of interdependencies with overarching or neigh-
boring systems is not too strong. Examples here range from single technology
innovations like mobile phones to empowering local food production (e.g.,
Community Supported Agriculture or CSA). Their initial development often takes
place under conditions shielded from the overarching regime logic. These can be
laboratories for research and development in science, experimental pilots intro-
duced by businesses, direct or indirect government subsidies for desired solutions,
or the emancipatory initiatives of citizens.
Higher levels of structuration characterize the regime or meso-level because it
hosts structures in the form of well-established institutional setups in governments
and markets, scientific standards and technologies or infrastructure. They change
much more slowly and define a framework for action that tends to stabilize the
status quo because it limits the scaling and multiplying of alternative solutions.
Yet, the MLP is not intended to present a hierarchical ordering but rather
embedded systems. It could and often is read as a bottom-up theory of change, in
particular because the arrows that represent change-inducing pioneering activity in
the graph emerge from the niche level. But it is important to point out that change
can emerge on all levels. Pioneering initiatives can be little hubs of deviation and
innovation within entities that fall into the regime grouping—for example, research
and development units in big corporations or inter-ministerial units in government.
An activity is pioneering if the solutions it promotes differ radically from the status
quo. And typically, niche actors depend on support from pioneering actors within
the regime institutions in order for their solutions to become part of an adapted or
transformed system configuration.
For this to happen, an important role is given to the landscape or meta-level. It
harbors all those aspects that intentional action will likely not be able to change in
the short- or medium-term. These are natural developments like climate change but
also deeply anchored human-made institutions like the market system or hegemonic
paradigms, social values and cultural beliefs. This level forms the backdrop, or
deeper structuration, of lower-level developments. Sudden expressions of ongoing
changes here, like natural disasters, a massive financial crisis or an outbreak of
right-wing violence against refugees, have the quality of shocks for the subsystems
and their self-stabilizing processes. These shocks tend to be windows of opportu-
nity for change, a point I will return to below.
Depending on the author, one finds slightly diverging descriptions of the level at
which single aspects like market patterns or policy orientation rest, i.e., regime or
landscape level. This choice often depends on the actual case researched and the
individual view of the researcher as to what should and can be changed inten-
tionally. The joint message is that the higher the level, the slower the change
processes and the more difficult for individual actors to imbue transformational
missions. But it also means the higher the level the higher the transformational
2.1 Digging into Societal Transformation and System Innovation Research 23

impact: changes in overarching systems always reshape the framework of action for
smaller units, whereas only a critical number of changes on lower levels are likely
to impact higher levels.
The other joint message is that despite the good intentions of many actors
involved, unsustainable trends persist, a phenomenon that can best be understood
through a systemic view that recognizes not only economic and technological
dimensions of innovation but also institutional and sociocultural aspects. The latter
affect not only which solutions take off but also whether their adoption will
transform or perpetuate system dynamics. One great demonstration of the added
value of such a holistic systemic approach is the search for answers for the widely
observed ‘rebound effect,’ namely, while resource efficiency goals and standards
reduce the relative resource use per product or service, overall resource use is not
coming down.
This observation was originally made by William Stanley Jevons in 1865
regarding coal extraction. The steam engine alleviated the need for coal in one
sector but the fall in prices then made it economically viable to use coal in many
other contexts, which increased overall extraction again. This example is now
known as the Jevons Paradox and he generalized it into the statement that a more
economic use of a resource must not be confused with its sparing use (Jevons
1866). More recent examples include the technological advances in transport
technologies for cars and planes, which have made each kilometer of distance
traveled more efficient and therefore economically cheaper. The consequence was a
spurt in kilometers traveled and rising emissions from the transport sector.
Thus, without checking holistically for the driving factors behind resource
extraction, we cannot change the overexploiting trajectory. If we begin with the
most obvious drivers, we must consider the number of people: population levels
(landscape) are still growing and at the same time a significant percentage of people
live with fewer material goods than they need for a decent life. But this can hardly
explain the persistence of rising resource consumption in countries with saturated
material needs and stable population levels. Here, when we examine the regime
level, we find, for example, business models based on constantly increasing outputs
embedded in market patterns geared at constant competitive growth of national
output. As a consequence, billions are spent on marketing measures to ensure that a
consumer culture (landscape level) guarantees demand for, or at least acceptance of,
what could count as oversupply. This culture then runs counter to solutions that
involve raising prices for resources that would in turn make products expensive:
people have become used to rapidly changing fashion or technology trends and the
short product-lives in throw-away use patterns and business models (regime). As a
consequence, absolute resource use increases despite impressive technological
efficiency advances in pioneering products or firms (niches).
Transition research therefore starts with one particular persistent problem or
undesirable trend and seeks to find and understand the key reasons, drivers and
stabilizers of the system to which it is host. The overarching term used for multi-
farious different stabilizers of certain system dynamics or development in
24 2 What Political Economy Adds to Transformation Research

institutionalism theory is ‘path dependencies.’ All transformation researchers use it,

albeit giving different degrees of attention to the technological, economic, institu-
tional, sociocultural and ecological dimensions that path dependencies combine. So
depending on the camp and also the individual researcher, such path dependencies
include more directly visible political laws and regulations, infrastructural or
technological limitations, market patterns and scientific knowledge, but also con-
sumer behavior, power plays, firm strategies and economic transaction cost con-
siderations (WBGU 2011a: 418–419). Moreover, socio-psychological aspects like
norms, role expectations, lifestyles and self-images or shared beliefs play important
yet less tangible roles (Welzer 2011). Complex system theory would say that path
dependencies harbor important ‘feedback loops’ in that particular system. All of
these usages of path dependencies capture processes within a system that hamper a
change of course. So at least some of them need to be ‘unlocked’ if the problem or
undesirable trend should discontinue.
Path dependencies also form the link between the MLP and the second concept
for explaining transformational change, the s-curve or multiphase concept: path
dependencies behind one particular problem do not necessarily adhere to one of the
levels but might cut across them. The set of path dependencies behind the rebound
effect was one example of this. And each context shows a different, historically
grown setup of path dependencies, which means that one niche proposal or ini-
tiative may work in one region but not in another. And here we depart from any
notions of and demands for blueprinting. Even if a solution is doing magic in one
place, this does not mean that replicating it in another will lead to success.
Hence, the starting point of strategic transformative research designs is always
one particular wicked problem in one defined context. After the challenge has been
defined, the system that is relevant for understanding its existence and persistence is
mapped, including aspects or elements from any MLP level if suitable. The results
portray unique system boundaries: constellations with different scope, dynamics,
impulses, agents, and room for maneuver. The next step then lies in developing
ideas on how to intervene in these system constellations so that desired outcomes—
like avoiding the rebound effect—become likely. This is where the multiphase
concept as another key iconography of the transition community comes in. It is
basically a very coarse model of a theory of change for complex systems and shows
at which stages which intentional change initiatives seem promising.
The multiphase concept illustrated in Fig. 2.2 shows that transformational
changes in complex systems do not unfold in an obvious and linear manner where
the dosage of change-input equals that of change-output. Unless they are triggered
by some drastic shocks from neighboring or overarching systems, system trans-
formations require a build-up in which not much is visibly happening before tipping
points are reached, after which a lot of change happens in a short period of time.
After this chaotic and contested phase either a restabilization of the system or its
collapse can follow. When this change pattern is captured in an illustration it
resembles an ‘s’, which is why the multiphase concept is also called the ‘s-curve.’
Sequencing is typically divided into four stages:
2.1 Digging into Societal Transformation and System Innovation Research 25

Fig. 2.2 The four-phase pattern of transformation processes. Source Based on Mersmann et al.
(2014: 34)

1. Pre-development, in which a system is in a dynamic state of equilibrium and

changes slowly but unobtrusively.
2. Take-off or point of ignition during which more coordinated niche activity and
regime reactions gain momentum. These may lead to the tipping points followed
by an…
3. Acceleration or navigation phase in which structural changes become possible
and visible but hard to control. Eventually, at the stage of…
4. Stabilization, a new dynamic system setting emerges. This can be a transformed
system in which the overall development trajectory is different, because it is
informed by many niche elements and ideas. However, this can also be an
adapted version of the old dynamic in which most of the challenges have been
absorbed or subjugated by the old regime structures, so that some aspects are
amended but the general development trajectory stays the same. In a third
alternative, the system can collapse when it falls out of the order imposed by the
former dynamic, should restabilizing feedbacks and activities be insufficient
(Grin et al. 2010: 3–7).
The phase pattern was originally observed in natural systems but proves very
insightful for social changes as well. It is part of all the reports reviewed in this
chapter. Figure 2.2 provides an example illustration drawn up for a climate change
financing project by myself and my colleagues at the Wuppertal Institute
26 2 What Political Economy Adds to Transformation Research

(Mersmann et al. 2014). It has been labeled with ideas about which type of activities
seem promising in each phase if a donor would like to support intentional trans-
formational changes. In our particular case these have been climate mitigation and
adaptation strategies with transformational impacts.
The basic message behind this phase concept is that stable systems, i.e., those
whose path dependencies work in smooth dynamic alignment, will be immune to
any attempts at transformational change. Their form is well supported by ongoing,
often slightly adaptive activities that maintain stability. Only through increasing
irritations do the alignments become brittle enough to provide space for more
radical changes: those that challenge this form.
Such irritations can be new challenging knowledge (e.g., on climatic change),
growing niche activities (e.g., around new renewable energy technologies), or
emerging landscape changes (e.g., increasing droughts and floods). If these prevail
despite adaptive calibrations, the alignments eventually stop running smoothly—
hence the term tipping points. These tipping points are highly political because they
mean that the feasibility, support and legitimacy of the old form has ceased, so
struggles about what should replace it are intense. This replacement outcome could
be a transformed one that embeds a new system goal or purpose—but could also be
re-formed to accommodate some of the irritations but stay on a similar development
trajectory. The multi-phase graph encapsulates this view: only with significant
changes of path dependencies on the regime level will there be lasting transfor-
mations of the system’s dynamics.
The thick purple line should not give the impression that the phases are
unfolding in a linear fashion. Transformations are a rocky and highly contested ride.
This graph is a gross simplified model of what would, in reality, zigzag consid-
erably if viewed in more detail. The energy transition in Germany is a good
example of how this simplified sequencing can help understand and inform the
intentional transformation of large systems. The following provides a rough tour
through important developments over the last few decades and groups them
according to the phases. It also shows that all dimensions of path dependencies
from cultural to technological are playing a role.
The important landmarks indicating the rising awareness in Germany that energy
systems would need to be transformed were the 1970s oil crises and the reports
about limits to the exploitation of natural resources. These first regime crises were
reined in but the sociocultural anchoring of the awareness that a fossil energy
development path was contested and risky prevailed. This fed into an already
ongoing anti-nuclear movement that led to the creation of The Greens as a political
party. The Greens got enough votes to enter the German parliament, the Bundestag,
in 1983 and the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster worked like an
accelerating shock from the landscape level for its political agenda. Environmental
concerns became much more mainstream.
Meanwhile, from the early 1980s onward, technological developments slowly
but surely made the idea of significant renewable energy production seem feasible.
Niche players acted in a pre-development phase under favorable civil society and
public discourse conditions. Some regime pioneers in the political and investment
2.1 Digging into Societal Transformation and System Innovation Research 27

community understood the potential and started to support these developments

through targeted research initiatives into technological opportunities and transition
pathways. In the political discourse these became solutions to what was established
as a societal challenge and the first small feed-in tariff regulation in 1991 encour-
aged credit for technology pioneers.
Following Germany’s 1998 elections, a new coalition government incorporating
the Green Party started to develop renewable energy support schemes and the
anti-nuclear agenda became a fully-fledged Renewable Energy Act. By 2000 this
included not only an agreement on phasing out nuclear power plants over the
following 25 years, but also differentiated support schemes for different renewable
energy technologies. These were available to all end users of electricity who wanted
to become producers by installing small-scale solar, wind or biomass power plants.
The ‘feed-in tariff’ scheme provided guaranteed prices per kilowatt-hour of
renewable energy fed into the national energy grid over 20 years. It obliged elec-
tricity utilities to purchase this energy but allowed for them to push the cost onto the
final consumer bills.
This mechanism effectively created a return on investment security that attracted
conventional banks and risk-averse investors into lending small enterprises, farmers
and citizens money to install renewable energy technology. For the first time there
was a technology market in a sector previously dominated by a few big companies
whose long-subsidized centralized coal and nuclear energy infrastructure seemed
more like oligopolies. Since these older business models had rendered the trans-
action costs of switching to renewable energy solutions prohibitively pricey in the
past, no pioneering movement had been possible. The Renewable Energy Law
hedged the risks of a plethora of new, decentralized energy producers and unlea-
shed the competitive activity of many small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)
active in technology development.
By the mid-2000s the tipping point into the acceleration or navigation phase had
been reached, and pioneering activities had become mainstream considerations.
Fossil energy suppliers now felt threatened and tried to fight the regulation at all
levels, e.g., attempting to make the EU declare feed-in tariffs incompatible with
energy market integrations. But the renewable energy sector grew very quickly,
created many jobs in rural areas with high unemployment and turned Germany into
an international technology leader that inspired other countries. Thus, an environ-
mental issue had found technology solutions and became solidly economic when it
served the export interests of the German economy and found wide, bottom-up
citizen support.
The share of renewable energy in the electricity mix increased steadily,
debunking the strongly spun narrative that renewable energy systems were tech-
nologically unfeasible—although concerns about black-outs remain. However, a
new narrative was established in which a transformation of the energy sector was
both possible and in progress, drawing in many new participants.
However, unexpected side effects—like rapidly dropping prices for solar tech-
nologies; changes in international production relations (solar panels imported from
China were much cheaper and their German purchasers were also entitled to the
28 2 What Political Economy Adds to Transformation Research

feed-in-tariff support scheme); problems with the functioning of the electricity

market (renewable energy has no fuel costs and therefore does not fit a spot market
sales scheme); and some resistance to the alternative electricity grid infrastructure
from civil society—led to a new and critical phase that required legislative changes.
Actors with vested interests in the fossil energy system inevitably used this
strategically. When the government changed to a conservative party coalition with a
very industry-friendly liberal party in 2009, a window of opportunity to open the
Renewable Energy Act and terminate the agreements to phase out nuclear power
plants emerged. This in turn boosted the revenues and stock values of the incum-
bent energy players. These had entered the renewables production and lobbied for
electricity market regulation that would favor big suppliers over small ones and
compensate conventional energy plant owners for being fall-back providers in
periods when renewables could not deliver.
Although the flipflop on the long-standing nuclear exit encountered much public
and political resistance in 2010, it was the Japanese nuclear catastrophe in
Fukushima in March 2011 (a shock from the landscape level) that caused the
conservative Chancellor Merkel not just to return to the nuclear-exit strategy but
also to go even further by fostering a cross-party consensus on an energy transition
roadmap. This consensus foresees tackling issues in electricity markets, compen-
sation injustices and electricity provision infrastructure that are all in line with the
goal of a renewable energy system. Yet, at the same time, the former plan for rapid
transformation was also watered down when the priority to get as much renewable
energy as possible was replaced by a target of 45 % by 2020.
Its proponents argue that this is due to safety of supply and better cost man-
agement, but it is clearly also less disruptive to the incumbent business models,
whose champions get public money to dismantle the previously lucrative nuclear
power stations. Nevertheless, these providers have been hard-hit by a plunge in
stock market value and revenues. So the German example clearly shows that each
transformation involves changes in who is winning and who is losing—and that
incumbents will not easily give up on status quo solutions.
So it is no surprise that Germany is still grappling with putting the energy
transition commitment into practice and will be for decades to come. It seems that
the radical vision of a renewable energy system will not be reversed: its purpose has
been changed from ‘as much energy as possible at lowest costs’ to ‘climate-friendly
and long-term secure energy.’ The cost effects are often used and misused in
arguments against the transition but its sociocultural anchoring is still firm and
broadly based. But the regime restabilization actually required to achieve this goal
is far from complete: intense struggles are taking place in the social, economic,
cultural, technological and political dimensions of the energy system. Who is
paying how much for which type of electricity? Which business models receive
which type of financial support? Where can wind turbines and solar panels be
located so that they fit the landscape? Which storage capacities will be available to
smoothly provide irregularly harvested renewable energy? Which party coalition is
supporting which business sector and how do Germany’s European neighbors react
to a transition that also impacts their energy grids?
2.1 Digging into Societal Transformation and System Innovation Research 29

Large-scale system transitions take time and are full of political battles and small
steps. The actors that steer or influence a transition are, at the same time, part of it.
Their freedom is a structured one, framed by the existing path dependencies. Here
we find the basis for the concept ‘radical incremental transformations’: no deep and
wide changes will happen without pre-development and build-up leading to fric-
tions and crises that provide the space for them.

2.1.2 Socio-ecological Systems and Their Safe Operating

Spaces

From an ecosystem perspective, the main question for the SES camp could be
summarized thus: how can we best understand sustainable human societies and
apply system innovations to achieve them? Important institutional research in this
field is carried out at the Stockholm Resilience Centre in Stockholm, Sweden, and
also the STEPS Centre in Brighton, United Kingdom.
One report that made significant waves in Germany was the WBGU’s 2011
World in Transition: A Social Contract for Sustainability. The WBGU was founded
just before the 1992 UN World Summit on Sustainable Development with the
mandate of providing independent scientific advice. A key idea promoted by the
WBGU in an earlier report was that of “planetary guard rails” similar to the
“Planetary Boundaries” introduced by Rockström et al. (2009). While acknowl-
edging other environmental domains and their overuse, the main emphasis of both
the WBGU guard rails and the 2011 transition or transformation report (the German
title uses ‘Transformation’ but the English translation is ‘transition’) lies on climate
change (WBGU 2011a).
Overall, the single most important issue and overarching goal of the different
measures and strategies discussed, is the avoidance of catastrophic climate change
with all its implications for “the world’s ecosystems and their ability to sustain
human life.” Given the wide-reaching consequences of the carbon cycle for life on
earth, a transformation toward “climate compliance” is declared an “ethical
imperative” similar to that of the abolition of slavery and child labor (WBGU
2011c: 1).
Climate change is introduced as the most important environmental global
challenge and the report discusses other global megatrends in order to understand
interlinkages: economic development; democratization; global energy supply and
demand; urbanization; and patterns of increasing competition for land use between
food, bio-energy and forests. It also seeks to identify how these and ecological earth
system trends interrelate. As a result, the three areas with the highest transformative
impact are identified. These are the sustainable design of future energy systems,
urbanization trends, and land use patterns. The programmatic gist of these required
transformations is to turn current carbon-based economies into ones based on
renewable, or at least recyclable resources. The magnitude of this remodeling is
30 2 What Political Economy Adds to Transformation Research

equated with “the two great revolutions which have crucially shaped world history:
the Neolithic Revolution (the diffusion of arable farming and animal husbandry)
and the Industrial Revolution (the transition from an agrarian to an industrial
society)” (WBGU 2011b).
In line with the focus on the fossil fuel foundations of our current development
model, one part of the World in Transition report provides detailed information
about how these megatrends impact energy use. It also discusses the technological
and economic feasibility of decarbonizing our economies and concludes that
decarbonization is possible if a supportive “social contract” between state, civil
society, business, science, and research is agreed. In essence this contract involves
the agreement that new rules are necessary for the economic system, and also
conclusions on how development could subsequently proceed.
While many of the contract’s rules will impact on very structural technological,
economic, political and ecological path dependencies, the prime root for its con-
clusion lies in the sociocultural domain: the ethical basis that can bind such diverse
interests could lie in our responsibility toward future generations, combined with
ecological responsibility and a culture of democratic participation. If the contract
were based on such a visionary agreement (read: a better purpose for development),
it would provide the legitimizing backdrop from which a ‘proactive state’ engaged
to change the rules and incentives so that sustainability transformations could
proceed. As a potent manifestation of the contract the country could embed sus-
tainable development or climate protection into the constitution.
Wide discussion of such a new social contract is intended to generate the
political will and public support necessary to break some of the current barriers to
policy change, namely powerful interests vested in the fossil-fuel-based infras-
tructures and consumption patterns of our economies today. The antidote to pow-
erful lobbyists is public opinion, which the authors claim has undergone a
significant shift in the direction of environmental awareness and post-materialist
value sets. The Gallup Institute’s World Values Survey is cited as one important
base of evidence for this, as are the ongoing initiatives on new measures of pro-
gress, wealth and well-being. Thus, the new social contract would find its
expression not primarily on paper but rather in people’s consciousness: it changes
what they judge to be appropriate and desirable policy and product options (WBGU
2011c: 2).
Adopting the STRN concepts, the report foresees that extended participation of
enlightened citizens would not only legitimize but also improve policy imple-
mentation, which creates new room for pioneering sustainable business and citizen
practices that test prototype practices for a sustainable society. These may turn into
niche solutions, like an eco-village, a car-sharing business or a renewable energy
cooperative but also possibly set a new trend. Such pioneers of sustainability
practices operate in all parts of society, business, non-governmental organizations,
culture and even in political decision-making.
These emerging solutions put visions into practice and provide proof to poli-
cymakers that alternatives to fossil-based energy dependence are not only thinkable
2.1 Digging into Societal Transformation and System Innovation Research 31

but actually possible. Through strategic niche management the state could therefore
create more spaces in which social and technological experiments are protected
from immediate market exposure. Meanwhile, the niche players can also increas-
ingly press for policy changes in the regulatory regime so that their solutions are
able to expand instead of being held back by the current path dependencies on the
regime level, like vested interests and structures of production and consumption.
Following citizen pressure, supportive regime-level changes are also proposed.
Institutionalized foresight and long-term orientation expresses the spirit of the
contract because it counters the dominance of short-term orientations in democra-
cies with frequent voting cycles: the immediate costs to one’s core voters are very
unpopular, even if they help prevent much higher costs in the future. In addition,
improved democratic participation in the formulation of policy changes is supposed
to up their acceptance and legitimacy. Some possible accountability mechanisms to
these ends include a future chamber of parliament that frequently reports on the
long-term effects of policies and programs, and also ombudspersons whom citizens
can address in cases of perceived maladministration or with whom civil society
organizations can work before bringing cases of environmental damage to the
courts.
Thus, transformation occurs when regime structures are changed to a meaningful
degree, accelerating the spread of existing pioneer solutions and incentivizing even
more radical ones. Taken together, the “requisite transformation encompasses
profound changes to infrastructures, production processes, regulation systems and
lifestyles, and extends to a new kind of interaction between politics, society, science
and the economy” (WBGU 2011c: 1).
In summary, the emergence of the Great Transition is described as a rather
evolutionary learning process, in which more knowledge and sustainability values
will make things better and bring down powerful vested interests. Key interlinked
processes mentioned here can be summarized as:
• Learning about technical performance, market demand, infrastructure require-
ments, policy instruments and symbolic meaning.
• The articulation and adjustment of expectations or visions that guide innovation
activities and help attract attention and funding from additional actors.
• The building of social networks that expand resources and capabilities (WBGU
2011c: 1).
In this way the authors of the 2011 WBGU report put strong emphasis on the
overarching role of joint ideas and visions in encompassing change processes, and
add these sociocultural aspects to the STRN perspective. They also discuss at length
what the role of science itself should be in these processes. As the WBGU is firmly
in the SES camp, this includes understanding the carrying capacities of our
ecosystems. The WBGU also draws attention, however, to the role that transfor-
mative science plays in this context, and promotes a notion that science should
become part of bringing sustainability solutions to life. The theory of change is
summarized as follows:
32 2 What Political Economy Adds to Transformation Research

In co-operation with policymakers, business and society at large, the scientific community
is tasked with developing visions for a low-carbon society, exploring various development
pathways, and supporting sustainable technological and social innovations. Education
should help to create problem awareness and promote systemic thinking, thus empowering
people to participate in and shape the transformation process (WBGU 2012: 1).

When considering the redesign of energy systems, urbanization trends and land
use patterns, a study of the wider setting of correlations and side effects will enable
people to not only think about more efficient cars but also to explore how mobility
can be delivered in the most sustainable way (WBGU 2011a: 342–343).
Here of course we find a strong link with the emphasis on mind-sets in this book,
and my call to integrate political economy stems from what I find to be a slightly
naïve conception of the origin and roles that ideas and paradigms play in political
processes and their relation with power. While hardly anyone would explicitly
argue against values like the protection of future generations or our environment,
the devil lies instead in the detail—in this case the worldviews held. The same value
set might lead to very different proposed solutions, given differing worldviews and
their focuses. Mainstream economic mind-sets tend not to support the regulation of
markets precisely because this would hamper individual freedom, happiness, cre-
ativity and meritocracy—values to which most people would subscribe.
In one paragraph, the report mentions that Karl Polanyi’s interpretation of the
industrial revolution, The Great Transformation (1944), describes how “attitudes
and considerations inspired by personal benefit maximisation have established
themselves” and that with mass production, “the ‘good life’ has increasingly
become synonymous with material wealth” (WBGU 2011a: 67). The proposals for
change in the report, however, leave this deep cultural wiring and its mental path
dependencies unchallenged. Hence, it does not say how the observed value shifts
can be implemented if there is no discussion of the paradigm behind the evidence
and narratives used to argue which policies are suitable to embed the shift.

2.1.3 Socio-ecological-Technical Systems and Their

Repurposing

The discussion of paradigms and mind-sets is an important aspect of the 2002 report
Great Transition: The Promise and Lure of the Times Ahead, which primarily
explores the question: how do we best understand human choices and apply this
understanding in times of transformation? It is the result of seven years of col-
laborative efforts between the Stockholm Environment Institute and the Tellus
Institute in the United States. The goal was to describe and model scenarios for
potential future development paths, including one that would be a Great Transition
toward sustainable development.
Making reference to two former “sweeping macro-transformations” from the
Stone Age to early civilization about ten thousand years ago and from there to the
modern era in the last one thousand years, such transitions, says the report, were
2.1 Digging into Societal Transformation and System Innovation Research 33

marked by a change in the “entire cultural matrix and the relationship of humanity
to nature” (Raskin et al. 2002: 3). With this definition the report combines an
ecologically embedded socio-technical view (SETS) with an economic lens on
relationships. The authors describe social organization, the character of the eco-
nomic system, and capacity for communication as the three core dimensions that
have been transformed.
The modern era is seen as beginning with the advent of nation states as the social
and political forms of organization that interacted with the establishment of
capitalist-industrialist forms of production and consumption. In parallel, commu-
nication also expanded its geographical scope and became more widely accessible
through printing. The ongoing twenty-first century transformation toward what the
report calls the “planetary phase” is marked by the globalization of all three
dimensions: governance beyond nation states, multinational economic relationships
and information technology communication connecting almost all parts of the
world. Another pattern observed is increasing social complexity, an accelerating
pace of change and spatial connectedness, so that few places are immune to what
takes place elsewhere. From this the authors conclude that the next transition should
not last ten thousand or a thousand years, but around a hundred.
The 2002 report locates the origins of the modern era transition in the charac-
teristics of the modern capitalist industrialist system that overthrew the authority of
a society based on birthright, economic traditionalism and rigid class divisions.
Instead, law-governed institutions, market economies and a society based on sci-
entific ingenuity and mass production emerged. The authors also observe that these
institutions were designed to primarily harness some aspects of human potential,
those for accumulation, acquisition and innovation: “A permanent revolution in
technology, culture and desire spawned an explosion of population, production and
economic complexity. Ever hungry for new markets, resources and investment
opportunities, the self-expanding and colonizing industrial system began its long
march toward a world system” (Raskin et al. 2002: 7).
The planetary phase was a necessary outcome of this explosion because the fate
and relationships of peoples in different parts of the world are now too connected
for anyone to think that developments in one part of the world can happen without
impacting others. In addition, the fate of and relationships between people and
nature are too intertwined for anyone to believe that the destruction of ecosystems
can leave humanity unscathed.
So the report focuses not on whether there will be a transformation but instead
on the fact that one is already underway. It is up to purposefully acting people to
influence which path this transformation will take. In terms of what drives con-
scious human action, the authors distinguish several different mind-sets. Each of
them embodies beliefs about the potentials and qualities of technological, human
and natural changes. They amount to paradigmatic differences regarding the
assumptions of what we can know about the world, what we say the world is like
and how we presume it ought to be. This broad categorization distinguishes three
typical lenses through which to anticipate the future:
34 2 What Political Economy Adds to Transformation Research

• Evolutionists foresee conventional worlds because they are convinced that the
dominant patterns of the modern era can be adjusted to deliver prosperity,
stability and ecological health.
• Catastrophists foresee a future of barbarization because they predict that
environmental, social and economic crises will lead to a perfect storm.
• Transformationists share these concerns but still believe that a Great Transition
toward sustainable solutions is possible.
The authors describe two development scenarios for each of the three world-
views in the event that each type of thinking—evolutionist, catastrophist, trans-
formationist—guides people’s actions and decisions in consumption, production
and policymaking. Examples include whether or not societies will elaborate policies
aiming to decouple resource use from economic growth or if they might, at the
same time, aim to reduce overall resource use. Other paradigmatic crossroads look
at what might happen if we continue to pursue more GDP per capita as a means for
better living or, by contrast, if the consumption-based welfare idea is challenged.
Still others examine whether the financial markets are perceived as efficient drivers
of economic development or not, and so on.
In a massive modeling endeavor, the study substantiates the narratives with
quantified estimates on resource use and availability, economic output numbers and
some social criteria in each scenario. This is done by estimating how selected
indicator developments—e.g., emission or resource extraction patterns—would be
impacted by the combined consumption, production and policy choices described
as likely for each of the different worldviews. The table in Fig. 2.3 summarizes the
scenarios and the predicted quantitative trends.

Fig. 2.3 Great transition scenario structure with illustrative patterns of development. Source
Based on Raskin et al. (2002: 16)
2.1 Digging into Societal Transformation and System Innovation Research 35

In a 2010 paper, some of the report’s leading authors updated the framework by
reducing the number of scenarios to four—market forces, policy reform, fortress
world and a Great Transition—and fitting them with data from 2005 (Raskin et al.
2010). They also developed a Quality of Development Index (QDI) with updated
data from 2005. This combines sub-indices on human well-being, community
cohesion, and environmental protection to “consider the quality of development—
the degree of well-being in human lives, the strength of communities, and the
resilience of the biosphere—rather than gross domestic product, the misleading
conventional measure of ‘development’” (Raskin et al. 2010: 2631). The website
greattransition.org also has an animated short film highlighting the key messages.
In both report and paper, only the Great Transition or new paradigm scenario
leads to long-term prosperity within Planetary Boundaries. This scenario involves
“profound historical transformations in the fundamental values and organizing
principles of society. New values and development paradigms ascend that
emphasize the quality of life and material sufficiency, human solidarity and global
equity, and affinity with nature and environmental sustainability” (Raskin et al.
2002: 15). Here we find a strong overlap with the WBGU report, including the urge
for a conscious repurposing of what development is about (like the social contract
on climate compliance). Yet, this report does not start the reflexive change process
with the spread of knowledge about planetary guardrails, but by asking what
purpose economies should have in the first place. This question precedes the
assessment of how this can be done sustainably and in this scope comes close to a
Second Enlightenment discourse.
In order to highlight the influence of basic paradigmatic questions concerning
‘being in the world’ on the more specific mind-sets that guide policy choices, the
Global Scenario Group combined each development scenario with one ‘archetyp-
ical worldview’ by referring to one well-known philosopher and his core ideas
about the world. Many of these ‘patrons’ are economists. The list of the key
attributes in their thinking of course emphasizes the fundamental differences, so the
nuances of each view get lost:
• Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes are the main protagonists for the
evolutionist worldview but differ hugely on the question of how best to run
economies smoothly: The invisible hand of the market is the best allocation tool
for Smith (scenario market forces) whereas Keynes emphasizes the role of
government interventions to secure demand when capitalist relations lead to
crises (scenario policy reform).
• Among the catastrophists we find Thomas Robert Malthus and Thomas Hobbes,
neither of whom were very optimistic about the human capacity to become more
civilized. Malthus is connected with a breakdown scenario because of his claim
that limited resources will necessarily mean that people die if the population
becomes too big. Hobbes stands for an armed defense or fortress world scenario
because he depicted the natural state of the world as one of warfare between
humans resembling beasts.
36 2 What Political Economy Adds to Transformation Research

• For the transformationists, the authors refer to William Morris, E. F. Schumacher

and Mahatma Gandhi as well as John Stuart Mill. All of these thinkers question
whether humans really need to be selfish, endlessly accumulating competitors.
The first three formulate ideas about a decentralized variety of small and beautiful
communities in self-determination (the eco-communalism scenario), while Mill
sticks with larger units but envisions a post-industrialist and post-scarcity
development model (a Great Transition or paradigm shift scenario). All three
aim for human development rather than material acquisition once subsistence
needs are met (Raskin et al. 2002: 17).
The main message of the Great Transition report thus lies in assessing the
combination of worldviews and values in order to understand differences in ideas,
imaginaries and convictions about the best way forward. The Global Scenario
Group labeled these ‘soft’ aspects of values and needs, knowledge and under-
standing, power structures and culture as the “ultimate drivers” of transitions. The
more readily observable trends in politics, economics, technology and governance
are by contrast mere “proximate drivers” (Raskin et al. 2002: 50).
Most of the time, as the concept of futures literacy cited in the introduction
indicates, humans operate without much awareness of their ultimate drivers. It is at
the moment of conscious reflexivity that unstated ideas and assumptions about the
world—possibly flawed—are revealed and contested. Here we find another reason
why transformation researchers herald the moments of crisis or increasing irritation
as moments of potential. They are not dismissive of the terrible consequences that
potential runaway effects might have when feedback loops turn trends into
uncontrollable developments, but, as the Global Scenario Group points out and the
s-curve in Fig. 2.2 illustrates, they are instead ‘branch points’ where conscious
human action can have very meaningful influences on the future of the planetary
system.
While many transformation researchers discuss the role of crises in structural
changes, few make such an explicit link to the ideas to which humans will revert
when searching for strategies to deal with them. One rather unexpected ally is
Nobel laureate Milton Friedman, one of the leading thinkers of the mainstream
economic paradigm. His theory of monetarism was instrumental in transforming the
governance structures of many countries and he is clear about the role it played as a
political tool: “Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change. When
that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying
around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing
policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes
the politically inevitable” (Friedman 2002: xiv).
Karl Polanyi was another thinker who was very clear about this interplay. Since I
believe that Friedman’s ideas are more of a problem for sustainable development
than a solution, this last subchapter is a quick excursion into the thinking of
Polanyi, who could also be called the father of the idea of a Great Transformation:
his 1944 book carried this title and he is often referred to in contemporary transition
2.1 Digging into Societal Transformation and System Innovation Research 37

and transformation writings. But reference is seldom made to the fact that his work
already contains much of today’s critique of the way in which mainstream eco-
nomics deals with issues of sustainability. It does, however, provide a very good
understanding of why systems built on these principles have severe blind spots
when it comes to delivering on human needs and respecting the quality and dignity
of nature.

2.1.4 The Economic Paradigm Shift Behind Today’s World:

Karl Polanyi’s Heritage

In The Great Transformation. The Political and Economic Origins of our Times,
Polanyi described what he saw as the complete overhaul of the core operating
principles of societies, which took place when feudal agriculture was replaced by
the capitalist industrialist market model. He used the term “Great Transformation”
because it demarcated the change from one civilization to another through a process
of continuous change of values, knowledge, norms, rules and regulations, starting
in the late eighteenth century (Polanyi 1957: 3).
His analysis focuses on Great Britain as the origin of industrialization. While
applying a historical point of view, his work does not reconstruct a sequence of
events in a perfectly chronological manner, but seeks to identify trends in the
emergence of institutions and social technologies and to track which philosophical
and economic ideas or reasoning lay behind them. To shed some light on these ties,
Polanyi describes real world developments as well as core theoretical concepts and
the explanations of influential thinkers of the time. This account therefore paints a
picture of how creative and reflective actors provide ideas and explanations for real
world developments and in so doing influence sociopolitical responses, sometimes
very explicitly.
His analysis shows how the basic ideas of what I will describe as the mainstream
paradigm started emerging in the eighteenth century, and have since underpinned a
massive reorganization of the social technologies and institutions guiding human
development. To Polanyi, the most powerful of those ideas was the substitution of
the economic motive of subsistence with that of gain. Polanyi discusses how the
philosophers and scholars of that time were instrumental in presenting this per-
spective as a more accurate description of reality, one that was even natural or at
least desirable. He singles out Adam Smith as particularly influential with his
argument that it is a deeply natural human inclination to barter, trade and exchange
in order to maximize gain. Smith also made self-interest the fundamental human
drive behind the pursuit of those activities (Polanyi 1957: 68–70). Polanyi adds
frequent references to other influential thinkers like Thomas Malthus, Jeremy
Bentham, David Ricardo and Joseph Townsend, who nurtured the view that this
inclination would need to be unleashed fully if man were to escape the fetters of
poverty and starvation. Over time the new concept of ‘interests’ replaced what the
38 2 What Political Economy Adds to Transformation Research

church had condemned as greed. The invisible hand of the market was the proper
solution for facilitating this natural rewiring efficiently and for punishing those who
were not contributing valuable assets or skills.
By spanning the differences and similarities in the work of thinkers of the period,
Polanyi found that the common new imaginary for progress had become what he
called the “stark utopia of a market system” or the “matrix of the self-regulating
market” (Polanyi 1957: 57). He offers many quotes from key philosophers and
politicians of the time when describing how, inspired by this new vision for pro-
gress, both economic theory and policymakers occupied themselves with seeking
out and resolving the barriers standing in the way of the efficient and profitable
running of market societies. Some of the leading thinkers even established factories
or other institutions to that end. Another important theme involved outwitting the
limitation that nature had put on production by applying increasing amounts of
energy, machinery and capital.
Polanyi does not describe these changes as a smooth rolling out of a blueprint,
but as a conflict-ridden process which involved multiple changes in technology,
social groupings and regulation, all influencing each other in a paradoxical pairing
of unprecedented material production capacity with unprecedented poverty. He
describes intricate correlations between technological developments, new sources
of energy and the introduction of big machinery and factories, land enclosures for
mass wool production and a new financier class providing capital for those
investments while brokering increasing international trade, which in turn incen-
tivized even more mass production.
Instrumental in all this were state and local government regulations that either
accelerated or slowed down certain trends and developments. These concerned, for
example, land enclosures, definition and protection of private property, poor pro-
tection laws or their abolition, or allowing capitalist merchants access to local
markets. Important also was the invention of the gold standard behind the emerging
monetary system, which in turn fuelled the trend of internationalization.
Polanyi’s historical observations describe how societal relationships became
increasingly focused on profit in the form of money as the general expression of
value. Increasingly, processes of collaboration were governed by newly created
monetary tokens, social relationships, payments and newly calibrated ownership
structures. Eventually most income was derived from the sale of something or
other. This, combined with the structural developments of mass production,
impelled a highly differentiated division of labor that would be more efficient in
terms of the generated output.
So in line with the big philosophers of the period, constant economic gain
became the new image for successful societal organization, supplanting culture,
custom and religion. The effect was indeed transformational: ‘Ultimately,’ Polanyi
sums up, “that is why the control of the economic system by the market is of
overwhelming consequence to the whole organization of society: it means no less
than the running of society as an adjunct to the market. Instead of economy being
embedded in social relations, social relations are embedded in the economic sys-
tem” (Polanyi 1957: 57).
2.1 Digging into Societal Transformation and System Innovation Research 39

It is important to note that Polanyi’s critical view of the market system does not
lead him to neglect the existence and importance of markets in history. Indeed, he
analyzes at length how these were organized by different principles at different
times and in different places. The Great Transformation lay precisely in turning
away from these long-approved principles of collaboration like reciprocity, redis-
tribution or property ownership. In his view, “nineteenth century civilization alone
was economic in a different and distinctive sense, for it chose to base itself on a
motive only rarely acknowledged as valid in the history of human societies, and
certainly never before raised to the level of a justification of action and behavior in
everyday life, namely gain” (Polanyi 1957: 30).
This interplay between theory, power and policy is the underlying theme in
Polanyi’s opus. Following the overarching imaginary of the market system, the key
mindshift that he put center stage was the view of humans, nature and capital as that
market system’s input factors: successful development strategies needed to ensure
that labor, natural resources and investments were available for the continuous and
smooth expansion of production and consumption. In effect this meant conceiving
of humans, land and money as what he calls “fictitious commodities.” The frame
with which their governance is approached becomes one of economic production.
Polanyi is clear that from his point of view this transformation inevitably leads to
unsustainable developments. Human life, the environment and money are con-
ceptualized and organized as if they have no other existence or purpose than to be
sold for profit. To him this alone renders the market society idea ‘utopian’ and
inherently destructive for subjects robbed of their real qualities. ‘Labor,’ he wrote,
is only another name for a human activity which goes with life itself, which in its turn is not
produced for sale but for entirely different reasons, nor can that activity be detached from
the rest of life, be stored or mobilized; land is only another name for nature, which is not
produced by man; actual money, finally is merely a token of purchasing power which, as a
rule, is not produced at all, but comes into being through the mechanism of banking or state
finance. None of them is produced for sale (Polanyi 1957: 72).

To Polanyi, the logical consequences of this were poverty for most workers
needing to sell their skills and an overexploitation of nature. Political interventions
were frequently necessary to prevent this inbuilt tendency of market systems from
destroying its real basis.
Social history in the nineteenth century was thus the result of a double move-
ment: the extension of the market organization in respect to genuine commodities
was accompanied by its restriction in respect to fictitious ones… Society protected
itself against the perils inherent in a self-regulating market system—this was the
one comprehensive feature in the history of the age (Polanyi 1957: 76).
The influential nineteenth-century philosophers or economists whom he cites,
however, see the origin of the misery precisely in these regulatory efforts. They
believed that without public interference and by shedding former organizational
patterns, market dynamics and their tendency toward equilibrium would lead to the
most efficient allocation of resources—from which everyone would prosper even-
tually. Some structural adjustment costs for some groups or ecosystems might
40 2 What Political Economy Adds to Transformation Research

emerge in the short- and medium-term but the less policy interfered, the faster the
adjustments would be (Polanyi 1957: 135–150). Seeking an explanation for this
interpretation he describes a “blind faith in spontaneous progress” that would be
brought about by the freeing of the market system from the constraints of treating
everything as a commodity (Polanyi 1957: 76).
Most of today’s discourse around progress, successful development and
individual-cultural aspirations still holds ‘gain’ as the overarching goal, and ficti-
tious commodification is still expanding, even though voices are increasingly raised
over its negative impacts. The imaginary of fictitious commodities is also very
much alive and kicking when political decisions around environmental protection
or social welfare are judged by how much ‘the (financial) markets’ will accept and
when a society’s or businesses ‘productivity’ or ‘competitiveness’ is hampered.
Under current political and economic structures—i.e., the manifestation of the
market system utopia—this is of course a rational way of looking at what is likely
to happen. This is why former chief economist of the UK Sustainable Development
Commission Tim Jackson and other scholars speak of the “Growth Dilemma,” in
which the current type and rate of economic growth threatens ecosystems and social
well-being alike, although the current system dynamics also mean that discontin-
uing it will lead to unemployment, drying up of investments and broken social
protection systems (Jackson 2009: 46).

2.2 Summary: Paradigm Shifts and Large System

Change: Humanity’s Structured Freedom

To summarize the findings of this chapter, I will introduce a few concepts I find key
to understanding how to work toward system innovation without risking system
collapse or intensified rejection of change attempts. These concepts place humans
as sense-making actors at the locus of intentional change. After all it is people who
argue, evaluate and struggle over which purpose any SETS should fulfill, how this
could best be done and whether any updates are necessary or desirable.
At its outset, the sustainable development agenda called for a repurposing of the
overarching development goal, away from economic gain as an end in itself. Yet,
the agenda primarily ended up positioning it as the crucial means to the higher ends
of poverty alleviation and the ability to afford environmental protection. In effect,
this meant that most of the sustainable development strategies actually kept it as an
end in itself and tried to provide it more efficiently or in a ‘dematerialized’ manner.
The prime agenda became that of decoupling economic growth from environmental
destruction, or doing more with less. Doing less was and is simply not in the cards,
anywhere or for anybody. Implementation thus sought to improve an otherwise
mainly uncontested way of thinking, planning and conceptualizing development.
The mental model continued to be blind to any possible solutions that would imply
‘sufficiency’ or ‘enough’ as possible goals. Poverty remained defined solely by
2.2 Summary: Paradigm Shifts and Large System Change … 41

material possessions and monetary income. This fell short of causing the upset to
the human self-image that the Brundtland Report had predicted would result from
seeing Earth from space.
This upset to the human self-image is what system-thinking scholars like
Donella Meadows call paradigm shifts. She also calls them “high leverage points”
for transforming systems. To me, paradigm or mind shifts are the bridge between
the radical and incremental aspects of transformation strategies: radically different
imaginaries of potential future developments influence the formulation of new goals
for the system that can then be implemented step by step, changing the rules,
procedures, roles and norms accordingly.
This strategy is in line with Meadow’s approach to working on system inno-
vations. In a seminal article about Places to Intervene in a System, Meadows
proposed a hierarchical list of possible leverage points for system change. As
illustrated in Box 2.1, it is ordered by increasing effectiveness for transformative
change, coupled with the possibility of actually influencing it. The more embedded
the identified points are within the deeper or resilient structurations of a system, the
more difficult they will be to change. The resulting change however, will also be
more lasting.

Box 2.1: Places to intervene in a system ranked by increasing order of

effectiveness. Source Meadows (1999: 3).

12. Constants, parameters, numbers (such as subsidies, taxes, standards).

11. The sizes of buffers and other stabilizing stocks, relative to their flows.
10. The structure of material stocks and flows (such as transport networks,
population age structures).
9. The lengths of delays, relative to the rate of system change.
8. The strength of negative feedback loops, relative to the impacts they are
trying to correct against.
7. The gain around driving positive feedback loops.
6. The structure of information flows (who does and does not have access to
what kinds of information).
5. The rules of the system (such as incentives, punishments, constraints).
4. The power to add, change, evolve, or self-organize system structure.
3. The goals of the system.
2. The mind-set or paradigm out of which the system—its goals,
structure/rules, delays, parameters—arises.
1. The power to transcend paradigms.

This list of leverage expressed in their abstract systems-thinking language works

for society-wide change as much as for small systems like, for example, families or
communities. The examples in brackets refer to political systems and I am most
42 2 What Political Economy Adds to Transformation Research

Fig. 2.4 Layers of leverage in system innovations. Source Based on Meadows (1999), illustration
from UNEP (2012: 422)

interested in the top three points. The reasons are illustrated by the United Nations
Environment Program GEO-5 report for the UN Conference on Sustainable
Development in 2012 (Fig. 2.4).
Here we see that the outer layer (or low-ranking adjustments in Meadows’ list),
will change little in the overall dynamic of development: Putting different people in
charge of making political or managerial adjustments is not going to bring about a
system innovation as long as the levers they pull are the same as before. They can
only use them with the same information and the same rules as before and thus keep
on pursuing the same old goal. Thus, while the exchange of CEOs or political
leaders is often sold as a radical measure, it may not turn out to be radical in effect
unless the new leaders start repurposing the system by tackling the high leverage
points.
Unfortunately, most of the attention in sustainable development thinking has
focused on adjusting to system feedbacks or tackling the symptoms of environ-
mental degradation and of extreme poverty. Most of the resource efficiency agenda
remained within this remit, as did a poverty alleviation agenda that declares yet
more growth for the richest to be a precondition for redistribution measures. This is
understandable given that these changes are easily visible and can be measured in
quantitative numbers, both of which are important standards in project planning and
evaluation under the current short-term, cost–benefit paradigm. This is also not very
surprising in political and economic systems in which having more than others is
seen as an indicator of merit and superiority and where the avoidance of short-term
costs for voters and stakeholders is what counts most for election purposes or
investment decisions. It is also very understandable in situations in which the bare
necessities for life must be met and path-dependent solutions are the easiest, fastest
or economically cheapest remedy for disaster prevention.
2.2 Summary: Paradigm Shifts and Large System Change … 43

The problem is that staying on lower leverage point levels rarely translates into
transformational change of the overall system dynamics. One metaphor for this has
been “arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic” (Meadows 1999: 6). Only if
changing these lower parameters results in ramifications higher up the leverage
point list can they lead to successive, wider-reaching changes. If a government
increases the minimum wage by 10 %, for example, is this because people need
social security payments on top of what jobs pay and this risks ruining the state
budget? Or does it advance the goal of limiting the maximum differential in income
between different people working the same hours? Is it simply a measure to keep
the low paid out of poverty statistics, or is it a move to lower inequality as a
benchmark for sustainable societies? The first means no more than dealing with the
symptoms of a remuneration pattern in which people are unable to pay their rent,
even if they work full-time. The latter examples, however, stand for a qualitatively
new goal according to which barriers are removed.
Thus, changing the third highest leverage point in Meadows’ list—the system
goal—usually means that many of the lower leverage points will have to be acted
upon to adjust the system’s development paths accordingly. Yet, support for a
deeper paradigm shift (the top two of the leverage point list) is still not readily
visible in the SDG agenda. The prime benchmark for reducing inequalities, for
example, still excludes any limits to the gains of the already very rich, but instead
aims to produce a comparatively faster gain for those with less. Gross Domestic
Product should continue to grow everywhere, including in rich countries with
stagnant population levels.
Yet, the goal of sustainable development was defined as meeting the needs of the
people today and in the future, not as meeting rising per capita GDP. Repurposing a
system accordingly raises the questions of what human needs are, how they are best
understood and served, and not simply extrapolating the old unstated idea that more
economic gain means more need satisfaction. If this paradigm goes unaltered, the
imaginaries, narratives, models and proposals based on it simply do not capture the
idea that much damage is caused only because of the type and speed of growth to
which we aspire.
Meadows herself also makes reference to the growth example when she points
out that this phenomenon is typical. People sense where leverage points are but
often tend to push them into the wrong direction. Everyone sees that growth is
critical, but most people push for more of it instead of thinking about the damage
which would be spared if we had slower, selective, differently defined growth, or
even a steady-state economy (Meadows 1999: 8).
Polanyi included this future-forward effect of a hegemonic paradigm in his
analysis of the effects of the stark utopia of a capitalist market system:

The usual ‘long-run’ considerations of economic theory are inadmissible; they would
prejudge the issue by assuming that the event took place in a market economy. However
natural it may appear to us to make that assumption, it is unjustified: market economy is an
institutional structure which, as we all too easily forget, has been present at no time except
our own (Polanyi 1957: 37).
44 2 What Political Economy Adds to Transformation Research

A proper repurposing or system innovation process therefore begins with what

the WSSR 2013 called “futures literacy”: identifying and exposing “hidden,
unexamined and sometimes flawed assumptions about present and past systems”
(ISSC and UNESCO 2013: 8). Changing the way we see the world also changes the
way we are in the world—and how we imagine promising development paths and
their governance. In the words of Meadows: “Paradigms are the sources of systems.
From them form shared social agreements about the nature of reality, come system
goals and information flows, feedbacks, stocks, flows and everything else about
systems” (Meadows 1999: 16).
This is what I seek to capture with the concept materiality of ideas as illustrated
in Fig. 2.5. It describes how humans are both subject and object of making history,
how reality today shapes the imaginary of how reality could be in the future.
As a purposefully acting species, humans create relationships and physical
technologies as well as social institutions to engage with each other and with nature
in the creation of goods and services deemed necessary or desirable. Thus, pre-
vailing paradigms and their key ideas are embedded into very tangible structural
outcomes that in turn confront and embed individuals within processes and systems

Fig. 2.5 The materiality of old ideas in today’s systems. Source Own illustration
2.2 Summary: Paradigm Shifts and Large System Change … 45

that shape their mind-sets and limit their scope of action. Karl Marx summarized
this patterned freedom with the critical eye for which he is famous:
Men [sic] make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make
it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and
transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on
the brains of the living (ibid. 1852: 5).

No one is asked to share Marx’s interpretation of the past as an inevitable

nightmare. But everyone is invited to acknowledge the ideational background of
what we call reality today. Once we do this we see that of course reality cannot be
replaced by simply thinking differently. Humans live in structured freedom. Reality
does influence how humans imagine what is possible, right or just for the future.
But at the same time the way we think, believe and act today will shape future
reality. History becomes an open-ended process—the status quo determined not by
any human or social laws but created by sense-making and purposefully acting
humans.
Civilization did not cease to evolve after the first Enlightenment and modernity.
Sense-making, learning and purposeful acting continues. The quantification and
marketization of our world might be an incredibly strong trend now, but does not
mark ‘the end of history.’ Human freedom lies exactly in becoming literate in
deconstructing the emergence and perpetuation processes and patterns behind the
trend toward economic totalitarianism and in starting to change it. Ideas and beliefs
play an instrumental role in these reflection processes. They are the elements of
inspiration, rationalization and argumentation and hence function on the individual
as well as societal level.
The reflexive ontologies applied by most transformation researchers track the
co-evolutionary interplay between actors and the structures that surround them.
Some might explore behavior changes while others go deeper into analyzing
changes in peoples’ values and identity. The latter is what, for example, figuration
or process sociology—a term often associated with Norbert Elias (1897–1990)—
stands for. The German sociologist wrote about the connection between social
developments and human psychology. His book, The Civilizing Process (also
published under the title On the Process of Civilization), explores the relationship
over time between power, behavior, emotion and knowledge and became one of the
most influential sociology books of the twentieth century. In Elias’ theory, status
quo or circumstances are not portrayed as phenomena that occur and which humans
encounter. He sees them instead as manifestations of changing human relationships.
His term ‘sociogenesis’ thus describes the emergence of social practices, norms,
rules, procedures and institutions over time. Elias links it with the process of
‘psychogenesis’ to capture the molding effects that prevailing circumstances have
on individual learning and identity formation. The latter, explains Harald Welzer, a
contemporary German sociologist in Elias’ tradition, is the prerequisite of identity,
of being in control of one’s own fate. It carries values, habits and aspirations alike
(Welzer 2011: 15).
46 2 What Political Economy Adds to Transformation Research

This ontology finds application in other scientific disciplines as well. Political

economist Robin Hahnel, for example, also makes this point when arguing that the
mainstream economic paradigm is not objective or value-free but through its
dominance in decision-making bodies and public discourse shapes future rela-
tionships and people: “When we fulfill needs through particular activities we are
induced to mold our thoughts to justify or rationalize both the logic and merit of
those activities, thereby generating consciousness-personality-structures that can
have a permanence beyond that of the activities that formed them” (Hahnel 2002:
4–5).
Thus, ideas are both inherent in less conscious individual sense-making pro-
cesses but also frequently expressed in the efforts of creating relations with others.
This is what the definition of paradigms stands for in Meadows’ analytical
framework presented above: “The shared idea in the minds of society, the great big
unstated assumptions—unstated because unnecessary to state; everyone already
knows them—constitute that society’s paradigm, or deepest set of beliefs about
how the world works” (Meadows 1999: 17). Other researchers use the term
‘worldviews’ and define them as “inescapable, overarching systems of meaning and
meaning-making that to a substantial extent inform how humans interpret, enact,
and co-create reality” (Hedlund-de Witt 2012: 18).
Personally, I prefer the term ‘mind’ to ‘paradigm’ when speaking about social
rather than scientific contexts because it expresses the way that seeing and believing
differently goes beyond an update of information. It also means changes in atten-
tion, consciousness, instinct, imagination, judgment, power, sense, spirit, and
psyche. ‘Mind’ emphasizes not so much the facts or ideas in themselves but the
processes of knowing, believing and arguing in which they are embedded. This
encapsulates the many ways in which our manner of thinking influences human
existence.
Moving from the individual-psychological level to the sociopolitical research
designs for explaining transformation we find, as one example, Polanyi-inspired
political economist Nancy Fraser. She highlights how widely spread ideas, like the
mainstream economic paradigm, function as the “discursive face of politics,”
mediating structure and agency by providing “the social imaginaries through which
social conditions are experienced, interpreted and evaluated by social beings”
(Fraser 2013: 125). The analytical term ‘narratives’ captures something similar,
sometimes defined in a rather instrumental way: “Narratives reduce complexity,
creative collective perspectives, support reliability of expectations, build a basis for
current and future-oriented action plans, and are a foundation for the cooperation
between actors” (Messner 2015: 263). Here, the emphasis lies more on under-
standing how humans choose communities and get energized for collective action
and less on the effects that this may have on their future identities.
Both the individual-psychological and the sociopolitical are important to the
transformative leverage of a Great Mindshift: an understanding of the imaginaries,
identities and narratives that guide individual and collective actions provides
explanations for the perpetuation of the status quo, an understanding of which
alternative solutions might find support and who might bring them about.
2.2 Summary: Paradigm Shifts and Large System Change … 47

A deconstruction of the overarching ideational frameworks or paradigms behind the

institutions, technologies and economic instruments in place provides an under-
standing of which path dependencies will be particularly difficult to unlock and
which pioneers and change agents are more likely to help—or block—that process.
Connecting this reflexive ontology with the MLP (Fig. 2.1) and multi-phase
concept (Fig. 2.2) of transformation research leads me to conclude this chapter with
the concept of radical incremental transformation. The MLP situates mind-sets on
the landscape level. Following the discussion of the crucial role of ideas on the
individual as much as on the societal level, I would like to differentiate the three
layers a bit more by adding two: the mini-level of individuals that makes up any
institutional setup and the meta-level of mind-sets that cut across and mediate
between the structurations on the niche and regime level and individual actors
(Fig. 2.6).
The purple and blue arrows illustrate how ideas function as the glue that holds
societies together. The purple ones stand for the hegemonic paradigm and common
sense framework that serves as a reference for individual strategies and narratives. It
is embedded in regime structures as well as in niche projects. At the same time,
individual mind-sets (the light blue arrows) might carry alternative paradigms that
influence their pioneering strategies. In addition to trying to showcase new solu-
tions in line with the new paradigm, all individuals can also engage in general
paradigm-busting work that influences the perpetuation or challenging of the
dominant paradigm. In this way, prevailing ideas also influence the way societies

Fig. 2.6 Mind-sets in the multilevel perspective on transformations. Source Own illustration
48 2 What Political Economy Adds to Transformation Research

decide to deal with the landscape-developments that they observe but cannot
change through direct action in the short term. Their most important role, however,
lies in providing the new imaginary and binding narratives necessary to ignite
change initiatives and galvanize support for them.
Charlie Leadbeater, a UK-based system innovator connected with the innovation
foundation Nesta, presented a list of ingredients for successful sustainability
transformations that embeds this view nicely. He makes reference to the MLP when
considering five successive features of successful regime transformation.
The following is my summary:
1. Failures and frustrations with the current system multiply as negative conse-
quences become increasingly visible. This is inherent in the sustainability
discourse.
2. The landscape on which the regime operates shifts as new long-term trends
emerge or sudden events drastically impact the general availability or persua-
siveness of particular solutions. This could be peak oil signaling an approaching
end to fossil fuel availability.
3. Niche alternatives start to develop and gain momentum, coalitions start forming
and coalesce around the principles of a new approach. Local Agenda 21, for
example, was a program emerging from the UN Conference on Environment
and Development in 1992, in which many local initiatives for implementation
were linked into a network.
4. New technologies give impetus to alternative solutions, either in the form of
alternative products or communication and connection possibilities. Renewable
energy solutions especially, but also information technologies, form part of
many sustainability projects.
5. For far-reaching regime change rather than small adaptations and cooptation
into the old regime, dissent and therefore fissures inside the regime itself are
key. Possibly called ‘niches’ within the regime, by joining coalitions for change
they will help bring the system down (Leadbeater/Mulgan 2013: 31–32).
A core functional ingredient in this sequence is the ‘new approach’ mentioned in
point 3, the new principles. In Leadbeater’s example they are the principles agreed
in the 1992 Rio Declaration on Sustainable Development. They provide the radical
vision for a repurposed development system and inspire niche initiatives with the
goal of putting the declaration into practice. As some of the quotes in the intro-
duction showed, the Agenda 21 vision foresaw very radical institutional changes,
and many different groups started experimenting with new ways of bringing them to
life. The discussion of path dependencies in this chapter has provided some good
insights into why these processes were not easy and were subsequently sometimes
discontinued or explicitly opposed.
Writing in 2013, Leadbeater however declares that tipping points have been
reached in some aspects like the energy systems, especially on the local level. Not
many make explicit reference to Agenda 21 anymore, but new narratives like
Transition Towns or 100 % renewable communities, etc., have gained more
2.2 Summary: Paradigm Shifts and Large System Change … 49

momentum. Also, renewable technologies are at a completely different stage of

availability and pricing, climate change impacts have become tangibly noticeable
and increasing conflicts in areas with big fossil fuel reserves have added impetus to
the feeling that turning away from unsustainable forms of energy is a good idea.
So it takes time, a certain degree of irritation, a critical mass of alternatives and
their supporters to bring radical visions to life. The multi-phase concept captures
this process well. Unless the system dynamics show a certain degree of friction or
an existing willingness to change, experiments that propose to change too much in
too short periods of time will cause rejection or resistance.
This pattern matches Thomas Kuhn’s account of the development of scientific
advancements for which he coined the term ‘paradigm shift.’ His 1962 book, The
Structure of Scientific Revolutions, describes changes in patterns of thinking and
basic assumptions (epistemology and ontology) behind scientific analysis. To this
end, he demonstrated the parallel existence of different paradigms to be the normal
state of affairs. These determine which questions will be asked when assessing a
certain issue, how they will be asked, what will be required to answer them and how
the results will be interpreted. Kuhn showed that there is usually one paradigm that
comes to predominate and does not evolve steadily by adding insights but is rather
overturned in an intellectual battle whose phases resemble those of the multi-phase
pattern. Dominant ideas and research premises tend not to cede gradually and
smoothly but instead to be amended until critique simply becomes too strong to
justify more exceptions to the rules. After such tipping points, the situation is
fundamentally altered, even if no consistent or coherent alternative explanations
and solutions are yet in place to fill the emerging gap and search processes.
Unsurprisingly, the navigation or transition phase in shifting paradigms as well as
governance solutions is marked by chaos, politicization, unease and power-ridden
struggles. The Global Scenario Group called them ‘branch points’ and stressed the
role of science and intellectuals in providing narratives that can galvanize enough
support to become institutionalized. Thus, change agents are well advised to be
mindful that the diverse changes necessary to achieve a radically different scenario
will emerge from multiple sources, and might feel impossible for a long time, before a
window of opportunity opens and much change happens in a short period.
At the same time, one should not assume that radical changes will emerge from
less-than-radical intentionality. Reflecting on Meadow’s list of leverage points and
Kuhn’s account of paradigm shifts, we see that only by checking which key
assumptions inform which change initiatives can we get a better grip on the
transformational potential they carry.
From this perspective, paradigms or mind-sets play two important roles in
transformations that differ with the 4 phases (Fig. 2.2): in the pre-development and
acceleration phase the role of new paradigms and ideas lies in creating or increasing
irritations in the system by deploying the alternative meanings and knowledges
around which pioneers develop experiments. Here the role is to create frictions in
common sense and accepted justifications to create openness to change. It is about
delegitimizing the status quo explanations and solutions, about defining no-go
answers or views when discussing decisions on the way forward.
50 2 What Political Economy Adds to Transformation Research

When forging toward tipping points in the navigation phase, however, the
function of a paradigm also changes: it needs to reduce frictions and uncertainties
by enabling single pioneers and followers to see and understand their common will
and to highlight which regime changes align with the paradigm, thus helping the
pioneers scale or multiply to become the new normal.
The mainstream economic paradigm serves as a great example here. As long as it
remains a legitimate reference framework for development, conventional growth
solutions remain difficult to defeat. The science and models it informs, as the next
chapter will discuss, allow only for analyses and predictions that subjugate sus-
tainable outcomes under the old economic growth development path. Or they
justify a continuation of this path in the short term because they predict that
changing course in the future will be less costly and thus a fairer allocation of costs
and benefits. It is only since the big financial crisis in 2008 that the credibility of
this paradigm and its linear extrapolations from historic trends have been severely
challenged, even in the corridors of power. Yet, until now no new paradigm has
found enough support to fill its place.
Kuhn stated that a new paradigm can only establish itself if it overcomes
stubborn adherences to intellectual vested interests. Political economists point out
that one should also be aware of practical vested interests when assessing why a
theoretical framework or the worldview it informs persist. In periods prior to tip-
ping points, those individuals and groups benefiting most from a system’s devel-
opment path have mainstream scientific evidence, canonized knowledge and public
discourse readily available to rationalize and justify the logic and merit of their path
over others.
The next 10–15 years will be very decisive for the outcome of this navigation
phase: stabilization around a new, consolidating paradigm, relapse into the old
dynamics with technological fixes and financialization, or even collapse because
this model has exhausted its adaptive capacities. Human history-making is an
emergent process of co-creation and political struggle, compromise and domination.
Yet, only if the stabilization phase is oriented around a shifted paradigm will the
new development dynamic of the system be radically different—or transformed. Put
differently: transformation means changing the default. Ideas and solutions that
have to justify their appropriateness and argue their legitimacy today will become
the new normal.
This chapter gave an overview of what different strands of transformation sci-
ence offer in response to the question of how to strategically work toward the
transformative quality that the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda foresees.
This summary started fleshing out the way in which the different starting points of
STS, SES, and political economy research designs can be combined into very
insightful transformative science frameworks: concepts and heuristics for the
design and conduct of transformation processes. My own filter in selecting and
combining insights has been one that places human inspiration and will to act at the
origin of understanding and explaining SETS’s. By embedding humans into sys-
temic models like the MLP and multi-phase concept we can see that even when we
are talking about global transformations, the source of intentional change is human
2.2 Summary: Paradigm Shifts and Large System Change … 51

thinking, feeling, and acting. SETS’s are created, ordered and stabilized through
human decision-making and (often) conscious creation of regime structures.
Searching for more efficient technologies and more effective economic incen-
tives is not enough when looking for sustainability solutions. It is the institutional
setups and sociocultural frameworks that define the purpose for which technologies
and economic instruments are used. Here is where we find the root causes of trends.
Incentives and technologies mostly function as accelerating or balancing feedback,
but not in themselves as game changers. This is why the multi-phase concept as I
posit it here gives the sociocultural anchoring of alternative proposals and
pioneering solutions a crucial role in all phases of transformation.
In the amended MLP it is the purple and blue arrows that make the link. They
indicate how mind-sets mediate between agents and structures and how the dom-
inant paradigm functions as a reference framework for justifications and narratives
of change. The big arrow on the right hand side of the graph also shows, however,
that each individual is constantly involved in shaping the future paradigm. By
providing reason, opinions, arguments and experiences as well as non-verbal
reactions and behavior we can all participate in paradigm shifts and thus in
changing reality.
Polanyi demonstrated this link in his account of the Great Transformation. The
classical economic paradigm played a crucial role in making today’s default
solution the growth-fixated development path. This paradigm survived over two
centuries of criticism by amending itself into a neoclassical version. But today its
basic assumptions are challenged from so many angles and the institutional solu-
tions and processes based on it deliver so many crises that the time is ripe to shift
from diversified irritation to unifying consolidation: which insights on human needs
and natural resource reproduction in today’s scientific debates could become the
foundational ideas of a new development paradigm?

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Chapter 3
Why the Mainstream Economic Paradigm
Cannot Inform Sustainability
Transformations

The theory they developed is known as neoclassical economics. Today it still forms the
basis of orthodox theory, and makes up the core curriculum taught to future economists and
business leaders in universities and business schools around the world. As a set of ideas, it
might be the most powerful in modern history.
David Orrell, Economyths: Ten Ways Economics Gets it Wrong (2010: 13).
Wherever we look around the world, conventional economic thinking remains the principal
source of solutions. Somehow, it is suggested, we must find ways of harnessing those
forces that have got us into such trouble—self-interest and greed, harnessed to technology
—to get us out.
Chandran Nair, Consumptionomics: Asia’s Role in Reshaping Capitalism and Saving the
Planet (2011: 62).
Economic thought did not adjust to the changed conditions it helped to create; thereby it
continued to legitimate, and indeed directly to cause, massive and rapid ecological change.
The overarching priority of economic growth was easily the most important idea of the
twentieth century.
J.R. McNeill, Something New Under the Sun (2001: 336).

Long before I discovered Polanyi, my decision to study political economy was a

key turning point in my quest to find an answer to the question of why we,
collectively, do not create the sustainable world that we, as individuals, wish for.
While finishing a degree in media and communications, (surely, I thought, “we just
need to get the information out!”) I added sociology, psychology, political science
and global governance to my courses in order to understand the gap between
knowledge and practice that I had detected. It was, however, a seminar on
macroeconomics that made me feel I was coming closer to understanding why
sustainability remains merely an aspiration. This discipline seemed to be devoid of
all the insights that I had taken away from the humanities and social sciences.
I will never forget how I was taught the Heckscher-Ohlin theorem, for example.
It explains why countries with low wages specialize in labor-intensive production
and those with high wages develop production that requires more capital. Because
of the factor price advantage of, for example, fisheries (more capital needed) over

© The Author(s) 2016 53

M. Göpel, The Great Mindshift, The Anthropocene:
Politik—Economics—Society—Science 2, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-43766-8_3
54 3 Why the Mainstream Economic Paradigm Cannot Inform …

agriculture (more labor intensity possible), a country with easily accessed capital
would focus on fishing and scale down its agricultural sector, and a country with
cheap labor would prioritize farming over trawling. As a consequence they would
quickly benefit: convert the boats into farms and up shoot the exports. In the
calculations for the basic model, this conversion is assumed to be free of costs and
involve a workforce that instantly migrates to wherever work is available. When I
asked if its adherents really believed that people would not find it very costly to
uproot their entire way of life simply because of the current terms of trade, the
professor gave me a stunning response: “Oh dear, a warm heart speaking.”
Confused as to why a cold heart was a good thing, or at least a prerequisite for
believing in mainstream economic models, I used my PhD to study theory of
science and the history of economic thought as well as global political economy,
institutionalism theories and the role of law. I continued to be drawn into what I
described as the reflexive approaches that I put emphasis on with the concept of
materiality of ideas in Fig. 2.5.
In the summary of Chap. 2, I discussed the way that the term ‘ideas’ captures
more than simple flashes of thought, mere slogans or buzzwords. This chapter is
about zooming in on some ideas that have been instrumental in shaping the pro-
cesses and systems we live in today. According to Morten Bøås and Desmond
McNeill, who have researched the role of ideas in the forming of institutions, these
ideas have “some reputable intellectual basis,” but they “may nevertheless be found
vulnerable on analytical and empirical grounds.” What is special about such ideas,
they argue, is that they are “able to operate in both academia and policy domains”
(Bøås/McNeill 2004: 1).
In the following I will identify some key ideas that, if changed, could induce a
paradigm shift and thus trigger a very high leverage point in unlocking unsus-
tainable path dependencies. I think the Brundtland Commission was already at this
point when it urged for the “need to integrate economic and ecological consider-
ations in decision making” because this is how the workings of the real world
operate. The commission also pointed out that this will “require a change in atti-
tudes and objectives and in institutional arrangements at every level” (WCED 1987:
55). So this chapter seeks to improve futures literacy: people’s capacity to imagine
futures that are not based on hidden, unexamined, and sometimes flawed
assumptions about present and past systems. It hopes to serve the spirit of jointly
tackling the structures and path dependencies that keep us, collectively, from
bringing about the sustainable world that we, individually, wish for and have agreed
to guide our policies toward.
As stated earlier, my goal is not to provide a detailed historical assessment of
theoretical and methodological intricacies but to show how strong the influence of
some basic economic ideas born in the Enlightenment era remains in
decision-making and its rationalization or justifications today. This is why I zoom
in on a few key concepts that are customarily applied when deciding how to put the
goals of sustainable development into practice: delivering on the needs of current
generations while safeguarding the means of need satisfaction for future ones. The
1992 Rio Declaration included the agreement that such development should
3 Why the Mainstream Economic Paradigm Cannot Inform … 55

prioritize two key points. These were “the concept of ‘needs,’ in particular the
essential needs of the world’s poor,” to whom, it argued, “overriding priority should
be given” and “the idea of limitations imposed by the state of technology and social
organization on the environment’s ability to meet present and future needs”
(WCED 1987: 41).
To reach these goals the Brundtland Commission urged that: “Human laws must
be reformulated to keep human activities in harmony with the unchanging and
universal laws of nature” (WCED 1987: 271). We will see that mainstream eco-
nomic theory does not provide much understanding as to how to do this but rather
offers concepts that keep us blind to these key points. The urge to ‘integrate’
environmental, social and economic concerns led to the expansion of the economic
mind-set into the governance of ever more areas of life. This effect has been called
the ‘economization’ of societies and its ongoing trending reifies unsustainable path
dependencies instead of helping to unlock them. So it is at least as important to limit
the realm of issues to which economics are applied as it is to update the entire
discipline.
So to what questions do economists claim to provide answers? Perhaps the most
widely used and accepted definition was coined by Lionel Robbins, the famous
London School of Economics professor who wrote in 1932 that “Economics is the
science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce
means which have alternative uses” (Robbins 1932: 15). Such alternative uses are
also called ‘competing ends’ and Robbins argues that the only situations that fall
under economic consideration are those in which choices between ends (going to
the opera, sleeping or baking bread) need to be taken because the means (time or
resources) are limited. Hence, economic situations are those in which some wants
need to be relinquished. This means that economics can explain choice making, but
cannot shed light on either ends or means. In fact, it was the aim of Robbins’ essay
to limit the concerns addressed by economics.
This focus is reflected in the key ideas and concepts that it puts forward and that
I have summarized in Table 3.1.
All the ideas in the left column clearly fit into the overarching Enlightenment
movement that started in the seventeenth century. Its ambition to free humanity
from superstitious, theological, and natural limitations to progress generated a
rather mechanistic-additive view of systems and the world. Each of the economic

Table 3.1 Mainstream economic paradigm effects on searching for sustainable development

Source Own overview

56 3 Why the Mainstream Economic Paradigm Cannot Inform …

concepts in the second and third column of this table can best be understood by
remembering that they were born in an era when
• the emphasis lay on the human intellect and its capacity to dissect complex
processes and investigate them empirically;
• natural scientism and its law-like predictions of developments replaced religion
as the prime source of explanations of the world;
• discourse around natural limits to population size met an energy revolution that
fuelled the managerial-industrial drive to improve productivity; and
• the securing of private property and pursuit of self-interest became basic tenets
of citizens’ freedom and were declared important drivers of progress.
Modernity and neoclassical economic developments of the twentieth century
have continued to employ the same mechanistic-additive view and basic concepts,
pushing quantified modeling and its extrapolating predictions into yet more dom-
inance when computation made massive calculations possible. There is no emphasis
on a deep or diversified understanding of the ends that transactions should serve
(human need satisfaction) or the scarce means that are required (nature’s resources).
These are subsumed into the container terms ‘utility’ and ‘(natural) capital.’ This is
in line with Robbins’ definition and understandable when reflecting back on the
context in which these concepts were born. Saturation with goods and services was
reserved for a very small part of the population and poverty was widespread. It was
rational to equate more with better. Meanwhile, in a world of one billion people
with plenty of ‘undiscovered’ territories, there was simply no expectation that more
effective exploitation of nature would threaten its health and existence.
From a transformation point of view it is thus easily understood why the
Enlightenment movement claimed the term ‘liberalism’: its ideas inspired collective
action toward overcoming an old system that no longer delivered (as far as
Enlightenment protagonists were concerned). The premise was to overcome the
‘dark’ epoch of the Middle Ages. These ideas were key aspects of a paradigm shift
that first challenged the old order and its legitimizing narrative and later, as Polanyi
showed, served as the gelling consensus between philosophers, scientists, busi-
nessmen, politicians and even church representatives working on alternative
institution-building and rule-formulation. Polanyi also concluded that imagining all
of society as one big market system and treating humans, nature, and money as
fictitious commodities inevitably leads to sustainability problems.
So here we come to an interesting question: if Robbins says that the application
of economic concepts should be limited to situations of exchanges and choice
making but Polanyi argues that all aspects of the planet have been subsumed under
the imaginary and logic of a market system, where does the application of eco-
nomics end? Having analyzed current discourse and observed the marketization and
privatization trends of the last 30 years I would say that their application is almost
ubiquitous—and that is precisely the problem. It means that neither ends nor means
become the center of attention and investigation. Instead, it focuses only on the
choice-making of selfishly calculating and insatiable individuals. The 250-year-old
3 Why the Mainstream Economic Paradigm Cannot Inform … 57

innovation of reorganizing all of society around endless gain goals remains

unchallenged.
Yet, we now know that there are limits to individual gain, all the more so on a
planet with nine to ten billion inhabitants. We also know that the notion that having
more means feeling better or happier very much depends, in reality, on the cir-
cumstances. Surely, when we seek transformational changes toward sustainable
development we cannot use a theory that has not integrated these contextual
changes in its concepts? The pursuit of endless gain, as Polanyi points out, had
never before in history been “raised to the level of justification of action and
behavior in everyday life” (ibid 1957: 30). So it seems obvious both that it is time to
repurpose our societies again and that we cannot accept a theory that cannot
inductively inform but only deductively reinterpret civilizational changes to fit the
universal concepts it has thought up.
Any new Great Transformation needs a different guiding paradigm if its outcome
is to improve sustainability. A paradigm that puts needs (ends) and nature (means)
center stage instead of hiding them in container terms. One that embraces some
empiricism and qualitative reasoning once more. We need a Second Enlightenment
fit for what is now known to be a very complex and full world. Luckily, natural and
social sciences have moved on and freed themselves from the ideals of
positivist-deductive reasoning and quantitative measuring that accompanied
modernity. Only mainstream economics has fallen strangely behind in this
evolution.
This chapter deals with that evolution. It runs through the columns of the table
and first discusses the origins and applications of the concepts for understanding
and organizing human need satisfaction, and then the origins and applications of the
concepts for understanding and engaging with nature. The subchapters argue that
the concepts are insufficient for any transformational sustainable development
agenda and are in fact instrumental in perpetuating an unsustainable development
path. Then I will add brief overviews of what twenty-first century social sciences,
humanities, psychology, neurosciences, quantum physics and also alternative
sub-strands of economics say that fills the black boxes of human needs and nature’s
laws.

3.1 How Mainstream Economics Views Human Needs

and Their Satisfaction

How do we satisfy the needs of current generations while safeguarding resources

for future generations? First we must understand people, their needs and what
motivates them to do certain things. Mainstream economics does not make much
use of the term ‘needs’ but has instead adopted the concept of ‘utility.’
The term was invented by the philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), who
described human existence as being based on a hedonic calculus or continuous
58 3 Why the Mainstream Economic Paradigm Cannot Inform …

hedonic flow of pleasure or pain. The prime goal of existence was to maximize
happiness calculated as the sum of pleasure minus pain. Thus the utility of a certain
product or practice expresses a cost–benefit or pain–pleasure trade-off calculation
that people undertake when making choices. Since there is no such thing as one
‘util,’ the numerical formula became money: the purchase decisions of people
indicate what they want and the price indicates how highly it ranks on their list of
preferences. This willingness to pay expresses the utility and thus happiness they
gain from consumption of, for example, ice cream, and the loss of what they give
up for it, for example, money or their skills in lawn mowing.
This way of measuring utility through willingness to pay was also called
‘working with revealed preferences.’ It allowed for the building of mathematical,
thus scientific models. Combined with the assumption that humans are insatiable
when it comes to happiness or utility, this became the first ‘law’ of the human
condition. It also supports the basic premise of ubiquitous and eternal scarcity
(scarce means) that Robbins’s 1932 definition of economics carries: since our wants
are endless we are constantly worried about how to get more of them satisfied and
where we will find those resources. For Robbins, this means not only natural and
material resources but also services that are per se limited. His definition restricts
the path for need satisfaction—e.g., eating or leisure—entirely to market relations:
“Both the services of cooks and the services of opera dancers are limited in relation
to demand and can be put to alternative uses” (ibid.: 15).
In this paradigm, trading and bartering are the essence of all relationships.
Human existence means constantly improving one’s balance sheet. In order for this
model to work, it is assumed that actors undertake this improvement rationally,
although this paradigm has a very narrow definition of rationality: it is understood
as knowing all possible strategies available in a particular situation, knowing the
outcomes of each of those—including the behavior of others—and ranking all of
the possible outcomes according to the preferences as measured by utility (money).
So all relationships with other humans and nature are driven by the hedonic
calculus and thus best governed by markets. The societal vision of a market system
is born. The basic ‘law’ of this system is that of supply and demand. It suggests
that, given unlimited wants, every product and service will always find a customer
once the price is right. This law has resulted in the famous prediction that markets
will always tend toward equilibrium: if I cannot get satisfying prices any longer
(demand goes down or too many competitors are around), I will reduce production
(supply goes down).
On these two laws all models of mainstream economics have been built. The
impact of the Enlightenment movement has been studied by several scholars. David
Orrell, Canadian mathematician and author of Economyths. Ten Ways Economics
Gets it Wrong, muses: “Just as Newton believed that matter is made up of minute
particles that bump off one another but are otherwise unchanged, so mainstream
theory assumes that the economy is made up of unconnected individuals who
interact by exchanging goods and services and money but are otherwise unchan-
ged” (Orrell 2010: 13).
3.1 How Mainstream Economics Views Human Needs and Their Satisfaction 59

Eric Beinhocker, the director of the Institute for New Economic Thinking at
Oxford, tells the story of Walras, the mastermind of market equilibrium models.
Inspired by his father’s declaration that one of the great challenges remaining from
the nineteenth century was a scientific theory of economics, Walras spent 14 years
working toward a mathematical theory that built on Bentham’s utility and the
related law of supply and demand to make economic systems predictable. After
presenting his market equilibrium equations, Walras concluded that his “pure
theory of economics is a science which resembles the physio-mathematical sciences
in every respect” (Beinhocker 2007: 36, citing Walras).
Beinhocker explains that models built on these laws do not capture what science
knows about behavior, decision-making and complex system dynamics today. Yet,
they are still used to predict future developments and to derive policy
recommendations:
Through the 1990s, economic researchers typically started with a set of principles: for
example, utility-maximizing by consumers and profit-maximizing for firms, far-sighted
individual rationality, and a belief in equilibrium, which meant that structurally, individ-
ual’s decisions in the models fit reasonably well together.…By the late twentieth century,
these principles formed the core of economists’ vision of reality, in the sense that all
economic models were built on these principles, or around variations of these principles
like assumptions of bounded rationality or imperfect information (Beinhocker 2007: 460,
citing Collander 1999).

According to all of these models, more production is always better and the price
paid indicates the utility gained from consuming that production. The policy con-
clusions are easy: meeting the needs of current and future generations means
ramping up productivity as much as we can. This has been the prime goal of policy
and business conduct. Yet, upping the productivity of the fictitious commodity
labor means changing the work life of humans. And often also ending the work life
of humans. What happens to human needs in this process is, as we will see, not part
of the models.

3.1.1 What Is Utility and Where Is It Created?

This section continues the search for an understanding of how human needs can be
satisfied and unpacks the concept of utility and its consumption-based definition.
Digging beneath the market-price indicator for utility (willingness to pay) we see
something that psychologists have called the ‘process benefits’ or ‘experienced
utility’ of the individuals involved in producing what can later be bought. It may
well decline if the amount of what is done in one hour by one person is constantly
ramped up. Or, in accounting terms, the amount paid for the same output falls. This
is what productivity stands for in its conventional definition.
The goal of contemporary psychologists and the economic Nobel Prize-winner
Daniel Kahneman has been to shed some empirical light on the pleasure and pain
that people experience during their everyday activities. His surveys seek to capture
60 3 Why the Mainstream Economic Paradigm Cannot Inform …

the happiness of an individual over a period of time, e.g., while working.

Experienced utility is defined “as the sum of the momentary utilities over that time
period; that is, the temporal integral of momentary utility” (Kahneman/Krueger
2006: 5).
So, instead of measuring my utility and happiness solely through my shopping
expenditures, these surveys seek to capture how much pleasure or pain I experience
in every situation throughout the day. This sheds a very different light on notions of
how we can support human need satisfaction but also requires a change to some of
the basic models with which production processes are captured and analyzed.
This is the domain where ecological economics has anchored some of its most
important alternative perspectives. Some of its leading thinkers, like Robert
Costanza, Joshua Farley, Hermann Daly or Paul Ekins have juxtaposed wealth
production functions in mainstream economics with those that capture people and
planet and make them part of the economy. The following are my own synopses of
slightly diverse versions in several publications (Ekins 1992: 147–155; Costanza
et al. 1997: 273–275; Ekins 2000: 52–54). Figure 3.1 shows the production func-
tion of an economy as portrayed by mainstream economists.
We see that utility sits at the very end of the production process where con-
sumption has resulted in profit for the producer and the pleasure of the buyer who has
consumed the goods. Thus, an increase in consumption is identical to an increase in
utility or need satisfaction. This model lacks information on both input and output—
the (scarce) means of production and the potentials for utility creation (the ends).
This results in two limits to attention and creativity in thinking about economic
development, which are highlighted by ecological economists who add some boxes
and arrows to the graph (Fig. 3.2). In particular, they amend two categories: the

Fig. 3.1 Mainstream economics model of wealth and utility production. Source Based on Ekins
(1992, 2000) and Costanza et al. (1997)
3.1 How Mainstream Economics Views Human Needs and Their Satisfaction 61

Fig. 3.2 A differentiated model of wealth and utility production. Source Own illustration based
on Ekins (1992, 2000) and Costanza et al. (1997)

factors of production and the stages at which utility or disutility can be created
during the process. The former introduced the now widely adopted four-fold concept
of capital that will become relevant below when discussing how economists antic-
ipate the future, whereas the latter is what I am interested in here: aspects of human
existence that escape the category of product or service consumption.
• Land is now portrayed as environmental capital and its understanding is
expanded by adding ecological services. These have a utility or well-being effect
outside of economic processes through, for example, beauty and recreation in
lush forests or meadows. The three economic roles are the provision of
resources like minerals, grains, wood or stone; of direct ecosystem services like
climatic regulation or fresh water; and supplying a sink to absorb waste, like
composting organic waste into humus.
• So waste is included as an explicit category that economic processes and con-
sumption create. It will affect utility (pleasure) directly if it stinks or pollutes the
air, and it impacts the regenerative circuits in ecological systems services.
• The concept of labor has been transformed into human capital that includes not
only the execution of production tasks but also the psychological, emotional and
social skills around them such as motivation, knowledge, creativity and health.
Also new is social capital, which embodies the relationships, norms, and pro-
cedures or institutions with which production is organized. Both are positively
influenced not only by investments but also by the general level of utility and
well-being on the side of the people involved—e.g., positive spirals of moti-
vation, mutual support, a sense of accomplishment. This effect flows in both
62 3 Why the Mainstream Economic Paradigm Cannot Inform …

directions, as good social and human capital tends to lead to higher degrees of
reported well-being and experienced utility.
• So utility is seen to have many sources, flowing from the entire production
process as well as the quality of the consumption process of the product or
service I paid for. Do I sit down on a bench in the sun or do I slurp my ice cream
behind the steering wheel, rushing home to feed the kids? This process quality
of utility is highlighted by the introduction of four modes of engagement which
we will discuss in more detail below: The mode of being, e.g., the enjoyment of
a high quality environment or the discomfort due to a high level of waste or
pollution in the air. Also: does my job context make me feel challenged and
supported in a meaningful way to develop my skills? The mode of having
results primarily from consumption but also directly from the natural assets to
one’s availability. In the mode of doing it is important how the work process is
set up and if I, for example, feel safe and in control, whereas the mode of
relating or interacting captures all the social organizational structures, e.g., do
we have enough breaks and can we talk to each other, or is the work process
interactive (see Ekins 1992: 147–155).
• The last difference lies in the way in which cultural norms and policies impact
consumption and investment preferences. Here, choices have the potential to
evolve rather than be fixed. This quality of change goes beyond the changes in
preference ordering that mainstream economics includes to, for example, cap-
ture me being fed up with cars and now liking bicycles: it might mean instead
that individual choices and cultural norms shift toward not wanting to consume
more because people feel they have enough (Costanza et al. 1997: 273–275).
This comparison makes three points that are very important for the sustainability
agenda. First, how the mainstream economic view ignores any direct utility gains
from intact nature as well as the often damaging effects that waste, as a result of
production and consumption, has on the future quality of ecosystems. At some
point we might get to mimicking nature’s symbiotic relations, in which the waste of
one process serves as the input factor of the next. Yet, such cradle-to-cradle designs
remain the talk of the future, and in order to transform our production and con-
sumption systems accordingly the models must provide the information we need.
Secondly, it highlights the fact that the mainstream cost-based input–output
models of production say nothing about the pleasure–pain impact of participating in
such guided production processes. Here we find the connection with the concept of
experienced utility and the limitation of accounting for utility or happiness only in
the role of consumers: most of us are also workers and spend much more time in
this role than in the one of shoppers.
Thirdly, and relatedly, it shows the massive blind spots that a
consumption-based model of utility generation brings to thinking about solutions
for less resource-intensive need-satisfaction strategies. It says that we only thrive
when we shop or eat or watch television, while working is an unfortunate necessity
to generate the money we need for that. We have to trade the production factor
labor for income so we can buy more happiness.
3.1 How Mainstream Economics Views Human Needs and Their Satisfaction 63

Given that most people spend many more hours of most days working than
consuming, this blind spot is huge. It also raises several questions that the differ-
entiated model in Fig. 3.2 picks up on: Do humans not enjoy engaging in pro-
ductive activities? Do we not all participate in providing and receiving services like
cooking or dancing without pay? So why not emphasize need satisfaction during
productive processes instead of sacrificing them to serve sacrosanct productivity
goals? What have we gained if there are ever more goods and services to choose
from but we have no time to really enjoy them anymore? Yes, willingness to pay for
compensatory measures and convenient ‘to-go’ solutions might even increase, but
does this really indicate overall better need satisfaction?

3.1.2 Is ‘Having’ Really All the Fun There Is?

Manfred Max-Neef developed a helpful tool to understand human needs that

increases the creative imaginary space for sustainable innovations that target
experienced utility and well-being. This popular Chilean development economist
has called himself the “barefoot economist” after spending 12 years with the
poorest communities in Latin America. His moment of revelation came when
understanding that none of the mainstream market-based economic concepts were
of any relevance to them. Much of his work has thus been built on proper empirical
experience in non-marketized societies. It therefore provides some fascinating
reflexive systemic insight into the effect that living with certain institutional setups
has on the way actors see and experience the world.
In an interview with Democracy Now! Max-Neef explained that his return to
immersing himself in experience rather than deducing theoretical models made him
conclude that we need an entirely new language in order to understand better what
people really need. According to him, mainstream economics has nothing to say in
support of the poorest people in the world if strategies are supposed to emerge from
local systems rather than disrupting them. If you live in poverty, behaving like the
selfish, insatiable atomic accumulator of mainstream theory won’t get you very far,
says Max-Neef: “You cannot be an idiot if you want to survive; you need networks
of cooperation and mutual aid.” In those communities, he observed, competition
and the promise of monetary gain are not required for people to demonstrate
enormous creativity, innovation and willingness to collaborate (Max-Neef 2010).
To illustrate which fundamental human needs he observed instead, Max-Neef
has developed a matrix whose key messages I summarized in Table 3.2. The matrix
limits the number of existential human needs to approximately nine. He does not
argue that the list of nine existential needs is definitive or set in stone, but he says he
is confident that a change in those basic needs would at best occur at a very slow
pace. Also, these needs should be understood as interrelated and without hierar-
chies, except for the need of subsistence or survival, which comes first (Max-Neef
1992: 204–205). Here Max-Neef differs from other need-satisfaction approaches,
many of which place self-actualization at the top and social, as well as material
64 3 Why the Mainstream Economic Paradigm Cannot Inform …

Table 3.2 Max-Neef’s matrix of fundamental human needs

Human needs Being Having Doing Interacting
Subsistence Physical health, Food, shelter, Feed, Living
mental health, work procreate, rest, environment,
equilibrium work social setting
Protection Care, adaptability, Insurance systems, Co-operate, Living space,
autonomy, savings, health prevent, plan, social
solidarity systems, rights, cure, help environment,
family dwelling
Affection Self-esteem, Friendships, Make love, Privacy,
tolerance, family, express intimacy, home,
generosity, partnerships, emotions, spaces of
passion, relationships with share, take togetherness
sensuality, sense nature care of,
of humour cultivate,
appreciate
Understanding Critical Literature, Investigate, Settings of
conscience, teachers, method, study, formative
receptiveness, educational experiment, interaction,
curiosity, policies, educate, schools,
astonishment, communication analyse, universities,
discipline, policies meditate communities,
rationality family
Participation Receptiveness, Rights, Become Settings of
willingness, responsibilities, affiliated, participative
determination, duties, privileges, co-operate, interaction,
dedication, work propose, share, parties,
respect, sense of obey, interact communities,
humour neighbourhoods
Leisure Curiosity, Games, Dream, brood, Privacy,
imagination, spectacles, clubs, remember, intimacy, free
recklessness, parties, peace of relax, have time,
tranquility, mind fun, play surroundings,
sensuality landscapes
Creation Passion, Abilities, skills, Work, invent, Productive and
determination, method, work build, design, feedback
intuition, compose, settings,
imagination, interpret audiences, space
rationality, and time for
inventiveness expression
Identity Sense of Symbols, habits, Commit Social rhythms,
belonging, customs, values, oneself, everyday
consistency, norms, language, integrate settings, settings
differentiation, religions, oneself, get to which one
self-esteem, reference groups, know oneself, belongs to,
assertiveness sexuality, actualize maturation stages
historical memory, oneself
work
(continued)
3.1 How Mainstream Economics Views Human Needs and Their Satisfaction 65

Table 3.2 (continued)

Human needs Being Having Doing Interacting
Freedom Assertiveness, Equal rights Dissent, Temporal/spatial
open-mindedness, choose, be plasticity
boldness, different from,
rebelliousness, run risks,
tolerance commit
Source Excerpt from Max-Neef (1992: 206–207)

needs, at the bottom. The assumption is that physical and social needs require
fulfillment before more transcendent ones can be realized. Max-Neef rejects such a
hierarchical ordering and says that even if people go hungry every day, their lives
can still host relationships of dignity, creative moments of productivity and the
feeling of connection with others (Max-Neef 1992: 204–205).
The column of being lists personal or collective attributes; having registers
institutions, norms, mechanisms, laws or tools in the material sense; doing relates to
personal or collective actions; and the final column of interacting lists locations and
milieus as defined in time and space. Max-Neef explains that this last existential
category is much better captured in the German term ‘befinden’ or the Spanish
‘estar,’ as they combine a space with a state of being (ibid. 1992: 207).
What the matrix highlights is that having is only one way of satisfying existential
needs and that products like food or shelter are not a need as such, but instead a
satisfier of the need of subsistence. All products are thus viewed in relation to the
satisfying strategy they fulfill. The desirability of economic goods like, in his
example, books, laboratory instruments, tools, or computers, only comes from the
role they play in strategies of satisfying needs. They are vehicles in actualizing the
need for understanding through the satisfying strategies of investigating, studying,
experimenting, educating, etc., that he grouped in the column doing. Here, products
become the deduced variable and culture, context and resources determine which
are most suitable—or sustainable. It also means that widespread individual book
ownership or the simple presence of many books with high prices does not equate
to better need satisfaction—an equation that mainstream economics would make.
On the contrary, the process of understanding is often less painful or much more
pleasurable if you have a peer group with which to discuss things or a parent
reading out loud to you.
So according to Max-Neef, “a satisfier is in an ultimate sense the way in which a
need is expressed,” while “goods are in a strict sense the means by which indi-
viduals will empower the satisfiers to meet their needs” (Max-Neef 1992: 202).
Also, one satisfier can actualize different needs at different times and several needs
at the same time, depending on how the process of creating goods or consuming
them is organized. Mainstream economics lacks such differentiations. Here, com-
modities bring utility through their consumption, as the willingness to pay for them
indicates. The amount of utility generated can be measured and compared to other
sources through the indicator of price. So the utility of books, for example, pops up
only in moments when they are sold (again).
66 3 Why the Mainstream Economic Paradigm Cannot Inform …

In the matrix, even the mode of having includes many elements that are very
difficult to quantify and monetize, like human rights, insurance systems, and edu-
cational policies. Mainstream economics tries to use willingness-to-pay surveys to
judge their importance to people. People might be asked how much in monetary
terms a public health insurance system should cost per capita. But a simple twist in
the question will change the answer: asking whether they have to pay to keep
something renders different results from asking how much they would want to be
paid as compensation for it being taken away. So just checking the price will not get
you far in understanding the complete picture of how and why certain choices are
being made or which needs exactly are satisfied through it.
This is also one of the conclusions of Well-Being for Public Policy by
world-leading well-being psychologists Ed Diener and John Helliwell. It compiles
the research of many psychological studies on the relationship between willingness
to pay, income and the well-being that people report in surveys to conclude that “the
economic decisions that people make, and the money that they have, may not be
perfect indicators of the well-being that they experience” (Diener et al. 2009: 40).
The most important message of Max-Neef’s matrix in terms of a Great
Mindshift, however, lies even beyond exposing blind spots of monetization and
price indicators. It declares the set of human needs to be limited and the range of
possible satisfiers to be abundant once the economistic consumption lens is
removed. This is in direct contrast to the standard economic assumption of
unlimited human needs and scarce resources, and it opens up a plethora of possible
solutions for good lives which do not have to cost the Earth. The satisfiers listed in
Table 3.2 provide only a few examples. Consequently, the goal of development can
become a holistic and endlessly creative endeavor of keeping environmental and
human relations responsive to an unfolding of satisfying potentials, so that material
goods serve satisfier strategies in alignment with contextually specific
circumstances.
The mainstream model, on the other hand, makes material goods the ends in and
of themselves and assumes that all need-satisfying springs from them. This means
that successful development can only be imagined as linear in one direction: more
gain. Slowing down and reducing production cannot be a strategy because then
well-being will drop. According to Max-Neef, adopting this worldview means that
“the speed of production and the diversification of objects have become ends in
themselves and as such are no longer able to satisfy any need whatsoever. People
have grown more dependent on this system of production but, at the same time,
more alienated from it” (Max-Neef 1992: 204).
Max-Neef therefore criticizes prevailing development policies, which are pri-
marily aimed at increasing consumption possibilities by market integration. They
stimulate the accumulation of goods regardless of human development status in
those systems. This results in an increasing dependence on externally generated
satisfiers, whose control lies beyond the influence of poor communities.
One example of this has been the structural adjustment programs of the
International Monetary Fund in the 1980s, in which many poor countries had to
embark on export-driven development strategies. This means the focus lay on the
3.1 How Mainstream Economics Views Human Needs and Their Satisfaction 67

comparative advantage of a few goods whose production was ramped up for

international competition. It sometimes meant that entire economies became
dependent on the world market price of one or two products. This had some
cataclysmic effects. The fates of Ethiopia, Burundi, and Uganda when the world
price of coffee fell in 2001 are prime examples (Francis/Francis 2011). It also meant
that the diversity of what was harvested at home was reduced significantly, leading
to a simultaneous dependence on world market prices for imports. This type of
double dependency becomes especially problematic when world prices are affected
not simply by actual supply and demand changes but, as price hikes of up to 200 %
for some grains showed in 2006–2008, food is also susceptible to financial
speculation.
In addition, as the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)
points out in its 2013 Trade and Development Report, producing for the world
market means that every cent in wages is a cost to be avoided. Production for
domestic markets, on the other hand, means that higher wages mean more pur-
chasing power on the demand side. From a macroeconomic perspective this benefits
everyone because price elasticity goes up. UNCTAD points out that statistics from
almost all export-driven countries demonstrate how real wages in the export sectors
have not increased with productivity gains over the last two decades. Coupling this
with slow growth and demand on a global scale leads the authors of the report to
conclude that “export-driven development is no longer viable” and that “economies
will perform better with more balanced strategies” aimed at “balanced growth” and
“a greater role of domestic demand” (UNCTAD 2013).
Long before these empirical numbers were gathered, Max-Neef had been
arguing that human need-satisfaction strategies should emerge from each individual
context, respectful of social practices, forms of organization, political models and
values as well as the natural systems in which they are embedded. This may lead to
less rapid increases in economic output as measured in GDP, but ensures a more
balanced and therefore resilient change process controlled by the people it affects.
Once the need for subsistence is no longer threatened, it may well deliver more
happiness than running after GDP per capita jumps.

3.1.3 Checking Human Happiness and the Link

with Income

The scholars cited at the beginning of this chapter second Polanyi in his assessment
that making endless gain or growth the polestar of societal aspiration might have
been the most transformational idea of the Enlightenment movement. It overarches
the third prime idea in mainstream economics: the pursuit of greater happiness or
utility (need satisfaction) is best done through more consumption. While the sub-
chapters above have shown the limiting blind spots of these reductionist models of
68 3 Why the Mainstream Economic Paradigm Cannot Inform …

where and how utility can be generated, this one is going to scrutinize the idea that
more is always better.
In mainstream economics more income always means better lives, as expressed,
for example, in the important indicator of GDP per capita in poverty and welfare
statistics. Yet, the fallacy of conflating income levels with need satisfaction and
well-being can be exposed by crunching the numbers. Researchers have discovered
that the level of reported well-being and happiness (which, in economics jargon, is
called ‘perceived utility status’), stops being causally linked to GDP growth once a
certain level of income per capita is reached. This observation is called the Easterlin
Paradox after Richard Easterlin, the American economist who pioneered research in
this field in the 1970s.
The most striking example of decoupling rising GDP and per capita income from
perceived quality of life was revealed in the results of a Gallup poll in China. Some
15,000 people were interviewed between 1994 and 2005 and the researchers found
that average life satisfaction had gone down despite a rise in real incomes of 250 %
(Kahneman/Krueger 2006: 16).
There has been heated debate over this issue and the quality of data in some of
the measurements over time (time series). However, the first World Happiness
Report (2013) issued by some of the world’s leading happiness and well-being
researchers—John Helliwell, Richard Layard and Jeffrey Sachs—collates a lot of
data from diverse sources and shows that the Easterlin Paradox is not so paradoxical
after all. Once the standard economic assumption that more income naturally means
more happiness is turned into an empirical research question, one comes to find this
leveling off rather logical. The following presents some research results that support
this mindshift.
It was qualitative empirical meta-research conducted on subjective well-being
research that delivered most of the answers that solved the paradox. These affective
theories of well-being have experienced a renaissance since the 1960s. Before that,
modern post-Enlightenment science and the rise of behaviorism approaches in psy-
chology in the 1930s had excluded many of these approaches and insights from
consideration as ‘valid evidence.’ Instead, behaviorism fits well with the goals of
economics as defined by Robbins, explaining choice-making without understanding
people’s deeper motivations in detail. This period also marked an important turning
point when income began to be seen as an important indicator of well-being. The birth
of GDP in the 1940s complemented the turning with a macroeconomic indicator.
The scientific study of subjective human well-being only gradually re-emerged
in the 1960s and it took what was called an ‘affective revolution’ in the 1980s to
reinstall it firmly on the horizon of the social sciences—while economics remained
slow on the uptake (Diener et al. 2009: 15–16).
This revolution was about asking people how they felt. The ‘objective’ condi-
tions such as income, unemployment, and sanitary provision may be captured in
order to understand context but are not elevated to the status of indicators for utility
levels. In an overview article, Daniel Kahneman and his colleague Alan Krueger
argue, “that it is fruitful to distinguish among different conceptions of utility rather
than presume to measure a single, unifying concept that motivates all human
3.1 How Mainstream Economics Views Human Needs and Their Satisfaction 69

choices and registers all relevant feelings and experiences” (Kahneman/Krueger

2006: 4). Their empirical findings support the amended production model (Fig. 3.2)
and the Max-Neef matrix (Table 3.2) in many ways. Most important for subjective
well-being are the quality of social relationships, the relative notion of income or
wealth and how sociocultural environments impact on people’s aspirations and
values.
So while these researchers also seek to understand how to maximize happiness
or utility, they make the effort of actually asking people what makes them feel good.
They investigate its sources empirically rather than simply saying that it will come
and grow with consumption. Also, Diener and Helliwell point out that many things,
like love, social relationships, environmental pollution, fair and effective gover-
nance and virtue and spirituality all play important roles in people’s experienced
well-being, but are difficult if not impossible to measure through willingness-to-pay
estimates (Diener et al. 2009: 37). They also observe that quite often, individual
predictions of what will make for happiness go wrong.
So while most metrics and success benchmarks for progress and development
involve constantly upping per capita income, when asked, people tend to claim that
health, recognition and a meaningful engagement lie at the center of what makes
their lives satisfying. Chronic pain and unemployment are amongst the worst things
that can happen, in particular in societies where those not finding a job are viewed
as lazy benefit-seekers or live with no social support and much reduced social
contact.
The influence of social norms on what we believe—or at least say we believe—
creates well-being has also been well documented. When comparing ratings on
work and childcare in surveys in which the respondents talked to a real person with
those where they anonymously press buttons on an app, the former type of survey
reveals higher rankings for childcare. According to Kahneman and Krueger they are
“likely to be reminded that both work and childcare are desirable aspects of their
life. Reports of how much they enjoy these activities will tend to be anchored in that
general assessment, resulting in a favorable bias. Respondents may also feel some
social pressure to tell interviewers that these domains of life are enjoyable”
(Kahneman/Krueger 2006: 13).
App technology, however, has now made it easy for people to report their
feelings during the day, while engaged in different activities. Grouped into three
positive categories (happy, warm, enjoying myself) and six negative ones (frus-
trated, depressed, hassled, angry, worried or criticized) individuals can select their
current state from zero (not at all) to six (very much). In this way answers are much
more immediate, and do not allow for time to reflect on the wider social context.
The results, say Kahneman and Krueger, indicate that net affect, also called
“mood score,” from these ratings “is highest, on average, when individuals are
engaged in leisure activities (such as socializing after work) and lowest when they
are engaged in market work and investment or personal maintenance activities
(such as house cleaning)” (Kahneman/Krueger 2006: 12). The morning commute is
viewed as particularly negative—unless it is undertaken in the company of others,
which again hints at the importance of social contact.
70 3 Why the Mainstream Economic Paradigm Cannot Inform …

What do these findings tell us about human needs, decision-making motivations

and the importance of a constantly growing number of possessions? They indicate
that Easterlin had not so much discovered a paradox as a natural development
process. This is indeed what Martin E.P. Seligman, another renowned positive
psychologist, seems to conclude in an overview article on well-being studies:
economic indicators are extremely useful in analyzing societies in their early stages
when the fulfillment of basic material needs is important but “as societies grow
wealthy, however, differences in well-being are less frequently due to income, and
are more frequently due to factors such as social relationships and enjoyment at
work” (Diener/Seligman 2004: 1).
None of this provides much support for any law-like equation of more economic
output with more happiness for everyone. If societies are built around this equation,
it results in pathways of development and civilizations that psychologists have
diagnosed as resembling a ‘hedonic treadmill.’
In the 1970s researchers started investigating the relatively small and short-lived
effects caused by changes in people’s circumstances. They observed people who
had suffered lasting setbacks to their health or had been afflicted with disabilities.
The results showed that within two years most had returned to the average life
satisfaction they had reported before their misfortune. Only those with severe
disabilities did not fully recover.
The same leveling out holds true in the case of important positive events like
marriage. Reported well-being typically increases one year before and after the
actual event before returning to the mean. Purely economic gains like a salary
increase or buying and enjoying a new car show the same adaptation effects but the
return to the norm is much faster (Kahneman/Krueger 2006: 14).
In the 1990s, Michael Eysenck, a British psychologist, formulated the hedonic
treadmill analogy as a generalization of these findings: the more you have, the more
your expectations rise and the more things you want. So it is not so much the
absolute number of possessions that matters but the relative amount of what we
have and against which we judge changes (Eysenck 1990). So even with a high
income, instead of being happy with what you have, you think that having more
will make you happier. This is especially true when your society promotes ever
more possibilities of consumption and richer lifestyles. One great example of this is
the income levels deemed necessary for having a good life in the United States. The
median estimate of Americans as to how much income they felt they needed to
“fulfill all of [their] dreams” was approximately $50,000 in 1987 and rose to
$90,000 by 1996—in constant dollars (Bok 2010: 13).
Other impressive survey results with the same message were cited by Stephen
Marglin, a Harvard economist in The Dismal Science: How Thinking Like an
Economist Undermines Community (2010). He refers to a 2005 PNC Bank survey
of wealthy individuals.
When asked how much they needed to feel financially secure in the future, respondents
consistently cited a need to approximately double their current level of assets. Those with
$10 million or more felt they needed a median of $18.1 million; those with $5 million or
3.1 How Mainstream Economics Views Human Needs and Their Satisfaction 71

more needed $10.4 million, and those with a half million to $1 million said they needed
$2.4 million (Marglin 2010: 200, citing PNC Advisors 2005).

So first and foremost, people’s ideas about what they need increase in line with
what they have. Here, financial security represents people’s perception of being
able to continue living the life they know. So, just taking numbers into consider-
ation does not tell you much about what people need in order to feel that their lives
are rich. Only if we contextualize survey data in the socioeconomic environment
can we start understanding the specific connections between income and
well-being. If, for example, former citizen entitlements like public health care,
education, pension schemes, etc., are increasingly turned into commodities sold in
the market, your access guarantee starts depending on your private wealth. Thus,
the more monetized and privatized a society’s relationships, the more central
income will be to people’s sense of security and the quality of goods and services
that they can afford. It does not necessarily mean that they also feel happy,
however.
The role of reliable income in feeling secure is confirmed in many studies in
richer societies that find secure income ranks higher than a growing absolute
amount. They also support the need to contextualize: connecting income level with
other losses, like a blow to health, for example, has shown that people with higher
incomes suffer a less dramatic drop in life satisfaction (Kahneman/Krueger 2006:
14). And in all societies the wealthier strata are on average happier than the poor.
As long as societies hold money to be the single most powerful access mech-
anism to experienced utility or need-satisfaction strategies, income will be very
important; but only as long as I can buy much more treatment and services to
alleviate my disabilities than I could get without private pay. Max-Neef has taught
us to understand the relationship between physical goods and artifacts like money
and the role they play in allowing for a need-satisfaction process to emerge.
Without such processes they are rather useless things.
So the use of qualitative findings to capture the relationships within a given
system in a holistic way gives rise to much better insights into the property and role
that individual elements play within it. Reflexive sciences would insist that the
characteristics of individual elements cannot be fully captured without checking for
the relationships in which they are embedded. In his 2010 meta-study on happiness
research and its relevance for policy, Derek Bok, former Harvard University
president, offers a rather anecdotal account of the relational benefits that being rich
brings to people: “Their jobs tend to be more interesting, they have more control
over how they spend their time, and they are more likely to give orders than to
receive them. The mere fact that they have succeeded in what they set out to
achieve should make them more satisfied with their lives” (Bok 2010: 15). Here we
find a lot of pointers for satisfiers in the category of doing, being and relating, that
could be served with qualitative rather than quantitative changes in economic
processes like work. Max-Neef’s barefoot economist findings in poor communities
are seconded by data from rich societies: the range of possible satisfiers is far wider
than what markets offer.
72 3 Why the Mainstream Economic Paradigm Cannot Inform …

Researchers concluded that it is attention that plays a crucial role for the quality
and intensity of an experience and that individual attention is high when something
is new. With time, however, the fraction of attention concentrated on the new thing
goes down and so does its influence on one’s general state of well-being. Working
with attention lies at the heart of mindfulness practices and therapeutic strategies
deployed to cure the increasing number of people that burn out in hedonic treadmill
civilizations.
Constantly keeping attention on what ubiquitous advertising is suggesting one
lacks in one’s life and what others have that is better is not a good recipe for
happiness. Neurosciences show that mental activity creates neuronal structures and,
depending on which skills people use most or what they pay attention to regularly,
some wirings and associations of their brain become more connected. Some parts
even grow physically bigger. So if societies create attention architectures that keep
people concentrated on accumulation and monetary expressions of value, this
influences their ideas about a good life, the best need-satisfaction strategies and,
ultimately, their experienced happiness (Hanson 2009: 18). Neurosciences and
biochemical research also tell us that a brain processing massive excitement would
fry if it did this over longer periods of time. Accumulating limitless stacks of
happiness is thus neither possible nor desirable. Happiness is a flow phenomenon
rather than a stock that can be hoarded. Its measurement takes place on a scale
between high and low and its levels are expected to fluctuate. It is not measured
with aggregated growth curves.
Psychologists like Tim Kasser provide more scientific evidence against the
conflation of more gain with more happiness, and also against the ‘law’ that all
humans are naturally wired toward competitive accumulation. He shows how
experienced well-being of even materially wealthy lives seems to decrease if too
much attention is given to economic indicators and the satisfier strategies of having.

3.1.4 How Does a Homo Economicus Feel and Act?

The technical term for what has become the ‘representative agent’ in mainstream
economic models is ‘Homo economicus.’ Its character is the embodiment of the first
law of the human condition: constantly seeking to improve the hedonic calculus and
constantly comparing and competing with others over scarce resources and best
offers. The cost–benefit analyses that this agent undertakes lie at the heart of
explaining human behavior and the choices that should be expected. The financial
crisis has shown how helpful the resulting predictions are for complex real world
dynamics. But this is not the topic at hand. We want to stay with the assessment of how
key ideas and concepts of the mainstream economic paradigm not only limit which
development solutions are imaginable and justifiable but also how their incorporation
in culture and institutions drives societies away from sustainable outcomes.
3.1 How Mainstream Economics Views Human Needs and Their Satisfaction 73

The latter is the theme of US psychologist Tim Kasser’s High Price of

Materialism. It collates ten years of psychological research that shows why we
should speak of the ‘Easterlin Logic’ rather than ‘paradox.’ Kasser provides rich
sociological evidence on the other claim that the choice of particular satisfiers
impacts psychological and social development and thus future-need perception and
well-being. He does so by investigating how materialistic values relate to
well-being. The questions he seeks to answer are the following: “What happens to
our well-being when our desires and goals to attain wealth and accumulate pos-
sessions become prominent? What happens to our internal experience and inter-
personal relationship when we adopt the messages of consumer culture as personal
beliefs? What happens to the quality of our lives when we value materialism?”
(Kasser 2002: 4)
Values research is an important strand of psychology and in itself shows that not
all humans are materialistically wired. Box 3.1 provides a brief overview of how in
some research designs values have become an explicit component, next to questions
of epistemology, ontology and methodology.

Box 3.1 Values research—axiological aspects of scientific paradigms

Psychologists have found a relatively high commonality of basic value ori-
entation varieties across cultures and age groups and have grouped them into
ten meta-categories that subsume several single value statements and aspi-
rations or goals for life to which people holding these values would ascribe.
In all cultures one finds the following: universalism, benevolence, tradition,
conformity, security, power, achievement, hedonism, stimulation, and
self-direction.
Individuals and cultures show different value sets with typical patterns of
correlation and non-correlation between some of these meta-categories. It is
unlikely, for example, that people with a high score in universalism will also
have a high score in power, whereas benevolence and self-direction will
typically rank highly together. These settings influence people’s aspirations,
judgments and behavior in a given context and the categories are applied
when seeking to understand differences in decision-making and support of
certain political or economic ideas and proposals. Approaches like that of the
Global Scenario Group presented here, base their stories for potential
developments on the assessments of sets of values and how these might
influence the decisions people take, in, for example, policies and
consumption.
For a wider discussion and a map of the typical category correlations and
single values within them, see the Common Cause Handbook of the British
Public Interest Research Centre (PIRC). It also includes instructions on how
to work with value change for improved well-being and sustainability.
74 3 Why the Mainstream Economic Paradigm Cannot Inform …

For his own research questions, Kasser selected people who put making money
and having possessions relatively high on their overall list of things they deemed
important. In order to find this group, surveys were conducted with an ‘Aspiration
Index’ that listed a variety of goals which participants ranked according to their
importance. If someone ranked, for example, financial success higher in comparison
to other goals like a good family life and friendships, it indicated a materialistic
value set on the index.
Each life goal was associated with descriptions of aspirations that have been
observed to relate to particular values like benevolence, self-direction, security,
power or hedonism. In the category of financial success, for example, these
included “you will be your own boss,” “you will have a job with high social status,”
“you will have a job that pays well,” or “you will buy things just because you want
them.”
The study also documented aspirations in non-monetary goal categories like
‘image’ and ‘fame’ that competitive societies tend to treat with similar importance.
The commonality between these three goals is that they are extrinsic motivations,
which means they involve seeking a sense of worth outside oneself. Feeling worthy
thus depends on external rewards and the praise of others.
From a methodological point of view we can see how Kasser tested how people
who most closely resembled Homo economicus felt and how they experienced life.
The complete survey also had four questionnaires to assess the individual’s score on
two important well-being characteristics (self-actualization and vitality) and on the
two most common psychological disorders (depression and anxiety). The results
showed that people whose values were centered on the accumulation of wealth,
material possessions, or fame, faced a greater risk of unhappiness, including anx-
iety, depression, low self-esteem, and problems with intimacy, regardless of age,
income, or culture. Kasser repeated the study several times with different groups
and compared his findings with those of others. He added more extrinsic orientation
values like narcissism and used a more open methodology in which goals were not
assigned by providing pre-set aspirations but defined by the individuals themselves.
Across the board he found the same picture emerging: “The more materialistic
values are at the center of our lives, the more our quality of life is diminished”
(Kasser 2002: 14).
Another group of researchers has found evidence that many who care a lot about
making money and succeed can offset the loss of well-being they experience by
sacrificing aspects of their life like family or leisure time. Overall, however,
Kasser’s finding are supported, as Bok concludes in his meta-study, because “the
findings of psychologists convey a warning that being preoccupied with getting rich
carries a substantial risk of leaving one unhappy and disappointed in the end” (Bok
2010: 15).
The blurb accompanying Thrive, the 2014 bestseller by Arianna Huffington, puts
it this way: “Our relentless pursuit of the two traditional metrics of success—money
and power—has led to an epidemic of burnout and stress-related illnesses, and an
erosion in the quality of our relationships, family life, and, ironically, our careers.”
So, encouraging and training people to see and think like a Homo economicus
3.1 How Mainstream Economics Views Human Needs and Their Satisfaction 75

seems like doubtful advice from a life coach and a terrible flaw in the discipline of
mainstream economics.
Kasser, however, went beyond individual happiness and also addressed the
question of what exactly social processes and institutions created with a Homo
economicus in mind do to the development of society. The results show that
materialistic people are possessive in the sense that they prefer to own and keep
things rather than borrow and rent, are less generous or more unwilling to share
their possessions, and envious of other people’s wealth. They also feel unhappy
when others have things they want.
Furthermore—and highly relevant to sustainability strategies—materialistic
values and pro-social values operate like a seesaw: people with high extrinsic value
sets are likely to show lower levels of intrinsic values like self-realization, psy-
chological growth or contributions to society that involve empathy for others or
concern for the environment (Kasser 2002: 18–19). Thus, materialistic values not
only reduce individual well-being and perpetuate feelings of insecurity and being
constrained, but they also hamper relationships with other people and the natural
environment. This effect is particularly strong when people have money on their
mind during decision-making.
Psychologists like James Heyman and Dan Ariely from Harvard University, for
example, demonstrated the difference between money markets in which financial
compensation motivates action or effort, and social markets with no rewards, gifts
or other tokens. In three experiments they show that using “monetary payments
causes participants to invoke monetary-marketplace frames and norms” whereas
people are actually willing to expend more effort in exchange for no payment
(Heyman and Ariely 2004: 787).
Unlike mainstream economists, they use relational theory that distinguishes four
basic types of social relationships, of which only one is ‘market pricing,’ in which
cost–benefit calculations dominate. The others are ‘communal sharing’ with a
dominant culture of ‘we-ness’; ‘authority ranking,’ which avoids the question of
who is ordering whom about and who is delivering; and ‘equality matching,’ in
which everyone gets the same rewards and reciprocity is monitored.
Heyman and Ariely found that, as long as people are not explicitly told that they
are paid, they consider themselves to be in one of the three non-money market
settings and their outlook on what they should do is different. Experiments with
students show that not offering a payment often results in greater efforts than when
money is proffered, especially when it concerns tasks like ‘helping out’ such as
carrying a sofa upstairs. When money is offered, cost–benefit thinking is used as
people seek to match their effort to the rate of pay. High pay means more effort in
solving simple tasks but low or even medium rates of pay mean less effort than no
pay. Experiment results suggest that monetary incentives can have significant
effects on how tasks are framed and therefore the motivation with which we engage
in them. When no payment is mentioned, or when it is offered in the form of gifts,
effort seems to stem from altruistic motives and the exchange is viewed as a social
one (Heyman/Ariely 2004: 792).
76 3 Why the Mainstream Economic Paradigm Cannot Inform …

Yet, the marketized and commodified way we live today makes cost–benefit
thinking almost unavoidable. Diener et al. tentatively hint that societies could feel
very different if economic indicators were not constantly present, but instead
replaced with information on how many spent time with their family, did a good
turn for their neighbor, exercised or engaged in meditation and prayer (Diener et al.
2009: 40).
In Sect. 3.3 I will discuss the role of price signals as guiding indicators in more
detail. Here I want to conclude with a summary of what psychology, sociology and
neurosciences tell us about the genesis, power and changeability of mental path
dependencies. It shows that the methodological stunt of making Homo economicus
the representative agent for all of humanity is scientifically false. In the light of this
fact, merely containing criticism by tinkering around the edges is insufficient. The
sociologist Welzer ridicules the way that mainstream models have started to tinker
by, for example, varying exogenous preferences: some green values are brought in
but the main impetus of wanting more remains the constant hypothesis of the theory
from which everything is deduced. Would I now rather have two funky bikes
instead of one car? In this paradigm, people’s core motivations cannot change. Yet,
historical studies show they can. The concept of psychogenesis, for example,
encompasses changes in endogenous preferences (do I really want to have all this
stuff?). This is simply excluded from mainstream economic frameworks even
though sociology suggests no less than that “changes in social structure lead to the
emergence of new social forms and practices, and thus to psychologically different
people with different needs” (Welzer 2011: 15).

3.1.5 Summary: Human Need Perception and Well-Being

Depend on the Processes Behind Creating Wealth

The research I have presented above renders obsolete the mainstream concepts
summarized in Table 3.1 and used to understand human needs and their satisfac-
tion. Human needs are not endless (although maybe the ‘wants’ created by
advertising are) and utility or happiness are much more than fleeting sensations of
joy and excitement experienced after consuming new things. After securing
material needs for subsistence, the most important factors for happiness and
well-being are not the absolute amount of income but income security. The other
important aspect is the match between income or available money and the costs of
having access to the need-satisfaction strategies one deems necessary for
well-being. This quantitative ratio depends on the context in which the person
happens to live and is usually corrected for by purchasing power estimates. These
do not capture qualitative differences between offers of similar services, like public
versus private health care or education. The bigger the qualitative gaps the less well
people feel if they cannot afford access to private services. Also, the more explicit
consumerist culture is advertised and declared to be normal, the more important
3.1 How Mainstream Economics Views Human Needs and Their Satisfaction 77

conspicuous consumption becomes—and the money needed to participate in it.

Anecdotal evidence in Germany has it that richer people drive Porsche but buy their
groceries at the cheapest discount stores. So once we dig deeper, we find that
happiness is an existential feeling of being on top of one’s life and its challenges.
Neither the utility of a product nor the happiness of a person can be measured by the
price people are willing to pay for something. Yet, constantly calculating costs and
benefits and guiding one’s life by comparing numbers as expressions of value
makes people lose their senses of worthiness, connection and caring.
So why should we continue to build societal development paths around the idea
that constant accumulation is always beneficial to people or society as a whole?
Well-being research helps bring to light the underlying needs that market-based
consumption is actually serving and how many different options a society has to
satisfy them. By debunking the consumption–happiness–maximization law we can
thus become creative in finding solutions for improved utility that align with Earth’s
ecosystems and other people’s needs for social relations, meaningful engagement
and respect. It becomes possible to imagine reduced production and consumption
levels without panicky reactions or unfounded excuses that doing so would nec-
essarily decrease happiness, well-being and freedom.
This requires and enables system innovation processes that focus on unlocking
political, economic and sociocultural path dependencies that were created to serve
the stark utopia of endless gain through a market system. Thinking back to Fig. 2.5
on the materiality of ideas, we can see that creating processes with such vision and
beliefs in mind resulted in a system that had the growth imperative wired into its
functioning. This is of course the second part of Jackson’s Growth Dilemma: that
any ‘degrowth’ undertaken today—given current institutional setups—is unstable
and causes unemployment and recession. I would add the breakdown of the
financial markets. Without a doubt, instant degrowth would diminish the happiness
of many. But it is the result of a structural crisis and not of the violation of some
natural laws of human existence. Twenty-first century empirical research shows that
those do not exist.
In this the qualitative survey data of well-being research and the historical
observations of figurative sociology receive supporting evidence from natural sci-
ences. Brain researchers have observed how our experiences of the external world
and our judgments of them find expression in the development of our neuronal
architecture. So quite literally, external circumstances, in their appearances as
social, cultural, technological and economic institutions, design our internal
infrastructure. These wirings determine how we experience and judge events now
and in the future.
“What happens in your mind changes your brain, both temporarily and in lasting
ways; neurons that fire together wire together. And what happens in your brain
changes your mind, since the brain and mind are a single, integrated system” write
Rick Hanson and Richard Mendius, cofounders of the Wellspring Institute for
Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom (Hanson 2009: 18). And the brain
changes through training just as muscles do. Hanson and Mendius quote Francisco
Varela, the famous Chilean biologist and neuroscientist, when describing this
78 3 Why the Mainstream Economic Paradigm Cannot Inform …

mutually reinforcing relationship: “In the largest sense, your mind is made by your
brain, body, natural world, and human culture—as well as by the mind itself”
(Hanson 2009: 7).
These findings resonate with Welzer’s ‘mental infrastructures’ that have path
dependency effects embedded beneath cognitive processes of knowing or social fears
of losing status or access. Referring to the economic growth paradigm, Welzer dis-
cusses how deeply rooted resistance to change can therefore be. Debunking it would
play on people’s fundamental “secret fears” that “everything they have established,
everything they worked for, planned and believed in, could have been meaningless.
The dimensions of meaning and identity that Western-style capitalist societies pro-
vide stand and fall with the functioning of the market” (Welzer 2011: 29).
So of course post-growth imaginaries and narratives may not necessarily gain
traction right away. They may offer the least enticements to those who risk losing
quite a few of their privileges if the promise of always more for everyone cedes and
paradigms and narratives on fair shares become dominant.
I am not sure if this was the upset of the human self-image that the Brundtland
Report foresaw to be necessary for sustainability to succeed. But surely, scientific
concepts and models should help to understand and explain such an upset and its
consequences instead of ruling it out by imposing theoretical iron cages.
The evidence behind policymaking would then look very different as well.
Richard Layard, leading British happiness economist, argues that well-being
research findings require turning mainstream concepts of productivity and com-
petitiveness on their head. Given the hedonic treadmill and high price of materi-
alism, he demands that policy should constrain the ability of individuals to earn and
work much more than other people:

If a person works harder and earns more, he may himself gain by increasing his income
compared with other people. But the other people lose because their income now falls
relative to his. He does not care that he is polluting other people in this way, so we must
provide him with an incentive to do so (Layard 2005: 229).

The proposed incentive is significantly higher taxation on working too much

given that a true benefit to society as a whole can no longer be identified. Whether
or not one likes this particular proposal, the important idea is that the adoption of a
historically sensitive mind-set does not lend itself to there-is-no-alternative claims.
Sociocultural circumstances and politico-economic institutions like markets shape
people’s mind-sets and imaginary and therefore their aspirations and preferred
need-satisfaction strategies. In the light of their surveys, for example, Kahneman
and Krueger suggest shifting attention from increasing consumption opportunities
to an emphasis on increasing social contacts; shifting the emphasis from income for
well-being toward a person’s relative embedding in society; making possible a
different allocation of time that reduces the amount of time people spend doing
things they find unpleasant (Kahneman/Krueger 2006: 18).
Given that work in its current forms ranks high among those things in life which
many say they do not like doing, some interesting strategies for sustainability
emerge. A popular one is to reduce working hours, because this would allow for the
3.1 How Mainstream Economics Views Human Needs and Their Satisfaction 79

wider sharing of paid work available, thus reducing unemployment—which is even

worse for health and well-being. This said, one also wants to include an analysis of if
or how this reduces pay and what it does to purchasing power and thus access in
deeply marketized societies. In Great Britain, for example, where private debt is the
highest in Europe and many low-paid workers have mortgages to service, the pro-
spect of earning less in exchange for having more time does not mean an improved
life. Unlocking path dependencies in complex settings require whole system change
strategies with policy-packages hedging such detrimental side-effects.
Another approach could be to change the experienced utility itself, so that
spending time at work was less of a nuisance. For this to happen, the idea of what
makes a firm competitive would need to change. Its prime benchmarking purpose
would become delivering high product and process utility in the most resource-light
and resilient way—instead of myopic and narrow price competitiveness. It would
include outcomes of social capital (good relationships, reported well-being, and
trust), human capital (giving people skills, their ability to creatively innovate and
collaborate), and the protection of environmental capital (as little resource use as
possible for the delivery of certain need satisfiers). Some corporate strategies do
involve such ideas, but usually not as the goals of their system: they are means to
better deliver on the unchanged goal of maximum profit.
To level the benchmarking playing field for those companies that sincerely try to
turn these means into goals, regulatory changes are necessary. These goals could
also free corporations from the pilot paralysis they report regarding their sustain-
ability endeavors. This would, however, require changing their business model and
thus corporate charters themselves. Other measures like taxation or subsidies are of
course political incentives that still induce people to work harder. In a transfor-
mational agenda the holy cow of constantly striving for labor productivity increases
should have to justify its merit: “if tax-cutters think people should work still harder,
they need to explain why” (Layard 2005: 228).
Today’s standard measures and indicators emerged from the ideas about the
world held by their inventors. Stripped of this context they function like ‘objective’
reference frameworks in arguing how to do things adequately. So if our culture,
signals and symbols were transformative in a way that steered clear of materialistic
values, extrinsic incentives and monetized expressions of worth, the perceived need
for ever more gain or new stuff in materially saturated societies might well fall. The
other deep wiring that needs double-checking is of course that of endless compe-
tition and individualist comparisons to define one’s own worth and value.
Interestingly, with these observations we come close to Asian wisdom that has
conceived of happiness as an existential and social concept all along. It stands for a
way of leading a life that is content overall and in which you feel able to master
challenges and enjoy what you are given. In Buddhist ethics and philosophy, as the
Bhutanese example of Gross National Happiness or GNH will show in Chapter 4 a
high degree of well-being for some individuals does not count as an achievement if
others in the community are suffering at lower levels. The Greek term eudaimonia,
as used by Aristotle, has a similar meaning. It describes happiness as an activity
rather than an emotional state: Happy individuals are capable of living up to the
80 3 Why the Mainstream Economic Paradigm Cannot Inform …

potentials of human nature and this leads to virtuous engagement for the common
good. For a comprehensive overview of different definitions of happiness see the
crowd-sourced Wikipedia.
So, sometimes it feels as though innovation is not always about finding new
ideas and evidence but also about remembering old wisdom. After all, if thought
through to its logical conclusion, the stark utopia and grand narrative of endless
gain is a desperate one. There is no happy ending if humans can simply never get
enough. As the numbers cited have shown, the threshold of what people report they
need to feel good keeps on growing with the wealth of society as a whole. In this
development vision we can never reach satisfaction. Thus, a culture and society
nested in mind-sets and institutions of endless economic growth and competition
appears less a stark utopia of freedom of choice and happiness, and more a dystopia
of never being able to enjoy and relax.

3.2 How Mainstream Economics Views Nature and Its

Governance

The second light green column of Table 3.1 assembles central concepts that
mainstream economics applies when dealing with nature: forests, oceans, moun-
tains, fields, deserts and the animals living in those locations. It provides the ana-
lytical tools available when addressing the second of the Brundtland Report’s key
qualifiers of sustainable development. That is “the idea of limitations imposed by
the state of technology and social organization on the environment’s ability to meet
present and future needs” (WCED 1987: 41). This is relevant for current genera-
tions and for safeguarding the livelihoods and well-being of future generations, and
the way the issue is phrased is very important. The message is usually framed
wrongly. In line with key thinkers during the Enlightenment movement (most
prominently Thomas Malthus), nature is depicted as imposing limits on human
development, of which there seems to be only one right, linear version.
However, by using instead the relational complex systems view that natural
sciences offer in the twenty-first century, we see that it is the manner and degree of
human interference with nature’s ability to reproduce its wealth that is backfiring. If
we change our ideas and goals of development or progress, our choice of tech-
nology and social organization, humans and nature can both flourish over the long
run. And from a less anthropocentric point of view, flourishing nature is an ethical
goal in itself, totally independent of the use value that this provides for humans.
The Second Enlightenment mindshift replaces the lens of ‘fighting nature’s
limits by extracting more natural resources faster’ with one of ‘aligning production
and consumption patterns with her circular reproductive cycles.’ This requires
descriptions, measures and models that illuminate where and how human inter-
ference hampers ecological laws.
3.2 How Mainstream Economics Views Nature and Its Governance 81

As we can see from the production function in Fig. 3.1, non-production-related

environmental benefits or waste impacts on nature do not figure in mainstream
thought unless producers need to pay a price for them. This way it is only viewed as
a fictitious commodity, an input factor whose price producers will try to lower in
order to stay competitive. The best mechanism to counter this trend and govern
scarce resources is to ‘get the prices right’ so that markets avoid exhausting
resources. With increasing scarcity, they become more expensive and therefore
unattractive for continued use, hence an alternative will be found. Nature is thus not
viewed as a web of life but as a heap of resources whose chunks have different
exchange values (prices), depending on their scarcity. Degradation does not matter
as long as alternative resources or technologies can fill the spot in production
chains.
The solution to this problem requires more than merely grouping input factors
into social, human, manufactured, and natural capital. As long as the models freely
exchange one type of capital for another in doing the math on successful devel-
opment, we see nothing of the real world changes underneath. On the input side the
models track flows of single chunks of nature (e.g., cubic meters of wood) but are
blind to the laws of their reproduction, which would help identify how, or which,
important resources are renewed at what rate (how quickly does a forest grow and
which soils are necessary for that?) and which stocks are indeed limited and
therefore need careful exploitation if long-term use is necessary. Regarding the
output side, superficial exchange value (market prices) says nothing about the actual
use values (need satisfiers) that were generated. Growing output in the financial
sector, for example, counts as positive growth in GDP standards even if it results
from speculative gains on staple food commodities that make the prices of these
prohibitively high for hungry people. From this point of view there is nothing
beyond the economic sphere and everything within it can be converted into
everything else—and nothing really gets lost. Everything is either capital as
expressed in market prices or invisible.
This is why economists like Daly have argued for the introduction of
non-monetized benchmarks, warning of “uneconomic growth” in which monetized
indicators like GDP still show growth even though the use value (utility) created for
humans becomes negative and/or natural capital stocks are destroyed beyond
recovery rate. The following sections will pick up on these aspects by zooming in
on each of the key concepts captured in Table 3.1 that refer to governing nature.

3.2.1 What Types of Capital Exist and Where Do They

Come from?

As in Sect. 3.1, I would like to start this discussion by presenting the typical
mainstream economic model that students are shown when studying macroeco-
nomic dynamics. Figures 3.1 and 3.2 highlight the blind spots when thinking about
82 3 Why the Mainstream Economic Paradigm Cannot Inform …

Fig. 3.3 Mainstream economics model of the economy. Source Daly/Farley (2010: 25)

production processes and here we turn to the model of an entire economic system. It
consists of two main actor groups, producers or firms and consumers or households.
The resulting image is that of a circular flow of goods and services and factors of
production (labor, land and capital) in a closed loop, guided by price signals
(Fig. 3.3).
In his discussion of how complexity economics diverges from this paradigm,
Beinhocker returned to his “half-baked physics” analogy, which rests on the First
Law of Thermodynamics, also called the Conservation of Energy Principle. It was
developed in the late eighteenth century and explains that in isolated or closed
systems energy is neither created nor destroyed but merely changes its forms. You
always have the same total: if net energy or heat is supplied to a system it equals the
net work done by the system. Energy in economics is capital. Similar to utility it
needs some measurement unit and this is once again money. The value of pieces of
capital is expressed in market prices, so what counts is their “exchange value.”
The Second Law of Thermodynamics followed midway through the nineteenth
century and refers to the irreversibility of natural processes. It states that every time
energy changes its form there is an increase in entropy, a measure of disorder or
randomness. This means that continued activity will eventually make any closed or
isolated system decay into disorder. Only open systems, using energy and matter
3.2 How Mainstream Economics Views Nature and Its Governance 83

flowing through, can counter this process. They can create syntropy—order,
structure and patterns—by taking the necessary energy from connected systems.
This is how nature uses the sun’s energy for its evolutionary reproduction circuits—
and how humans use nature.
Yet, this fully baked physics did not make it into mainstream economic models.
The sources of energy remain invisible in mainstream economic models. Only the
prices of what is exchanged are tracked. In their classic textbook Ecological
Economics: Principles and Applications (2010) famous ecological economists
Herman Daly and Joshua Farley summarize the loss of information so brilliantly
that it is worth quoting at length:
What is it that is really flowing around and around in a circle in the circular flow vision? Is
it really physical goods and services, and physical laborers and land and resources? No. It is
only abstract exchange value, the purchasing power represented by these physical things.
The ‘soul’ embodied in goods by the firms is abstract exchange value. When goods arrive at
the households, the ‘soul’ of exchange value jumps out of its embodiment in goods and
takes on the body of factors for its return trip to the firms, whereupon it jumps out of the
body of factors and reincorporates itself once again into goods, and so on. But what
happens to all the discarded bodies of goods and factors as the soul of exchange value
transmigrates from firms to households and back ad infinitum? (Daly/Farley 2010: 28)

The real-world impact that the discarded bodies create lies beyond what is
captured by capital accounting. Mines, wells, fishing grounds or cropland are built
up and replenished according to their own logics. They are not simply available
because someone demands them and is willing to pay a price. Nor are their
capacities to absorb and store all the discarded bodies endless.
One estimate puts the total amount of extracted raw materials that end up as solid
waste at 12 billion tons per year, of which 4 billion tons are generated in OECD
countries alone (OECD 2014b: 10). The only way that such waste enters the
exchange value circle is in form of the cost of collecting it and storing it some-
where. What remains unaccounted for is how nature then deals with this output,
which might include gigantic garbage dumps, sealed radioactive containers, or a
field of plastic the size of Texas floating in the Pacific Ocean. Even more difficult to
account for, in particular in price signals, is non-material waste like emissions from
burning fossil fuels, the declining fertility of billions of hectares of soil, the seepage
of chemicals from agriculture into the earth and then into the oceans, destroying
coral reefs.
The first UN World Conference on Sustainable Development in 1992 in Rio de
Janeiro acknowledged that the management of ecosystems might need different
governance mechanisms than that of conventional markets. Thus, Rio created
conventions for tackling climate change, biodiversity loss and desertification. Still,
economic growth impacts are always of concern and already in the 1970s econo-
mists had engaged with nature by making it an input factor of production functions.
Somewhat as all the pleasure (output) to be had was stuffed into the abstract
container term of utility, 1970s economists simply expanded the term ‘capital’ to
include everything that could be used productively (input). Both are handily
measured in monetary terms, so that predictive models can be run.
84 3 Why the Mainstream Economic Paradigm Cannot Inform …

US economists Robert Solow and John Hartwick then embarked on the question
of the intergenerational allocation of natural resources and their basic idea became
that of ‘capital substitutability.’ In line with closed system exchange value con-
version assumptions, capital substitutability holds that while each generation should
have the same amount of capital available, the composition of its overall stock can
vary. For example, natural capital can be degraded as long as man-made capital is
increased to the same value (Solow 1986: 141–149).
When the Rio Summit put intergenerational distribution of the means for need
satisfaction center stage, this concept was included in the measures recommended
for tracking if development had become sustainable. But instead of making cal-
culations according to the biophysical laws of nature, policymakers used the laws of
exchange value for natural assets. Capital substitutability offered a way to integrate
the environment with economic calculations that need not upset the human
self-image: economic growth could happily continue. It might also have helped that
Robert Solow won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1987, the same year that the
Brundtland Report came out.
Natural scientists and ecological economists were and are critical of this move
and demand that there should be limits to the use of market pricing in a good
governance regime. Let us explore their criticisms and alternative concepts in more
detail.

3.2.2 Market Prices and the Allocation or Protection

of Scarce Resources

The term that mainstream economics uses when its models’ predictions go awry is
‘market failure.’ There is no question as to whether markets are always the best
solution; the problem is always that some policymaker was silly enough to inter-
vene in the equilibrating checks and balances of exchange value. Of course there
are many, many cases where market prices are distorted, often because private
actors also seek to manipulate them. The aim of making them tell the ‘truth’ about
the environmental and social costs involved in producing a product or service is a
necessary one. But it is not sufficient to govern human–nature relations in a sus-
tainable manner.
Here are some examples in which prices did not secure good allocation or
prevent overexploitation of nature’s riches. First, when the natural resources
affected are needed for subsistence. The direct survival means of many of the
poorest people in the world today need to be protected against price hikes fuelled by
speculative interests that aggravate supply crises. Individual economic gain aspi-
rations need to yield to survival needs. Yet, if there is a detectable pattern, it seems
to be that instead of prioritizing the needs of the poor, exchange value orientation
means prioritizing the rich with purchasing power. Second, and as a consequence of
unequal wealth generation, market prices do not necessarily deter rich people from
3.2 How Mainstream Economics Views Nature and Its Governance 85

consuming things that prices indicate have become scarce. In a materialist culture of
competitive status-seeking, paying more means showing off—as the term ‘con-
spicuous consumption’ implies.
One example of this is the threatened Japanese bluefin tuna, whose very high
price has not reduced consumption, but actually made it even more desirable.
Indeed, in 2013 the first tuna of the year was sold for almost $2 million. This pretty
irrational market failure was described as ‘Sushinomics’ by the The Atlantic (Narula
2014). It bears out Daly and Farley’s observation that the maximum economically
and technologically feasible exploitation of nature might just be too high. Even
from a blatantly anthropocentric point of view, this will have disutility effects on all
the manufactured goods whose successful use is dependent on an intact environ-
ment, for example, diving masks worn to observe tuna. Nature, Daly and Farley
note, “provides a complementary service without which the utilities of most con-
sumer goods are not very great” (Daly/Farley 2010: 163).
Worse, there are no price signals for all non-commodifiable ecosystem services.
These include the entire cyclical management of freshwater or a healthy atmosphere
in which multiple ecosystems like rivers, oceans, soils and forests are involved in
cleaning water and air so that they are fit for human consumption. Emission trading
schemes represent attempts to create markets for the waste absorbing or usefully
transforming sinks that form part of these ecosystems. In these schemes, producers
are supposed to buy CO2 emission rights (e.g., the European Emissions Trading
System), or the owners of forests are compensated for the CO2 extracted from the
atmosphere (e.g., the REDD+ mechanism under the UN Framework Convention for
Climate Change). The goal is to disincentivize both the use of CO2-emitting
resources and the destruction of CO2-absorbing ones so that the balance, or carrying
capacity of the atmosphere, can be restored.
However, the creation of markets for ecosystem services only works on single
atomized units of capital, like a ton of CO2, and thus tells us little about the whole
web of natural life. Living species interact and form complex ecosystems with
balancing feedback loops and food chains. Thus, overexploiting one type of
resource, or condemning one species to extinction may seem harmless. But without
an understanding of these intricate relationships, we may create a ‘missing link,’
glut or shortage in the dynamic reproduction circuits of basic life support systems
like water supply, pollination patterns or soil fertility (Daly/Farley 2010: 75–76).
To me, it sounds like a rational risk management strategy to amend these price
signals with some biophysical data tracking and sound regulations on usage limits.
This is particularly important given the minimal help that price signals can provide
for future-oriented precautionary governance of scarce resources: living complex
systems are unpredictable precisely because these development models are built
around a mechanical additive understanding in which single elements can be freely
subtracted and added without changing the overall dynamic. The Assessment
Reports of the IPCC, for example, calculate that, if the atmosphere is to stay within
its current dynamic equilibrium, a concentration of CO2 somewhere between 350
and 450 ppm is all that the natural cycle of CO2 transformation can take. If we
exceed this amount, all the ecosystems involved in the carbon cycle face changes
86 3 Why the Mainstream Economic Paradigm Cannot Inform …

and potentially drastic ones, such as ocean acidification, sea level rise, increased
flooding or, by contrast, desertification, and so on.
Meanwhile, the challenge with complex systems is that they often have delays in
their feedback structures, depending on the available stocks of resources that can be
used, like credit, for a certain amount of time. In addition, the effects on one
resource or biophysical process are typically linked with other natural cycles and
may lead to accelerated feedback loops that have nothing to do with the original
human activities. This means that problems often only become visible or tangible
when it is no longer easy to put a halt to the damage they are causing. The linear
causality image of a kettle removed from a stove when it whistles is utterly mis-
leading. MIT professor John Sterman and Harvard education expert Linda
Booth-Sweeney explain this “wrong mental model” in the context of climate
change. It assumes, they argue, that it will only
require short delays in all the links in a long causal chain, stretching from the detection of
adverse climate impacts to the decision to implement mitigation policies to emissions
reductions to changes in atmospheric GHG [Greenhouse Gas] concentrations to radiative
forcing to surface warming and finally to climate impacts, including changes in ice cover,
sea level, weather patterns, agricultural productivity, the distribution of species, extinction
rates, and the incidence of diseases, among others. None of these conditions hold: there are
long delays in every link of the chain (Sterman/Sweeney 2007: 214).

None of this can be captured by exchange value or market prices. The gover-
nance of nature requires multidimensional evidence instead of the typical monetized
cost–benefit analyses that are popular in policymaking. In those natural protection
measures, investment in education, extent of social welfare, etc., are judged by
quantifying their value in monetary terms. Equipped with those numbers one can
calculate when it is ‘economic’ to implement them. There are no general standards
as to how this conversion should be done, so it is down to the ethical judgments and
mind-set of the—often economics-trained—policy advisor: what is the monetary
value of a human life? How much should saving thousands of lives a year through
tougher pollution standards therefore be allowed to cost? When is it too expensive?
Whose competitiveness might be impacted by the higher costs of production?
When it comes to presenting the ‘evidence,’ numerical equations radiate the aura
of objectivity. But digging into what twenty-first century science tells us about
nature renders equations unsuitable for sound economic governance. Ecological
economists like Daly therefore demand a precautionary approach that starts from
the premise that certain functions of nature—some of its laws—cannot be dupli-
cated by humans but are essential to the continuation of human prosperity on this
planet, at least for the foreseeable future. They determine the quantity of and rate at
which nature develops the low entropy resources that humans use. For example, the
humus in fertile soil that takes up to 2000 years to form, and the fossil fuels that
started forming 300 to 400 million year ago. Likewise the way that high entropy
waste in the form of emissions, chemicals and heat can be absorbed by plants, soil,
water, and so on.
Sustainability economics will need to embed the exchange value loop model in
the real world, argues Daly. During his time from 1988 to 1994 as a senior
3.2 How Mainstream Economics Views Nature and Its Governance 87

economist at the World Bank he developed a succinct set of management principles

for sustainability. They show which scientific and ethical judgments are inherent in
market prices and cost–benefit analyses:
• The use rate of renewable resources cannot be higher than their rate of regen-
eration or they are lost for future generations.
• The use of non-renewable natural resources should not exceed the discovery of
alternative sources to deliver on the same function (e.g., replacing fossil fuels
with solar technology).
• Emissions cannot be higher than the capacity of the natural environment to cope
with them.
• Human-made threats to or excessive risks for human health and the environment
should be avoided (Wikipedia 2014).
So even if one sticks with the mainstream lens of rejecting allocation decisions
through laws and agreements, the question about when prices tell the environmental
and social truth will be equally political. This process cannot be left to economist
modelers. In democracies the process needs to be as explicit and transparent as
possible. The agenda on Planetary Boundaries, or limits to growth, is about nothing
else, even though its critics like to portray it as doomsday eco-dictatorship. No one
is talking about people not being allowed to intervene in nature, intentionally
enhance natural resources or look for artificial ones. It is about developing a good
understanding of what we have and how the laws of resource reproduction coalesce
so that we can manage development processes well and equitably.
This view has also been dubbed “strong sustainability” and its advocates argue
that the three dimensions—social, ecological, economic—of sustainable develop-
ment should capture its paradigmatic shift away from the old development imagi-
nary. Sustainable development should not be delineated with three pillars of similar
importance—the dominant icon since the Earth Summit in 1992—it should instead
be portrayed as a series of embedded systems. Figure 3.4 shows that this renders the
economic system—the stark utopia of the market system—the servant rather than
the master of the social and environmental system. A discussion of the arguments
can be found in the first Global Sustainable Development Report (2014).
In line with this paradigm, ecological economists are less interested in what
might theoretically, at some point in the future, be possible if technological revo-
lutions and yet more money were available. They are more interested in preventing
the irreversible harm caused by ignoring the long period of transition required
between now and then. It is from this perspective—also a great mindshift—that
they argue for future development paths that will host a steady state economy that
remains constant instead of exponentially expanding levels of production and
consumption. Getting there would require massive transformations of many path
dependencies in the economic and also social systems. But ruling them out means
accepting massive transformations in the ecological and social systems, which will
also impact economic systems in the mid-term.
88 3 Why the Mainstream Economic Paradigm Cannot Inform …

Fig. 3.4 The three-pillar versus embedded-system view of sustainable development. Source Own
illustration

Maintaining an unequivocal imaginary and narrative of endless growth might be

politically easier and convenient for privileged groups but cannot be backed by
evidence drawn from the natural sciences of the twenty-first century.

3.2.3 Checking Nature’s Safe Operating Spaces for Human

Growth Aspirations

The third and fourth rows in Table 3.1 bring us to a deeper understanding of why
only economists can argue for unlimited growth. The most popular argument we
hear is that one can decouple economic growth from natural resource use. Make
more with less. There is nothing to say against the efficient and sparing use of
natural resources, but relative savings should not be confused with an absolute
reduction of human-caused exploitation levels. Raw material extraction levels
reached 70 billion tons in 2008. This is unprecedented not only in total but also in
the amount per person: about 10.5 tons. Of course these numbers vary widely
between countries, being lower in India and China and higher in Australia and Chile
(Wiedmann et al. 2015: 6273–75). So it seems like good news that global average
resource intensity or relative decoupling as measured in the standard indicator of
Domestic Material Consumption per unit of GDP (DMC/GDP) has decreased
significantly from 3.6 kg/$ in 1900 to 1.3 kg/$ in 2005 (Wiedmann et al. 2015:
6271). Otherwise the world would look like a big mine shaft. With this indicator, as
OECD reports summarize, it also looks like some countries such as Canada,
Germany, Italy and Japan have decoupled DMC from economic growth in absolute
terms. They get richer but no longer need more natural resources.
Yet, a discussion of the rebound effect hinted that current consumption and
market patterns do give price signals that suggest using fewer resources per product
3.2 How Mainstream Economics Views Nature and Its Governance 89

or service (as long as there are prices on the natural resources or waste created) but
don’t really suggest using fewer resources in total. ‘Making more’ and ‘consuming
more’ remain the dominant partners in the formula.
One study that tried to untangle what seem to be contradicting observations was
undertaken by an international group of ecological economists working with
Thomas Wiedmann and published as ‘The material footprint of nations’ in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the US (PNAS). They show
that DMC, despite being the lead indicator for the Green Growth and Green
Economy studies and strategies of the EU, OECD and also the UN Environment
Programme (UNEP), hosts two big blind spots:
(1) it captures only those materials that made it into the final products and leaves
all the waste and extraction created in the process unaccounted for;
(2) it allocates the resource extraction figures in the country where they occur and
not in the countries where the products they are used for are consumed.
This means that all the environmental impacts associated with extracting and
processing raw materials into goods fall out of the picture. These include water
resource depletion and pollution, soil erosion, biodiversity loss, mine tailings, and
natural destruction or pollution through spillages and agrochemicals. In particular
the production of metals involves digging out ores and turning them into concen-
trated commodities. It also means the obfuscation of the way in which the glob-
alized supply chains rich countries use to primarily import materials or even
semi-finished products relegate consumption and natural impact to two separate
balance sheets (Wiedmann et al. 2015: 6273). This ‘leakage’ effect has already been
criticized in connection with the commonly used statistics and thus negotiations
about CO2 reduction commitments.
To tackle these blind spots the research team used the Material Footprint
(MF) as a consumption rather than production indicator. It measures all the natural
impact that a particular economy creates, including unused extraction, and
regardless of where resources happen to be taken out. The indicator has also been
called Total Material Requirement (TMR) and comparing it with DMC shows a
“process of externalization of resource-intensive processes of mature economies” in
which the MF per capita becomes considerably larger than the standard measure
(ibid.: 6273). The United Kingdom and Japan are at the extreme end not only
regarding this statistical aberration but also in their dependence on imports for their
levels of final consumption.
When checking for correlations with factors that influence the levels of MF—
such as availability of raw materials, density of population or GDP per capita—the
findings confirm “a very strong link found previously between growth in building
materials, ores, and fossil fuels use and economic growth in most of developing
Asia, most notably in China,” and, as in many other studies working with footprint
indicators, with levels of income. For “a 10 % increase in wealth, the MF would
increase by 6 %” (Wiedmann et al. 2015: 6273).
90 3 Why the Mainstream Economic Paradigm Cannot Inform …

So while it is commonly argued that environmental pollution drops once certain

thresholds of income are reached (the famous Kuznet’s curve) this cannot be
documented in such meta studies. Instead they bring to the fore structural questions
that will become vital in the SDG agenda, e.g., which development model can claim
to be sustainable? Surely not those whose MFs overshoot what would be a fair
share of the globally available resources by a factor of five to ten?
This is what Stefan Bringezu, member of the UNEP International Resource
Panel, found when undertaking a per-capita calculation of fair shares of all natural
resources. A “potential sustainability corridor” would be reached by 2050 if the
Total Material Consumption (TMC) of abiotic or non-renewable resources lay
between 6 and 12 tons per person, the TMC of biotic or renewable resources below
2 tons per person, and the Raw Material Consumption (RMC) of used biotic and
abiotic materials between 3 and 6 tons per person. He concludes that “[F]or policy,
a ‘10-2-5 target triplet’ can provide orientation, when the three indicators are
assigned values of 10, 2, and 5 t/person, respectively” (Bringezu 2015: 25). To put
these numbers into perspective: for rich countries they mean a reduction of 40–
90 % in each of the indicators based on 2014 use levels (ibid.: 42–45).
We see that before decoupling strategies can be called successful, their calcu-
lations and indicators need to tell the true story behind any Green Growth path,
especially for a global agenda. The OECD as well as the EU have come around to
expressing the limitations of DMC but have not accepted absolute targets for TMR
as Bringezu suggests.
But why are natural scientists so concerned with defining a sustainability cor-
ridor or operating space? Because market prices can only tell the truth about social
and environmental impact when these are realistically estimated. If an estimate is
undertaken with a mechanical engineering mind-set it will look very different from
one undertaken with an embedded systems view. According to the latter, ecosys-
tems already risk losing the stable and resilient environmental characteristics to
which humanity is accustomed. This is what the term ‘Anthropocene’ stands for:
the 10,000 benign years of the Holocene have been ended by human interference
with Earth’s reproductive processes. This earth system science shows us that if we
extract from the planet all that is technologically and economically feasible to
harvest, it will be far too much for the planet to sustain. Price signals come too late
unless caps for maximum exploitation are defined.
The research agenda on ‘Planetary Boundaries’ aims to avoid ecosystem cycles
or reproduction being ‘tipped out’ of dynamic equilibrium. Twenty-six scientists
published an article on Planetary Boundaries in the journal Nature in 2009 to
highlight the fact that three out of nine central dimensions of Earth’s productive
processes were already in a state of overexploitation: namely CO2 and nitrogen
cycles, and the rate of biodiversity loss (Rockström et al. 2009). The title dovetails
well with the mainstream image of nature limiting human growth aspirations. Yet,
the article is a plea to understand these boundaries and to align human activity with
them. This is what the subtitle “A Safe Operating Space for Humanity” means
(Table 3.3).
3.2 How Mainstream Economics Views Nature and Its Governance 91

Table 3.3 Defining Planetary Boundaries

Earth-system Control variable Boundary Current Boundary Preindustrial
process value value crossed value
1. Climate change Atmospheric 350 387 Yes 280
carbon dioxide
concentration (ppm
by volume) [25]
See also: Tipping
point (climatology)
Alternatively: 1.0 1.5 Yes 0
Increase in radiative
forcing (W/m2)
since the start of the
industrial
revolution (*1750)
2. Biodiversity Extinction rate 10 >100 Yes 0.1–1
loss (number of species
per million per
year)
3. Biogeochemical (a) anthropogenic 35 121 Yes 0
nitrogen removed
from the
atmosphere
(millions of tonnes
per year)
(b) anthropogenic 11 8.5–9.5 No −1
phosphorus going
into the oceans
(millions of tonnes
per year)
4. Ocean Global mean 2.75 2.90 No 3.44
acidification saturation state of
aragonite in surface
seawater (omega
units)
5. Land use Land surface 15 11.7 No Low
converted to
cropland (%)
6. Freshwater Global human 4000 2600 No 415
consumption of
water (3 km/year)
7. Ozone depletion Stratospheric ozone 276 283 No 290
concentration
(Dobson units)
8. Atmospheric Overall particulate Not yet quantified
aerosols concentration in the
atmosphere, on a
regional basis
(continued)
92 3 Why the Mainstream Economic Paradigm Cannot Inform …

Table 3.3 (continued)

Earth-system Control variable Boundary Current Boundary Preindustrial
process value value crossed value
9. Chemical Concentration of Not yet quantified
pollution toxic substances,
plastics, endocrine
disruptors, heavy
metals, and
radioactive
contamination into
the environment
Source Rockström et al. (2009: 472–475)

The concept of Planetary Boundaries was developed to host an ongoing process

of refinement in line with improving data and computer simulations (see, for
example, Steffen et al. 2015). The work includes the identification of the best
indicators for the remaining two of the nine dimensions and to understand regional
thresholds in line with the actual biophysical realities in these areas. Regional
assessments are necessary because, in certain regions, tipping points in some of the
dimensions will be reached much more quickly than in the global average. There
are prime examples in the cases of freshwater provision and soil erosion.
Another research angle addresses the correlations between the dimensions, for
example, of how land-use pattern changes impact on CO2 emissions, freshwater
availability, and biodiversity. This is necessary because otherwise predictive cal-
culations as to how many resources are left for production, or how they can be
substituted by renewable ones may end up relying on one source several times over.
This issue is currently emerging with the growing agenda for a ‘bio-economy.’
Raw material shortages are to be circumvented by using biomass and natural fibers
instead. While the political strategies tend to insist that food production has to have
priority over industrial use, quantifications on what this means in practice are
missing. The German bio-economy strategy of June 2013, for example, aligns its
goals with those of the German sustainable development strategy that seeks to limit
the conversion of land for settlement, transport, production, or agriculture from 87
to 30 ha daily by 2020. However, this policy fails to provide any safeguards for
maximum conversion limits, if Planetary Boundaries are to remain intact (Destatis
2012: 15). This relative target still allows for an indefinite 10,680 ha to be con-
verted every year after 2020. Over the long run Germany could turn every forest
into a field for biomass.
It was research scientists at the UN International Resource Panel that shed some
light onto how much global cropland is actually available to sustainably supply
food for 9–10 billion people. They undertook extensive work to identify where
thresholds lie for land-use changes if biodiversity loss, release of CO2, disruption of
water and nutrient cycles and the loss of fertile soils should not plummet under their
Planetary Boundary levels.
3.2 How Mainstream Economics Views Nature and Its Governance 93

Table 3.4 Land use predictions by the UN International Resource Panel

Business-as-usual Low High Source
expansion estimate estimate
(Mha) (Mha)
Food supply 71 300 Based on Bruinsma (2009),
RFA (2008), Bringezu et al. (2009a)
Biofuel supply 48 80 Based on Fischer (2009), IEA (2011)
Biomaterial supply 4 115 Based on Colwill et al. (2001),
Raschka/Carus (2012)
Net expansion 123 495
Compensation for 107 129 Based on Electris et al. (2009)
built environment
Compensation for 90 225 Based on Scherr (1999)
soil degradation
Gross expansion 320 849
Source UNEP (2014: 20)

Their 2014 report, Assessing Global Land Use: Balancing Consumption with
Sustainable Supply, concludes that humanity’s safe operating space ends at a total
of 1640 million hectares of global cropland, which leaves roughly an additional 100
million hectares yet to be converted. Were current trends to continue, this limit
would be reached by 2020 and conversion would not stop there but, as can be seen
in Table 3.4, eat up an additional 320–849 million hectares before demand leveled
off (UNEP 2014: 23–25). To prevent this the report recommends that significant
changes in agricultural practices, production and consumption patterns and the
composition of diets are more imperative than the growth of a land-guzzling
bio-economy.
Of course, the ranges calculated for the Planetary Boundaries are contested.
Interestingly, most of the criticism comes from within the strong sustainability
camp and is lodged by biologists or experts in the individual dimensions. They
argue that the identification of precise thresholds is still too numerical and too
mechanical, further supporting the persistence of the managerial paradigm of
exploiting nature as quickly and effectively as possible. Others say that global
boundaries cannot tell us much about regional challenges, among which the
availability of land, fresh water or oceans, for example, differ widely.
Another caveat concerns the absence of non-renewable resources in what has
become the most prominent framework in addressing the sustainable governance of
nature. As the discussion on the MF showed, this omission obscures much of the
picture of how much natural capital is left. It also showed that even if the boundary
or carrying capacity numbers are not totally correct, the trends toward overex-
ploitation are so clearly documented that swiftly and significantly changing course
should be the rational strategy.
One crucial element in this context is indeed the much more efficient use of
natural resources, the improvement of recycling rates, adoption of modular designs
and a choice of materials that allows for reintegration into the natural cycles.
94 3 Why the Mainstream Economic Paradigm Cannot Inform …

Measures and incentives as well as policy frameworks are needed toward this end.
Yet, doing all of this without challenging the output indicator of the decoupling
agenda, GDP, keeps the thinking linearly, geared at maximum possible exploita-
tion: which means, for example, that species extinction rates ten times the average
rate over time are acceptable simply because they would not destroy human
welfare.

3.2.4 How Does Exchange Value Governance Impact

Living Systems?

Just as introducing the logic of cost–benefit thinking in more and more areas of life
numbs people to realizing what is really at stake, the logic of capital substitutability
turns the perceptions of the webs of life of which nature is composed into one of a
demand-satisfying raw material storage whose overexploitation will spur human
ingenuity into finding substitute input factors. Ironically, the concept was developed
to recognize nature’s importance in economic processes but in the end made nature
invisible.
It was John Hartwick who translated the concept of capital substitutability into
policy guidelines in the 1980s, and after the Rio Summit in 1992 these became the
measurement standards promoted by powerful international institutions. According
to the Hartwick–Solow rule, sustainable development is reached as long as the rent
or benefit made from degrading natural resources is invested in the augmentation of
man-made, i.e., social and human capital (Hartwick 1978: 347–354). As a conse-
quence, the world started changing its accounting systems, incorporating nature into
the most influential measure of economic performance and progress, GDP.
GDP expresses the sum of the market value of all final goods and services
produced by firms, individuals and the government in any given time within one
country’s borders. It is usually calculated annually and, with some minimal
exceptions, nothing is counted that is not purchased within that year. It also pro-
vides the base line for the most common indicator of poverty and standard of living,
GDP per capita. The total of GDP is divided by the number of people living in a
country.
The criticism of GDP as a measure has many nuances but three points are always
made:
• GDP violates accounting rules because it lumps together costs and benefits:
Cleaning up after natural disasters or having to install thick absorption walls
along highways for noise protection create payments for services and products
but are actually defensive expenditures. They only restore or maintain a similar
level of ‘wealth’ but do not increase it.
• GDP ignores all value created or depleted that has not been captured by market
prices. This includes household and volunteer work, education and caring for
children and the aged. Meanwhile, once someone starts being paid for this type
3.2 How Mainstream Economics Views Nature and Its Governance 95

of work, it automatically registers as ‘growth’ even though nothing new has

been created. Destruction of natural resources like healthy oceans, forests or
landscapes is growth, once someone pays for their raw materials, but the same
destruction is invisible if they do not.
• GDP is blind to the effects of distribution. The overall sum does not show who
has been receiving which amount of income from exchanging the products and
services whose market prices are aggregated. The per capita GDP of a country
may therefore rise while its poverty levels stay the same.
After a first wave of debate about the blind spots of GDP as a benchmark for
development in the 1970s, the ever more tangible, negative effects of the economic
growth development agenda have revived criticism in recent years. Since 2007,
many initiatives have formed around the world, which the OECD-led online plat-
form www.wikiprogress.org seeks to keep track of.
Before this revival, however, the capital substitutability logic had elegantly
settled the challenge of environmental limits to progress: in Standard National
Accounting, as used by the UN, only the formation of fixed, produced capital was
counted as an investment in the future, since it is viewed as increasing the value of
the assets available to society. Likewise, depreciation of the value of this type of
capital was calculated as a decrease. The World Bank engaged with the critique of
an undifferentiated understanding of capital and added human and environmental or
natural capital because, according to the World Bank’s Manual for Calculating
Adjusted Net Savings, they are equally important “assets upon which the produc-
tivity and therefore well-being of a nation rest” (World Bank 2002: 4). A depletion
in the stock of an asset like minerals or water means that options for future use
decrease and therefore should be calculated as a disinvestment.
However—and here we find the Hartwick-Solow rule—the net opportunity costs
for future citizens are not necessarily negative if the profits made from depletion are
invested elsewhere. The new indicator of Genuine Savings Accounting or Adjusted
Net Savings expresses this substitutability view by subtracting a country’s natural
capital depletion and pollution from its Gross National Income (GNI), which is
similar to GDP but counts the production of all citizens independently of where
they live.
Within the discipline of the economics of sustainability this approach has been
labeled “weak sustainability” because it does not make any reference to the bio-
physical limits that a country might well run into even if the entire population becomes
utterly smart and creative. This is different from the safe operating space mind-set and
became the source of peer benchmarking activities comparing the sustainability
performances of different countries. As the World Bank manual explains:
Weak sustainability assumes that any type of capital is perfectly substitutable for
natural capital as an input to production. From the adjusted net savings standpoint,
for example, a nation which reinvested all of its profits from the exploitation of
non-renewable resources in the formation of human capital through its educational
system would have imposed no net opportunity cost on the country’s future
96 3 Why the Mainstream Economic Paradigm Cannot Inform …

citizens. Whether or not this is precisely true is a hotly-debated issue, and this study
makes no attempt to settle the issue (World Bank 2002: 4).
In practice this means that an indicator of zero or more is viewed as sustainable
development, whereas negative savings indicate that total net wealth is in decline
and policy change is necessary (ibid.: 5). The most successful role models from this
point of view are all those countries that apply high royalties on the extraction of
their natural resources and use these to improve the social and human capital of
their population, which will then spur further growth.
The 2011 World Bank report, The Changing Wealth of Nations, calculated how
high the “hypothetical produced capital” of several countries would be, had they
reinvested the royalties from their environmental capital accordingly. Trinidad and
Tobago and Gabon could have tripled the social, human, and manufactured capital
they produced between 1995 and 2005 (World Bank 2011: 16). By contrast
Norway and its oil industry is always cited as the exemplary star performer.
So while Adjusted Net Saving acknowledges the growth/environment trade-off
to a certain degree, its assumption of easy capital substitutability does not provide
many warning signals on Planetary Boundaries. Instead it champions development
role models that cannot continue if sustainable development is to be achieved.
Norway is impressively rich in all forms of capital because it possesses and sells a
lot of oil. The IEA predicts that about two-thirds of the oil that could be extracted
and used needs to stay in the ground if climate protection goals are to be reached.
How can a country win the best practice sustainability prize if its current devel-
opment strategy is costing the earth?
Only monetary abstraction allows for the measurement of progress on sustain-
ability while ecosystems are threatening to tip out of balance.
Yet, this translation of all value assets into capital is one of the explicitly
mentioned advantages of the indicator. According to a World Bank manual on
Adjusted Net Saving, “it presents resource and environmental issues within a
framework that finance and development planning ministries can understand”
(World Bank 2012: 2). But, if the outlooks on the world and the language spoken in
those ministries are not conducive to finding solutions for sustainability, are they a
good standard to which to convert?

3.2.5 Summary: Governing Human–Nature Relations

Successfully Depends on Understanding Them

Market prices and indeed the economistic way of viewing the world clearly have
their limits when it comes to respecting the environmental and social dimensions of
sustainable development. This is why many scientists have argued for strong sus-
tainability in which different forms of capital cannot simply be exchanged for others
in measures of growth and progress. The clearest expression of this difference in
paradigm is the replacement of the three-pillar image born at the 1992 Rio Summit
3.2 How Mainstream Economics Views Nature and Its Governance 97

with one of embedded systems. Three pillars suggest that the economic, social, and
environmental dimensions are of equal quality and could potentially be served in an
additive and not integrated way: some institutions take care of social things, some
protect the environment and others make sure we have enough economic growth.
The total sum would be sustainable development.
I found a striking example of this during my PhD in global political economy
when I was also working as a volunteer campaigner for Friends of the Earth in its
international trade program. Since 1999, international civil society organizations
have formed huge coalitions behind the slogan “Our World is Not for Sale.” They
teamed up with small farmers, fishing communities, and workers from around the
globe to voice concerns about the impact that treating everything as traded com-
modities managed through global market mechanisms has on livelihoods, equity
and ecosystem integrity. They also pointed out that this type of world trade system
would primarily benefit wealthy corporate players who are empowered to expand
their activities according to their own standards.
The dominant narrative found in major global institutions, on the other hand,
presented a mainstream economic spin on why a global trade system and its core
institution, the World Trade Organization (WTO), would benefit poorer people:
growth will trickle down after some structural adjustment periods. Moreover,
environmental issues should be dealt with in the Multilateral Environmental
Agreements (MEAs) but not in purely economic trade negotiations. During my
research into different schools of economic thought and the role that scientific
expertise plays in institutionalization processes, I came across the following
eye-opening passage from the WTO’s tenth anniversary report. Prepared by an
“international panel of experts” it states: “It is old wisdom in many cultures that you
cannot kill two birds with one stone . . . So the correct policy solution is to fix the
environment through an appropriate environmental policy and to maintain open
trade to maximize the gains from trade and hence economic prosperity” (Sutherland
et al. 2004: 14).
Wow, I thought, have these people not heard anything about the sustainable
development agenda and its argument that this false dichotomy between environ-
ment and economy only holds in theoretical models? Checking the educational
background of the eight experts in question, I found that all of them had studied
economics at American universities. Differing passports notwithstanding, the
degree of diversity of views on this panel could hardly have been lower.
Unsurprisingly, some of the most popular cases for the WTO Dispute Settlement
Body and also the hottest topics in the ongoing Transatlantic Trade and Investment
Partnership (TTIP) negotiations are things like import bans on tuna fished with
tight nets that create incredible amounts of by-catch, genetically modified organ-
isms or hormone-treated meats: because they are ‘like products’ (basically offering
the same) they must not be treated differently under the purely economic trade law.
They must be granted equal access to the market. Also prohibited are border tax
adjustments that counter the competitive price advantage of products where
98 3 Why the Mainstream Economic Paradigm Cannot Inform …

producers did not pay the ‘true’ price for environmental degradation. One prime
example in the context of climate protection is CO2 emission standards for products
or companies: if only a handful of countries apply them, all foreign competitors
whose home countries do not make them pay for emissions can thus undercut the
more sustainable producers. It takes a degree in mainstream economics to continue
to see environmental and economic concerns as two separate birds and abstracted
‘evidence’ to support such ideological claims in the expert reports. It also takes the
popular growth narrative to justify even criminal pursuit of interests and fraudulent
behavior as somewhat related to overall economic progress.
The Volkswagen scandal is a great demonstration of how an economic mind-set
impacts the framing of events and thus the judgments of what is at stake: the EU
raised its emission standards because it tried to prevent the all-encompassing effects
of climate change and because air quality is the top environmental cause of pre-
mature deaths in Europe—about 100,000 a year. The World Health Organization
(WHO) declared air pollution the single biggest environmental health risk (Vidal
2014). Yet, when the intentional manipulation of emission measurement software
was discovered in Volkswagen cars, it was Volkswagen’s plummeting stock value
and the profit warnings that become headline news. The auto industry stands for
20 % of Germany’s GDP and some headlines are straightforwardly asking if it will
depress the country’s growth. Meanwhile, the German government continued to
block tougher European emission standards in the same month.
Structurally, the Growth Dilemma is real. But in societies with high incomes and
stagnant or negative population levels, the Growth Dilemma resembles far more a
straightjacket than an economy serving human needs: structurally it means we have
to always want more or else our economic systems fall into turmoil. Billions are
expended on marketing so that we do not forget that what we have is not enough.
Before the institutional setup that we are used to calling ‘markets’ can help to
bring out the best innovations and solutions for sustainable societies, they have to
be set up in a way that makes sustainable solutions their goal. Science should help
to understand, untangle and overcome the path dependencies that work in the other
direction. The mainstream economic paradigm and its monetary mind-set, measures
and metrics are not fit for this purpose. They are laden with value judgments and
power relations that disguise instead of enlighten.

3.3 How Mainstream Economics Anticipate the Future

This final subchapter turns to the dark green row at the bottom of Table 3.1. It
assesses what adopting the mainstream economic mind-sets means for addressing
the overarching goal of sustainable development: i.e., governing economies so that
future generations can also live satisfactory lives. To begin, mainstream economics
does not so much anticipate the future as extrapolate the way the economy will be
3.3 How Mainstream Economics Anticipate the Future 99

from the way it was. Or rather, what its models capture of the way the economy
was. Most influential in this respect are the GDP growth predictions derived from
the registered and aggregated monetary transactions. As long as these extrapola-
tions are positive the future looks positive. But if GDP growth is low, financial
markets get ‘nervous,’ investors ‘lose trust’ and politicians their jobs.
We have discussed the shortcomings of this measure above but what is important
to add when thinking about the future is that calculating GDP trends is an expo-
nential function. This means that zero growth, often perceived to be an equivalent
to economic standstill, equals operating at the same level of output as before. And
each successive percentage of growth is nominally bigger than the one before: the
baseline is higher. Thus, if GDP increases by, for example, 7 % in poorer countries
it is likely to indicate a far smaller increase in real production output than 1 %
growth in a rich country. Many historically aware experts thus argue that high
growth rates should be anticipated as temporary phenomena and not the norm.
In practice, zero growth does create several problems for the institutions behind
today’s capitalist market societies. But this is the result of the way they are set up
and not some kind of natural inevitability. Much of the data presented above
suggests that positive growth everywhere on the planet is not very likely to continue
much longer. Yet, mainstream economics can by definition not imagine a positive
future in which societies operate steady-state economies in which the throughput
stays at more or less the same level. The idea of or need for constant growth is a
natural law in any scenario or model for potential policy solutions.
This mental iron cage (Weber) is so strong that arguing for a no-growth or even
degrowth path in rich societies is often conflated with attacking the ethical
imperative of putting the needs of the poorest people first. Homo economicus
cannot share existing wealth without flipping his hedonic calculus into the red. The
Brundtland Report found that this would cause too much political resistance: The
matter-of-fact assumption was that, “in most situations redistributive policies can
only operate on increases in income” (WCED 1987: 47). Existing wealth is
sacrosanct:
The number of years required to bring the poverty ratio down from 50 to 10 %
ranges from:
• 18–24 years if per capita income grows at 3 %,
• 26–36 years if it grown at 2 %, and
• 51–70 years if it grows only at 1 %.
In each case, the shorter time is associated with the redistribution of 25 % of the
incremental income of the richest fifth of the population and the longer period with
no redistribution (WCED 1987: 47).
This no-net-loss justice definition has been, and still is, a taboo. It dovetails
nicely with the liberal Enlightenment ideas behind the mainstream economic
paradigm. Goal 8 in the SDGs, in particular its first target, reiterates the imperative
of growth for everyone, even the super-rich:
100 3 Why the Mainstream Economic Paradigm Cannot Inform …

Goal 8. Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive
employment and decent work for all
8.1 Sustain per capita economic growth in accordance with national circumstances and, in
particular, at least 7 % gross domestic product growth per annum in the least developed
countries (UN 2015: 16)

This time, the explicit connection with upping the chance for redistribution
policies is not even made. To be fair, there is SDG 10, “Reduce inequality within
and among countries”—but its target 10.1 makes very clear that this can only
happen with yet more growth: “By 2030, progressively achieve and sustain income
growth of the bottom 40 % of the population at a rate higher than the national
average” (ibid.: 17).

3.3.1 Which Real Qualities of Development Lie Behind

Monetarized Predictions?

The group hit hardest by the assumption that everything always keeps on growing is
the one for which the sustainable development agenda was originally created: future
generations. If we apply the no-net-loss justice definitions to our children and
grandchildren, we need to ensure that they do not pay too little for the outcomes of
investments that are paid for by generations today. The cost–benefit analyses of
political decision-making on public or social investments should therefore include
future costs and benefits. Who is paying and how much are they benefiting from
building roads or alternative transport systems, schools or parks, renewable or fossil
energy infrastructures, and so on?
For the mainstream economics mind-set the answer is as easy as it is convenient:
since economic growth and per capita incomes will continue to rise exponentially,
cost–benefit analyses almost always employ a social discount rate, meaning that the
costs for current and future generations are not weighted equally but are compar-
atively higher for those living and paying today.
So, instead of being worried about how future generations will be able to satisfy
their needs, weak sustainability economists worry that the current generation will
take on the cost of investing, while most of the benefits are reaped by future
generations. Adding the extrapolations of decreasing technology prices and
increasing efficiency gains renders ‘uneconomic’ many of the projects that others
would declare urgently necessary to keep within safe natural operating spaces.
Criticism of these assumptions therefore comes from economists who bring some
physical data into their equations. The seminal reports of Nicholas Stern, the 2006
The Economics of Climate Change, and the multi-scientist study The Economics of
Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB), coordinated by Pavan Sukhdev from 2008
onward, both explicitly call for zero or even negative discount rates.
3.3 How Mainstream Economics Anticipate the Future 101

Both of these studies came to this conclusion because they acknowledged the
fragile state of ecosystems today. For the authors, swift and significant investment
is necessary to restore their balance so that they can continue to provide the bio-
physical conditions that humans have enjoyed for thousands of years. The sooner
these investments are undertaken, the lower the eventual costs for overall devel-
opment. The economic costs of inaction today will rise so quickly that GDP growth
will not be able to outstrip them. Depending on the range of risks and impacts
calculated, Stern predicted losing between at least 5 % and more than 20 % of
global GDP each year indefinitely, while the TEEB report estimated the cost of
biodiversity and ecosystem damage would reach 18 % of global economic output
by 2050.
These claims are supported by the Oxford Martin Commission for Future
Generations chaired by Pascal Lamy, a former director-general of the WTO. The
primary purview of its work was to check where in current analytical concepts and
governance solutions the ignorance about the future was highest. The 2013 report
diagnosed a structural discrimination against future generations and concluded that
in “a world of considerable uncertainty about future levels of well-being” neither
linear extrapolation of trends nor short-term returns on investments in imperfect
markets were suitable measures for policy design. Instead, “[W]hen evaluating the
costs of action and inaction, policymakers need to ensure discounting embraces a
more sophisticated appreciation of the role of ethics, risk, and the scale of possible
damages in the future” (Oxford Martin Commission 2013: 61).
The science on ecosystems has shown that expecting further exponential growth
everywhere in the world for a long time might not be a fair base for ethical
considerations. Also, data from rich countries shows that growth rates have been
slumping for two decades (Wahl/Gödderz 2012). The research results on human
well-being have shown that this might not be such terrible news as long as the
growth-dependent institutional setups are changed and measures corrected so that
one can see what is really going on underneath the growth saga. Without this
transparency and accountability the GDP and monetary output measures keep us
blind to where a lot of uneconomic and unproductive ‘wealth’ is created and
concentrated.
For the majority of people on this planet—the 3 billion still living in poverty—
more and better access to goods and services is urgently needed. But the dogged
pursuit of absolute economic growth is not necessarily leading to this desired
outcome. GDP rose from $13 trillion with 5 billion people in 1987 to $72 trillion
with 7 billion people in 2012. Roughly speaking, this means we now live in a world
with economic output equaling $10,000 per capita compared to one equaling $2600
per capita 25 years ago. Technically, no one should have to suffer from hunger and
extreme poverty any longer. So reaching sustainability is not about more and more
output of everything for everyone but about getting the right outputs in the right
places into the right hands.
This is the key message that the inventors of the Genuine Progress Indicator
(GPI) and its predecessor, the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW) want
to illustrate. The GPI seeks to measure how economic growth can actually destroy
102 3 Why the Mainstream Economic Paradigm Cannot Inform …

social, human and environmental wealth and this methodology is mirrored in other
indices like the National Welfare Index (NWI) in Germany. While adhering to a
monetary valuation of progress, these indicators make an effort to identify the ‘use
value’ created or depleted in the course of a particular path of development. Starting
with the exchange value numbers of GDP, these are adjusted by using 24 different
components that express gains or losses in social, natural and human capital. These
include, for example, pollution and ozone levels, CO2 emissions, loss of farmland
and primary forests and, in line with many well-being findings, income distribution,
crime rates, loss of leisure time and also the time people spend in unpleasant
activities like commuting. The benefits of non-marketized work at home, or as
volunteers, are added as increases in wealth by counting the amount that it would
cost to employ someone to do the babysitting and cleaning etc. (Genuine Progress
2014).
The overall goal is not to create an alternative cumulative indicator of sustain-
able development, as the information loss through monetarization and high
aggregation levels prevails. The GPI was and is intended to deliver a warning as to
where increased GDP contrasts with negative individual and social experiences, i.e.,
when uneconomic growth is reached and the marginal benefits of more GDP
growth are lower than its marginal costs.
A growing group of researchers and some governments have calculated GPI per
capita and compared results with GDP per capita. Similarly to Easterlin’s findings,
they observed a parting of the two curves at a certain point of development. In a
2013 journal article, many of the leading scholars in ecological economics like
Robert Costanza, Tim Jackson and John Talberth brought together the insights of
GPI calculations in 17 countries from five continents, representing 53 % of the
world’s population. Next to an assessment of where the costs of GDP growth start
to outweigh its benefits they also compared GPI per capita findings with other
indicators like ecological footprint, the UN Development Programme or UNDP’s
Human Development Index or HDI and life satisfaction surveys in those countries
(Kubiszewski et al. 2013).
By using Purchasing Power Parity to convert all GPI and GDP findings into
2005 US dollars, they added up all the country data into Global GDP and GPI per
capita figures to compare their developments. While the authors do not claim their
figures were absolutely accurate, as both GPI and GDP are hard to determine, the
trends are clear (Fig. 3.5).
The authors identified the start of uneconomic growth on a global scale in the
late 1970s: “Global GPI/capita peaked in 1978, about the same time that global
Ecological Footprint exceeded global Biocapacity. Life Satisfaction in almost all
countries has also not improved significantly since 1975. Globally, GPI/capita does
not increase beyond a GDP/capita of around $7000/capita” (Kubiszewski et al.
2013: 57). The primary policy recommendation taken from these findings comes
very close to the Brundtland Report’s redistribution goal but without declaring that
we first need to grow more: “If we distributed income more equitably around the
planet, the current world GDP ($67 trillion/year) could support 9.6 billion people at
$7000/capita” (Kubiszewski et al. 2013). In 2012 we had already reached a global
3.3 How Mainstream Economics Anticipate the Future 103

Fig. 3.5 Comparing world GDP/capita and world GPI/capita trends. Source Kubiszewski et al.
(2013: 63)

GDP of $72 trillion. So what do these impressive numbers say about ubiquitous
scarcity and thus the endless need to grow?
A proper examination of which resources are scarce, which are not, and how all
of them are allocated, pushes economic accounting to the sidelines and puts ethics,
political will and power relations center stage. We see utterly wasteful and unjust
consumption, production and distribution patterns.
Tracking the actual output of food, for example, shows that we have what we need
to feed everyone well. According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization,
roughly one third of what is produced for human consumption is never eaten. This
amounts to about 1.3 billion tons per year. Examining the figures by country, we see
that people in Sub-Saharan Africa, South as well as South East Asia only waste
around 6–10 kg per person per year whereas Europeans and North Americans throw
away between 95 and 115 kg of perfectly edible food (FAO 2011: v).
This pattern is repeated with other goods as well. In Britain around 30 % of the
contents of the average wardrobe has not been worn for at least a year, which gives
us the figure of 1.7 billion items of clothing unused in the United Kingdom alone
(Gracey/Moon 2012: 2).
In 2006, the McKinsey Global Institute calculated that the world’s financial
markets struggled to find investment opportunities for about 3.5 times global GDP
at the time. This was the staggering figure of $167 trillion in desperate liquidity
(Farrell et al. 2008: 7) at the same time that the international community could not
104 3 Why the Mainstream Economic Paradigm Cannot Inform …

(and cannot) find enough money to supply sustainable energy, sanitation and food
to a third of the world’s population (Scharmer/Kaufer 2013: 94).
So, we can see that quite a bit of the capital (energy) is withdrawn from the
system even though demand for more produced goods or use value is clearly there.
The mainstream model of the economy in Fig. 3.3 does not capture this. But if the
purchasing power among the poor does not meet capital owners’ expectations of
return on investment it will not flow there. Current ‘growth’ measurement standards
are indifferent to such distributive effects. They count a euro that pays for a private
jet as having created the same ‘value’ as one that pays for a ton of rice.
In rich countries slowing growth is usually equated with unemployment, the
biggest threat to well-being. A team of economists at the Institute for Sustainable
Development and International Relations (IDDRI) at the Science Po university in
France has conducted a study on “A post-growth society for the twenty-first cen-
tury. Does prosperity have to wait for the return of economic growth?” Here we find
collated evidence about jobless growth, a disconnect between wage rises and
productivity gains and a missing link between long-term growth and employment
levels. The researchers conclude that political changes in labor policies, taxes,
pension and health systems, and investment criteria would allow for much less
growth-dependent societies in which individual and social prosperity are not
compromised (Chancel et al. 2013).
So, sticking with the mantra in which endless economic growth is needed is a
great way of avoiding the political responsibility and struggles that unlocking those
path dependencies requires. This Herculean task is not helped by the perverse
inequalities that the real rather than theoretical market logics, laws and institutions
like our monetary system have created, overlooked or disguised by undifferentiated
cost–benefit and growth analyses. In the United States, for example, decoupling
productivity gains from real wage developments went hand in hand with lower
taxation on capital and wealth. This cocktail has driven GDP to unprecedented
heights and inequality levels back to those of the 1920s.
In a podcast for the Economist, Robert Reich, labor secretary under Bill Clinton
and an economics professor explains: “Most of the economic gains in the past
25 years have gone to the top 15–20 % of Americans, but more recently, in the past
six to seven years, most of the economic gains have gone to the top one percent….
The average CEO is making about 380 times more than the average worker—a
huge gap relative to what it used to be 40 years ago—it was about 30 times” (Reich
2007). This interview predated the financial crisis, which has accelerated still fur-
ther the rise in income of those controlling the factors of production.
One major cause of this trend has been documented by the OECD in its 2008
report Growing Unequal? Income Distribution and Poverty in OECD Countries. In
countries where financial capital gains and self-employment income are taxed at
lower rates than wages the pattern is clear: the top 20 % keep on diverging from the
middle classes and lower income strata. Real wages have stagnated in most of the
OECD countries since the 1980s and in many the trend is “moderate but signifi-
cant” while some countries like Germany, Canada, Norway, the United States and
Italy report ‘significant’ changes.
3.3 How Mainstream Economics Anticipate the Future 105

The primary policy measure, especially for any longer-term correction of this
structural discrimination, was outlined as follows: “Relying on taxing more and
spending more as a response to inequality can only be a temporary measure. The
only sustainable way to reduce inequality is to stop the underlying widening of
wages and income from capital” (OECD 2008: 3). In this context it is interesting
that the OECD report did not include the income of the super-rich because it would
have been hard to measure by standard income indicators. What Thomas Picketty
called the rentier class (2014) earns and manages its wealth differently.
The Tax Justice Network (TJN), a coalition of researchers and activists, esti-
mated in 2012 that some 30 % of global financial wealth was owned by the top
0.001 % of the world’s population or about 91,000 people. The next 19 % was
owned by the next 0.01 %, or 800,000 people and 32 % belonged to the next
0.1 %, or 8 million people. This left 19 % of the world’s financial wealth for the
remaining 99.9 % of the world’s population (TJN 2012: 5).
These numbers are probably utterly out of date by now. Oxfam International
brought new calculations to the 2014 WEF showing that the richest 85 people
owned assets which amounted to the same value as those owned by the poorest 3.5
billion people. Since the report used numbers gleaned from the ‘Forbes Billionaires
List,’ the magazine published an update three months later: the top tier had shrunk
to 67 individuals.
The wealth of the wealthiest is growing so fast that the lists need monthly
updates. Within one year, from 2013 to 2014, the threshold for qualification into the
top 20 billionaires list jumped from $23 to $31 billion (Moreno 2014).
TJN went further and also examined levels of tax avoidance and the harmful
impacts of tax competition and tax havens in offshore centers. In 2012 they pub-
lished a report by James Henry, a former chief economist at McKinsey. According to
him, at least $21 trillion and possibly up to $32 trillion of “unreported privately held
financial wealth” is squirreled away in tax havens. This is a sum, “equivalent to the
size of the United States and Japanese economies combined” (Henry 2012: 1). And
this is only financial wealth. It excludes real estate, yachts and other non-financial
assets owned via offshore structures.
Because this is unreported wealth, inevitably none of these sums have so far
made it into the official statistics, so global wealth inequality is much higher than
the data we usually draw upon suggests. In order to put the potential of redis-
tributing existing wealth into perspective, TJN calculated how much a tax of 30 %
on a conservative estimate of 3 % capital gains on those $21–32 trillion would
generate. The resulting $190–280 billion is double the amount that the OECD
countries combined spend on all overseas development assistance around the world
(Henry 2012: 2). Additional taxes, for example, on inheritance, a wealth tax or a
collection of tax avoided in years past would increase the numbers accordingly.
TJN estimates that the $21 trillion belongs to no more than 10 million people
who can afford a team of advisers specializing in the most effective ways of
avoiding tax. This casts a very different light on scarcity, just distribution practices
or proper formula for redistribution policies. The ahistorical ethics of no-net-loss is
unmasked as just as half-baked as closed system physics.
106 3 Why the Mainstream Economic Paradigm Cannot Inform …

A future-oriented ethics and also management strategy was actually defined as

part of sustainable development: sufficiency. Next to efficiency (no unnecessary
waste) and consistency (solutions fit local—environmental—systems) this strategy
is not so much technical but highly normative. It means embracing the idea that
there can and should be enough production and consumption. Phrased this way it
sounds like the baseline of sustainable development. Enough for everyone forever.
Enough and not less, however, also means enough and not more. At least on one
finite planet.
Yet, the economic thinking that is so overwhelmingly influential in politics and
public discourse today simply excludes sufficiency from what could be a feasible
solution. It is equated to a depression or moving back into caves. Moreover, it is
often mainstream economists who declare that any idea of sufficiency, or no further
economic growth in rich economies, would impair the ‘human freedom’ to invent,
innovate and be creative. Not even in countries with stable population levels can
their theory conceive of how living up to human potential would not lead to more
market sales.
Critical conceptual environment and development thinkers like Wolfgang Sachs
readily point out that only rich people can fall into the trap of seeing sufficiency
solely as a regression. For every person living in deprivation and hunger the end of
suffering is an aspiration (Sachs 2015: 2). In addition, Sachs continues, refraining
from having more than enough might be less of an altruistic move, but instead a
step toward justice and respect in a system where the overflow of wealth in some
parts is directly connected to exploitation in others (ibid.).
The idea of providing enough for everyone within the carrying capacity of the
planet was iconized in the ‘doughnut’ by Kate Raworth, UK researcher and cam-
paigner for Oxfam in the run-up to the Rio+20 Summit. Her graph combines the
Planetary Boundaries with minimum entitlements to social foundations to which
every person on this planet should be granted access. The resulting ‘doughnut’
shows that there is a corridor or “safe and just operating space” in which devel-
opment can be sustainably pursued.
The social foundations in Fig. 3.6 do not reflect a scientific assessment, but
instead the results of what governments had stated to be their priorities in the run-up
to the conference. They are therefore not definitive but illustrative. An under-
standing of the qualities of most important social foundations and of which gov-
ernance solutions can most successfully embed them will become more precise with
more research, just as the Planetary Boundaries will. Unfortunately, none of these
empirical searches will be helped by mainstream economic approaches. In these
approaches, only more monetary growth would mean that societies could pay for
cleaning up the environment and grant some support to their unfit citizens—who
could not otherwise survive.
3.3 How Mainstream Economics Anticipate the Future 107

Fig. 3.6 The sustainable development doughnut. Source Based on Raworth (2012: 4)

3.3.2 Unveiling the Money Magic

On checking the statistics one can see that we do not have too little but far too much
money racing around the globe. We live in a situation in which there is no lack of
money but rather a lack of credit to fund real economic activity where it is needed.
Instead, the search for trillions of dollars for good returns on investment causes
frequent bubbles and economic instability. Sounds absurd? That is what I thought
until I read good old Karl Marx. He explains how, in the context of the ascent of the
mainstream economic paradigm, money has been given a peculiar function—a
function that Polanyi acknowledged when he called it a fictitious commodity, but
that economics textbooks overlook. It is very relevant when seeking to understand
roadblocks to sustainable development.
108 3 Why the Mainstream Economic Paradigm Cannot Inform …

Money is typically portrayed as an equivalent value expression for all types of

goods and services. It is defined as serving three functions. As a ‘medium of
exchange’ it facilitates trade between goods. If a fisherman had to barter whatever
he had caught directly for all the goods and services that he needed, it would require
a lot of work, or luck, to find trading partners in possession of what he wanted, and
they would also have to want fish in return. Money eases barter by dividing it into
two transactions. The fisherman gets money for his fish from whoever wants the
fish, and gives that money to whoever happens to offer what he himself wants. As a
‘unit of account’ money therefore allows the fisherman to measure the exchange
value of what he has and to estimate how much of which good or service he can get
on selling his produce. This also allows him to start planning a more complex
fisheries enterprise and to use the money as a ‘store of value’ until he has saved
enough, so that he can purchase another boat. During periods of low catches this
also allows him to continue buying goods or services without having any fish to
sell.
These three functions are listed in the mainstream textbooks. Here, exchange
value and use value are directly linked. Each economic process involves investing
money in order to produce an output whose value is higher than that of the single
input factors. Savings or credit is applied to enable productive processes. The
investor or creditor often participates in the generated surplus value for the pru-
dence that saving money took or the risk that taking on a debt involves.
Thus goes the money story, and originally, as the term ‘commodity money’
expresses, there was something of real value behind it, e.g., beads or rare metals
like gold. Marx’s equation for this function of money goes as follows: C–M–C’, or
in other words commodities of a given value are available as input—one applies
money to enable a process of combining them—commodities with higher value
form the output (Marx 1887: 102–108).
This narrative is so strong that even today we think of money as something
thing-like. But it was in fact a social innovation and over the course of the Great
Transition stripped of any real use value, making it ‘fiat money.’ This type of
money exists only because of government regulation. Its paper value tokens or
numbers on computer screens have no real value at all. They are not real wealth but
a claim on wealth and only function because you and the person or institution
owing you the money accept this relational duty—or have to accept it by legal
imposition.
So money is a relationship, as the root of the word credit—the Latin term
credere or believing in—indicates. The paper notes of the Bank of England still
have the following pledge on them: “I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum
of….” This type of money is a form of debt: Someone owes you something of real
value. It is a promise of access to something one desires in the future.
With this innovation societies gave themselves the collective illusion that such
faith-based wealth tokens could be transformed into any use value at any time.
James Tobin (1918–2002), who won the Nobel Prize for economics in 1981,
summarized this effect nicely:
3.3 How Mainstream Economics Anticipate the Future 109

The community’s wealth now has two components: the real goods accumulated through
past real investment and fiduciary or paper ‘goods’ manufactured by the government from
thin air. Of course the nonhuman wealth of such a nation ‘really’ consists only of its
tangible capital. But, as viewed by the inhabitants of the nation individually, wealth
exceeds the tangible capital stock by the size of what we might term the fiduciary issue.
This is an illusion, but only one of the many fallacies of composition which are basic to any
economy or any society. The illusion can be maintained unimpaired so long as society does
not actually try to convert all of its paper wealth into goods (Tobin 1965: 676).

The beauty of this transformation was that there were far fewer limitations on the
amount of money that could be created. But how did this impact the functions of
money? This is the key question that Marx was looking at and he showed that the
useful public good or social illusion was slowly but surely turned into a private
commodity serving the accumulation of ever more financial wealth in any form.
For Marx, this was one of the essential and specific features of a capitalist market
economy in comparison to other forms of market economies. His original use of the
term ‘capital’ expresses the objectification of value in the form of financial ‘prod-
ucts’ that enable people to not only spend money on buying other commodities but
also to apply it, with the sole aim of accumulating more money.
Marx expressed the difference by turning the normal money function around:
C-M-C’ (the purpose of money is to serve a higher input/output goal of creating
something with more use value) becomes M-C-M’ in which the purpose of money
is to make more money. It is applied in any economic transaction that promises
more exchange value and thus more financial return on investment (Marx 1887:
102–108). What is actually done in this process becomes secondary.
Prior to Polanyi’s fictitious commodities, Marx showed how ‘financial capital’
becomes an input factor just like all the goods whose value it should express. The
analogy expressing what he called a socioeconomic ‘craziness’ was the general
genus of “the animal.” Imagine a world in which it would suddenly come to life and
interact with lions, tigers, rabbits and all the other creatures that this term had been
created to subsume (Heinrich 2005, 76). Making money a ‘value object’ destined to
be sold in markets is the incarnation of an abstract idea that turns debt into wealth.
This new commodity, however, is the most desirable of all as long as the
conversion belief holds strongly. It does not rot, it needs little room for storage and
promises to transform itself into any use value at any time. And for those with more
money than their own need satisfaction requires, its application creates even more
money without much actual work being required. In several languages we have the
expression ‘make your money work for you,’ which refers to money invested
purely to generate interest. This became a strong desire in accumulation-seeking
individuals and soon we saw the emergence of private banks and lending
organizations.
This is where the ‘public good’ concept of the way a financial sector should be
set up was very beneficial, although it no longer reflects reality. Public goods serve
all of society, so a financial sector designed from this perspective would have the
role of ensuring that credit could flow where it was needed for use value generation.
As a consequence, the fewer the costs involved in accomplishing this service, the
110 3 Why the Mainstream Economic Paradigm Cannot Inform …

better for society. So the financial sector should account for as small a percentage of
total economic activity as possible (Dietz/O’Neill 2013: 110). The people working
in it need to be paid for their managerial work since the actual value created for a
society begins elsewhere, in the productive economy.
Does this resemble the financial system of today? Certainly not. The idea that
finance is serving the economy is actively maintained, but increasing deregulation
has allowed its institutions to do far more than matching the received money with
credit needs. Today, private banks create a huge amount of the money themselves.
While governments still control currency, over 90 % of the money supply is issued
by private, commercial banks and institutions that leverage the deposited amounts
multiple times when issuing credit, i.e., debt (Daly/Farley 2010: 289–291).
Under the regulation of ‘fractional reserve banking,’ a bank only needs to have a
small sum to be able to create big amounts of money. A reserve requirement of
10 %, for example, means that the bank can use a $100 deposit to create $900 in
credit, out of which maybe $500 will make it into another bank account leading to
another $4500 of new money, and so on. In some cases before the financial crisis of
2008 these reserves were as low as 2–3 % or even zero.
Not all of this magically created money becomes productive credit by any
means. Most of it circulates between financial institutions, while only a third of it
enters the real economy (Scharmer/Kaufer 2013: 101–103). In practice this has
meant that, in the last few decades, the amount of money in circulation has been
growing much faster than the output of the real economy. Foreign exchange
transactions of $1.5 quadrillion outnumber international trade by a factor of 75
(Scharmer/Kaufer 2013: 94). This has led economists like Tobin (cited above) to
demand a financial transaction tax that would slow such speculative flows down
and provide some revenue that could be used by the government institutions
safeguarding the public good image with gigantic bailouts or guarantees.
So the idea of turning money into a commodity and then stripping it of any
real-world embodiment has led to what has been called the ‘financialization’ of
economies: all value that is exchanged is captured, counted and expressed in
monetary figures and thus easily transformed into financial instruments that can be
traded in markets. Unsurprisingly the financial sector now contributes about 10 %
of GDP in countries like the United Kingdom and the United States, up from 2.3 %
in the 1950s (Ferguson 2008: 6).
Meanwhile, the excess of ‘wealth’ leads to an increase of prices of already
existing assets like real estate and stocks, but not necessarily to the creation of new
production and innovation that would bring new use value to where it is really
needed. This was accelerated by making shareholder value the prime goal in cor-
porate governance, and giving it greater importance than what is actually produced
and how. But if money’s purpose is to be applied for a good and quick financial
return, risk calculations in comparison to the estimated profits speak against poor
countries and people with non-Western legislation and a lack of purchasing power.
Behind this financialization trend and the increasing protection and privileging
of investors lies, of course, the view that money, as capital, is a commodity or input
factor equal to all the others. Of course it entitles its owner to a share of the
3.3 How Mainstream Economics Anticipate the Future 111

generated surplus value. Some mainstream economists say that the investor is in
effect paid for abstaining from the immediate utility gains that using the money for
consumption would have brought, had he not lent it to someone else. Others would
say that interest is necessary to incentivize paying back, and a justified premium for
the risk involved in lending it to others.
All of this might have been true in times in which shareholders were also
stakeholders and typically longer-term investors. Today, the vast majority of stocks
are held by sharehoppers. Buying and selling within seconds is not really taking
part in the entrepreneurial risk of a business. The traders doing it do not care what
the companies do. Their algorithms track price developments and seek to gain from
differences at times of purchase and selling. Whether the companies flourish or tank
does not matter to them.
It does not come as a great surprise that profit making increasingly occurs for
those inventing more and more financial instruments or ‘products’ like derivatives,
credit default swaps, futures and options that are exchanged and traded in markets
totally removed from the commodity world. We need a third equation: M-M-M′.
Financialization has several consequences from mind-sets to the structural dri-
vers of development: the importance of financial motives and motivations increases
in line with the influence of financial institutions, elites and markets in governing
institutions. Big parts of the financial system today have lost any resemblance to the
fiduciary role that Tobin foresaw. Trillions in desperate liquidity chase around the
globe in search of good returns while money for development aid, climate pro-
tection or refugees cannot be found.
Meanwhile, the expectation of a constant return on each investment leads to
compound interest developments that are simply absurd if one takes the long view
of future generations. Garrett Hardin (1915–2003), a famous American ecologist,
gave an example in 1985:
Suppose that the thirty pieces of silver Judas received for betraying Christ had
been worth $30; and suppose that he had put this into a bank account bearing 5 %
compound interest, payable in gold. Presuming the present price of gold, the initial
capital would amount to 2.5 grams of gold. How long would it take for the Judas
Account to be worth a weight of gold equal to the weight of the entire earth
(5.983 × 1027 g)? Just 1292 years (Hardin 1985: 72).

3.3.3 Summary: Opening up Mainstream Economic Ideas Is

Key for ‘Our Common Future’

Section 3.3 highlighted how the ideas and concepts summarized in Table 3.1 are
among the root causes of financialization and its utterly unsustainable patterns of
exploitation, allocation and accumulation. It showed what gets lost if these concepts
provide the explanations and evidence for sustainability policymaking. Most
importantly, it highlighted how the mind-sets and narratives building on these
112 3 Why the Mainstream Economic Paradigm Cannot Inform …

concepts encourage worldviews, personality structures and justification logics that

might be very transformational, but not toward the goals and principles that the
sustainable development agenda has adopted.
“Economic thought systems matter because they are at the heart of an intellectual battle
over the future direction of society,” wrote MIT scholar Otto Scharmer and researcher
Katrin Kaufer in their 2013 book on working toward more sustainable economies. The
mainstream belief system, they continue, “has given Wall Street a de facto veto over public
policy making that no other group or industry enjoys.” Simon Johnson, another MIT
professor and former IMF chief economist, is cited by them: “by 1998, it was part of the
worldview of the Washington elite that what was good for Wall Street was good for
America” (all from Scharmer/Kaufer 2013: 71).

The following summary is thus also the conclusion of this chapter. It briefly runs
through the four big ideas listed in Table 3.1 and why they fall short when we seek
to understand how to satisfy human needs while respecting nature’s law. The
discussions above have shown that they are scientifically flawed. Yet, through their
materialization in today’s market and government structures, these ideas have
become very real in their impact on people, their decision-making and their freedom
to do things differently and more sustainably.
The reflexive ontology behind this book sees the opening up of worldviews and
belief systems as the first step in system innovation strategies: identify which
arguments, practices or laws are built around flawed assumptions and ideas and
understand how they hamper more sustainable developments. Engaging in trans-
forming such path dependencies will of course always be a highly political, con-
tested and power-ridden process whose outcome no one can predict. But shedding
vested intellectual interests often comes before shedding economic vested interests:
sense and legitimacy of the status quo start crumbling and alternative practices
multiply, inspired by an emerging imaginary that there are indeed alternatives.
Trying to understand the world by dividing it into pieces creates an imaginary in
which the relationships and generative rules underlying system dynamics get lost
behind numbers and detailed descriptions of the individual pieces. This atomistic
view of mechanical systems suggests that the single items remain unchanged and
between them one can detect and thus manage linear and reproducible causalities in
an additive or subtractive approach. System dynamics are viewed as predictable and
controllable as long as the properties of the individual parts are understood well.
There are no time delays or feedback loops that allow one to anticipate the fact that
stopping a particular cause will no longer stop a particular reaction once system
dynamics have reached tipping points. General ignorance of the Tyranny of Small
Decisions is related to this: large output changes need large input changes. It is this
‘particle’ worldview or paradigm that leads to the common juxtaposition of
incremental versus radical change.
But applying this view to complex systems filled with humans is not helpful, as
the financial crises show. Using it to inform strategies of human need satisfaction
offers very little insight about the matter it is supposed to address: utility or hap-
piness is a relative and context-dependent experience and not a thing that can be
privately held and hoarded. Meanwhile, natural capital is a web of life and not a
3.3 How Mainstream Economics Anticipate the Future 113

stack of resources and services to be freely disassembled, reassembled and

substituted.
Neither happiness nor nature qualify as ‘pieces’ whose properties stay the same
if they are relocated. Nor can properties be easily reinstalled once single items have
been taken out of their former setting. Understanding the world in systems, on the
other hand, provides a very different understanding of the developments and their
trajectories. Notions of tipping points, non-linear developments, delays and run-
away effects, as well as irreversible changes and uncertainty enter the picture
instead. This changes the perceptions of risk and even cost–benefit analyses
tremendously. Adopting a precautionary approach becomes more of a rational
strategy than one easily dismissed as anti-progress. This is the effect of paradigm
shifts as described by Kuhn:
. . . the historian of science may be tempted to exclaim that when paradigms change, the
world itself changes with them. Led by a new paradigm, scientists adopt new instruments
and look in new places. Even more important, during revolutions scientists see new and
different things when looking with familiar instruments in places they have looked before.
It is rather as if the professional community had been suddenly transported to another planet
where familiar objects are seen in a different light and are joined by unfamiliar ones as well.
. . . In so far as their only recourse to that world is through what they see and do, we may
want to say that after a revolution scientists are responding to a different world (Kuhn 1962:
111).

Understanding the world through quantifying and monetizing has subjected ever
more areas of social being and collaboration as well as human–nature relations to
the logic of markets. A non-market relationship or good is transformed into a
commodity that is, from now on, compensated for with a payment, wage, rent or
interest. It is now captured in economic statistics and an exchange value frame of
willingness-to-pay enters the relation: the worth of everything is expressed in pri-
ces. Marglin dedicated his entire book to discussing how thinking like an economist
undermines the earlier guiding principles and frames around those relations: people
or communities who were formerly rather self-reliant and governed by reciprocity
become dependent on market processes and the exchange values of their particular
goods and services (Marglin 2010). With money come economistic mind-sets and
financial motivations. The wider cultural meaning of work as a productive and
caring activity is reduced to something done to make money.
While some may argue that this has delivered on a more efficient division of
labor and specialization, it does not at all automatically mean that the relations and
the quality of services like childcare, nursing, housework, etc., improves. Or that
people enjoy their work more and perform better. At the same time, this way of
thinking justifies anti-poor resentment because the lower the price of what one
offers to society (i.e., the wage), the less worth it has. Therefore, having no job is
viewed as a sign of not making enough effort.
Meanwhile, expanding financialization also means that the structural imperative
of needing even more growth is expanded. Using interest-bearing or debt-based
forms of money means that the borrower not only has to ensure an output that
returns the input factor costs and his income in the form of profit, but also the
114 3 Why the Mainstream Economic Paradigm Cannot Inform …

interest he has to pay for the credit. Each enterprise owner therefore operates under
constrained conditions when it comes to making production processes more sus-
tainable, equitable or simply constant in output. Thanks especially to quarterly
reporting and very short returns on investment expectations, they work with
additional drivers toward the already high incentive to externalize environmental
and social costs in weakly regulated competitive economies.
Regarding natural exploitation, Trucost, a green accounting specialist, has
estimated that the world’s 3000 largest corporations caused $2.15 trillion in envi-
ronmental damage in 2008 alone—and this did not register on their balance sheets
(Trucost 2012). Imagine what internalizing these costs would mean for their profit
warnings and thus stock values. So neither monetization nor market prices are
neutral indicators or just allocation mechanisms, but are instead defined through
highly political and power-laden processes.
Understanding the world by tracking accumulation of monetized values there-
fore keeps us from seeing where more productivity becomes void of productiveness
and utility or where growth is causing irreversible damage in our ecosystems.
Sociologist Harald Welzer describes the ‘degrading’ effect for humans:
This is the exact form in which work is understood in national economic theory: as an
unlimited, endless activity that does not have a specific, limited, product-related objective,
but is dedicated to the ceaseless creation of value—consequently the never-ending pro-
duction of ‘growth.’ Marx referred to this process as the disappearance of concrete labor
into exchange value (Welzer 2011: 22).

In affluent countries, as Jorgen Norgaard, professor at the Technical University

of Denmark, has written, “much of the growth in GDP over the last years can be
ascribed to pulling activities like child care, health care, cooking, entertainment,
maintaining houses, etc. from the non-paid amateur economy into the professional
economy” (Nørgård 2013: 63). All of these effects are part of what the decoupling
agenda will measure: the economy ‘immaterializes’ itself. But nothing new has
necessarily been created. Only the way it is done has changed.
The same things happen when corporations run by CEOs rather than owners
gear their business toward increasing shareholder value, for example, through
tactical issuance, sales and buying back of stocks. Big corporations now have huge
internal financial departments whose only purpose is to increase the firm’s market
value and top executive pay is usually coupled directly to the firm’s stock market
value. For societies, however, exploding prices for stocks, houses, raw materials
and land cannot count as a sign of real wealth generation, particularly if lower strata
of society lose access to them. Instead, this type of ‘growth’ is a sign of too much
liquidity and at the same time perpetuates its concentration even further. The
by-catch are economic bubbles and instability.
Understanding the world by comparing and ranking all of the monetized price
indicators instead of the underlying items does, however, mean that fictitious wealth
can continue to grow for a long time. Capital substitutability thinking allows for
Tobin’s social myth to be stretched so far that consultancy firms like the Boston
Consulting Group really issue forecasts like the following: “for Chinese children
3.3 How Mainstream Economics Anticipate the Future 115

born in 2009, continued economic progress will mean that over the course of their
lives, they can expect to consume thirty-eight times more material goods than their
grandparents” (Asia Society 2012). Since 2010, the WEF’s Global Risk Reports
have, however, put water and food supply crises and rising greenhouse gas emis-
sions among the top ten global risks of the next ten years. So while Chinese kids
might keep on amassing financial capital, they could never transform it into 38
times more material goods.
Meanwhile, applying an exchange value or cost–benefit lens in all relations does
affect human value judgments and our willingness to help, relate and feel connected
to others and nature. One of the ongoing examples here is the cooptation of the idea
of a ‘Sharing Economy’ by capitalist players. What started with the idea that people
would make their use value items available to others (couchsurfing) has been pulled
into the logics of exchange value. The mind-set of ‘what could I give to others to
enjoy—or enjoy with them jointly’ is transformed into a financialized mind-set of
‘what can I get money for from others that I did not think of before now.’ The
enabling technologies might be the same but the intent and purpose behind these
social innovations is completely different—as will be the relations emerging from it.
I therefore side with Heyman and Ariely who suggest “that compensations for
employment and effort should be considered separately for social and monetary
markets and that the level and type of compensation should be designed to fit the
defined relationship” (Heyman/Ariely 2004: 793).
In conclusion we see how a blind emphasis on exchange value in mainstream
accounting tools and standards has helped a situation to emerge in which the
financial sector does not serve the real economy anymore, but rules it. It does that at
a tremendously high cost to societies and sustainability. Of course, one might argue
that people wishing to exert power and undercut societal agreements do so without
taking the detour into mainstream economic thinking and models. But when it
comes to rationalizing one’s decisions, arguing them to the public and creating
narratives in which particular interests seem compatible with an image of public
benefit and good, they have performed a great service.
Also, the reflexive ontology presented in Chap. 2 has shown that biasing frames
and selective interpretations of situations are an unavoidable aspect of human
existence. They can be a conscious act of strategic framing or tactical misrepre-
sentation of information. But when it comes to understanding the effect of para-
digms and their shifting we talk about much deeper sociocultural transformations.
Elinor Ostrom in her 2009 Nobel Prize lecture highlights how the—of course—
purely economic Homo economicus saga has impacted the design of institutions
across the board:
Designing institutions to force entirely self-interested individuals to achieve better out-
comes has been the major goal posited by policy analysts for much of the past half century.
Extensive empirical research leads me to argue that instead, a core goal of public policy
should be to facilitate the development of institutions that bring out the best in humans
(Ostrom 2009: 435).
116 3 Why the Mainstream Economic Paradigm Cannot Inform …

So what could become the major goal instead? Summarizing twenty-first century
research about human needs and how to align them with nature’s qualities brings us
very close to the differentiated framework of sufficiency of Sachs. He suggested it
as early as the 1990s, and I did not anticipate this resemblance when I began to
write the book.
For Sachs, sufficiency goes far beyond simply having less stuff. It tackles several
unsustainable trends of the current development paradigm at once. In the frame-
work he differentiates four ‘E’s’ in German (Entschleunigung, Entflechtung,
Entrümpelung, and Entkommerzialisierung), which I would translate as four ‘D’s’:
Deceleration, Deglobalization, Decluttering, and Decommodification. In a book on
sufficiency policies another translator has called them the “four Lessens” because
these concepts “express the idea that we need to lessen our speed, our distance, the
encumbrance of our acquired possessions, and the role of commerce and the market
in our lives” (Schneidewind/Zahrnt 2014: 30).
I like the four D’s and summarize the key stance behind them by drawing on
terms that were introduced and discussed in this chapter:
• Deceleration—endless efficiency and increasing speed in all areas of production
and consumption reduce experienced utility and increase vulnerability of pro-
duction chains;
• Deglobalization—price-driven fragmentation of production chains and
transnational corporate units across the globe boosts profits but widely exter-
nalizes ecological costs and avoids fair taxation;
• Decluttering—running after ever more stuff in competition with others reduces
the ability to really connect and enjoy each one of our items and also over-
stretches the Earth’s carrying capacity;
• Decommercialization—applying mental models of commodities and financial
benefits to all relationships leads to less quality of life, less concern for others or
the environment, and keeps governance blind to the physical and psychological
realities behind the numbers.
We can take more care of what we have, distribute it more sensibly and thor-
oughly, and innovate our production and consumption systems so they bring us into
a safe and just operating space. There clearly is enough to go round. Spending
patterns show that there is room for the reorientation of already existing wealth
without ruining lives. We do not need ever more output. We need different business
models, market patterns, money systems and the courage to let go of the exhausting
narrative that we are insatiable egoists trapped in a constant competitive race over
accumulation for accumulation’s sake and a fear of falling behind.
The good news is that the wider context of what could shape into a Second
Enlightenment movement holds this potential:
• Emphasis lies on reflexivity that takes circumstances into account when
undertaking intellectual and empirical investigations.
• Social sciences and the role of spirituality return to the realms of understanding
and explaining development patterns of the world.
3.3 How Mainstream Economics Anticipate the Future 117

• Discourse around natural limits to growth meets an information technology

revolution that could enable decentralized, resource-light well-being.
• Limits to private property and financialization are discussed as tenets for
securing all citizens’ freedoms and the functioning of democracy.
Where this type of thinking lies at the heart of developing businesses, towns,
governments, and communities is the topic we turn to now.

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Chapter 4
Mapping an Emerging New Economic
Paradigm in Practice

Recognizing the importance of mind-sets in the sustainability transition allows an oppor-

tunity to reflect and examine underlying assumptions, identify shared values and cultivate
common ground. Each of these contributes to defining the shared goals and the compelling
visions necessary to bring these changes about.
UNEP, GEO-5 (2012: 422).
Driving the system to do more will not be enough if something different is needed. When
the goals and ends of the system are in question, then systems innovation has to focus not
merely on new means but on a new purpose.
Leadbeater and Mulgan, Systems Innovation (2013: 46).
Vision is not enough; it must be combined with venture. It is not enough to stare up the
steps, we must step up the stairs.
Vaclav Havel

Transformation research is close to innovation research and practice in its emphasis

on experimentation and the role that pioneers play when it comes to testing new
solutions. Many corporations have similar prototype programs or cross-finance one
unit to explore different practices. In recent years in particular, this has also been
about making things more sustainably. But no corporation manages to make sus-
tainable production the core benchmark of their business model. Instead, most of
the 1000 Global Compact CEOs interviewed by Accenture in 2013 have lamented
that sustainability is “not bankable.” The Global Compact is a UN initiative that
was launched by Kofi Annan as Secretary General with the goal of improving
reporting by big corporations on their contributions to sustainable development and
human rights. Unlike 2009 respondents, during the first round of interviews many
of the CEOs of participating corporations were ‘frustrated’ that market, investment
and reporting structures made the business case for sustainability nearly impossible.
Without state regulation, the company bosses stated, they could not get out of what
they called “pilot paralysis,” in which some small-scale individual projects or units
become champions for sustainability but can never scale up. Business therefore
seems to have reached its “plateau in advancing sustainability” before “radical,
structural change of markets and systems” make further reaching reorientations of
investments and restructuration of value chains possible (Accenture 2013: 5).

© The Author(s) 2016 119

M. Göpel, The Great Mindshift, The Anthropocene:
Politik—Economics—Society—Science 2, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-43766-8_4
120 4 Mapping an Emerging New Economic Paradigm in Practice

Structurally it is true that today’s market regulations, investment and produc-

tivity standards lead to a competitive advantage for those externalizing their social
and environmental costs. In Brussels I was part of the civil society community that
had to remind the corporate representatives on the discussion panels that writing
glossy reports and transferring the responsibility for change onto governments was
not going to lead to substantial legal changes unless they told their lobbyists to
support rather than block such a policy framework. Meanwhile, firms that put
sustainable solutions at the core of their business models were hardly ever repre-
sented. Since they face tough price and access competitions with firms that exter-
nalize a lot of the social and environmental costs, they often do not have profits to
spare for remunerating lobbyists.
Transformation research thus clearly differentiates between ‘incumbents,’ those
parties, firms or organizations prominently embedded in the working of the given
regime structure, and ‘pioneers’ whose solutions challenge this default and thus
have the irritating effect that can lead to transformative dynamics. Of course there
are also agents or subgroups within regime structurations that push for sustain-
ability innovations on that level (e.g., the sustainably run units). Yet, their regime
level is more likely an internal one: if their innovations were politically supported
their motherships’ business models would be disrupted.
So this chapter shines a light on some pioneering initiatives that were radical
enough to put recoupling productive processes with human well-being and nature’s
laws at the core of their practice. Intending to check which development paradigms
galvanize enough energy and support for collective transformative strategies in line
with the wider SDG ambitions, I chose examples that fulfill the following criteria:
• Economic growth or growing profits may be an element in the business plan but
certainly not an overruling one. Instead, the optimal rate of economic growth
depends on the role it plays in fulfilling the overarching purpose of supporting
human well-being and respecting nature’s reproductive cycles. This subscribes
to the embedded-systems-view captured in Fig. 3.4 and implies that economic
processes are means to higher ends. If those can be met by a steady state or
shrunk economy or turnover that is fine, too.
• In order for the recoupling purpose to inform the incremental actions and
changes necessary to innovate their systems, each of the examples has devel-
oped a set of principles, symbols, indicators and measures to track changes.
These are not kept within separate sustainability departments but inform the core
decision-making bodies and strategies. They are communicated widely and
explicitly and underpin the narratives with which reliability of expectation and
foundations for cooperation are being built.
• Since single pioneering examples will not lead to transformations unless their
existence and support causes sufficient irritation to overarching regime struc-
turations, I have chosen four examples with the characteristics of a movement.
The definition of values, purpose, goals, indicators, and measures within these
examples is done with a degree of transparency and openness that allows others
to learn, replicate and feed back. This can develop into a community of practice
4 Mapping an Emerging New Economic Paradigm in Practice 121

(a group in itself). By sharing best practice, experiences in implementation and

also difficulties, this community of practice can also identify common political
interests and start advocating and acting jointly for overarching system change
(a group for itself). The latter can also be done and supported by people who are
not directly part of the pioneering practice but share their purpose and world-
view and would like such solutions to spread.
• I also found it intriguing to check for similarities across sectors and, due to
language barriers, found that easier than a proper cross-cultural assessment of,
say, multiple business networks. I am aware that this has led to a set of examples
that is both somewhat eurocentric and confined to those with a good internet
presence, which made them easier to research.
This is how the Economy for the Common Good (a prominent business initiative
in Germany and Austria), Transition Towns (an urban community initiative born in
the United Kingdom), and the Commoning movement (a civil society initiative
spanning the Atlantic between the United States and Europe) were chosen. Only in
the context of government initiatives around ‘Beyond GDP’ was I lucky enough to
visit the pioneering nation of Bhutan, whose Gross National Happiness or GNH
framework is referenced by many.
In the Multilevel-Perspective on societal change presented in Fig. 2.1, the first
three examples of Economy of the Common Good businesses, Transition Towns
and Commoning initiatives would count as pioneers at the niche level. The last
example of a national government strategy, the GNH Framework of Bhutan and its
policy commission, would be a pioneer at the regime level, leading change from
within the overarching structurations.
Of course such a short summary in a book has to be very selective. It cannot do
justice to a proper summary of what exactly is happening in each initiative. So the
most important focal point for the exploration has been the identification of some
crucial paradigmatic differences to the mainstream concepts I presented in Chap. 3.
I was surprised by the degree of commonality between the four cases in this.
I have summarized their radically new purpose as one of recoupling economic
processes with human well-being and nature’s reproductive laws. Since all of them
confront strong path dependencies in the overarching and surrounding systems—
and also partly in their own—their incremental change strategies are ones of suc-
cessive double-decoupling:
1. Decouple the production of goods and services from unsustainable, wasteful or
uncaring treatment of humans, nature and animals (do better).
2. Decouple the satisfaction of human needs from the imperative to deliver ever
more economic output (do well).
The summary details core findings in juxtaposition to the mainstream economic
development paradigm.
Another shortcoming of any desktop assessment in comparison to proper field
research is the degree of informed critical discussion that is possible. Here, it is
limited to a recapitulation of the most prominent critical voices found on the web.
122 4 Mapping an Emerging New Economic Paradigm in Practice

Most of these address more the implementation processes than the conceptual
frameworks. A lot of the criticism I found could be applied to any given plan or
agreement for collective action: a proposal still allows for abuse, and some concrete
actions taken by members of the network will not live up to its declared values and
principles.
While it is important to highlight instances where thinking or declared purpose
deviate from doing or lived purpose, the locus of responsibility for this does not
necessarily lie with the founders of a movement. They cannot and arguably should
not seek to prescribe how exactly people engage in putting the joint vision and
goals into practice. The SDGs themselves are actually a great example for this:
whilst almost all governments accepted the goals and targets and indicators, they
were not made into binding commitments. Monitoring and reporting on progress is
voluntary and each country is going to prioritize meeting some goals over meeting
others. The idea is that peer reviewing will inspire commitment and mutual learning
between countries with similar challenges.
So hardly any pioneer or UN body can ensure that everyone using their ideas or
claiming to serve the SDGs will do so in the way that was originally envisioned or
intended. This is an unavoidable characteristic of movements and politics, and none
of the critiques I came across included a proposal on how, in real concrete practical
terms, the formation of movements and government of cooperation could feasibly
resolve these issues.
Others took an oppositional stance, believing that a progressive and inclusive
movement could not prescribe such detailed rules and benchmarks. Here I would
counter that without some agreement as to what this group of people stands for and
what it does not represent, it will never become a political force that can jointly
work for change. So in the end it will be the integrity, clarity, and courage of the
people involved that influences how individual freedom and collective action are
combined and thus how progressive it is. Thus, in each example I briefly pick up on
what I felt were the most common reproaches, but can only draw superficial con-
clusions. An empirically sound assessment was not possible but would be a great
project for which to seek funding. In reaching my conclusions, I found that the most
important characteristic of these examples was their willingness to reflect criticism
and to assess how the incremental steps taken could continue to support the radi-
cally different purpose that generated each initiative.

4.1 Pioneering Businesses: Common Good Matrix

and Balance Sheets

The concept of Corporate Social Responsibility came into existence as a conse-

quence of acknowledging the important role of business in shaping development.
Business was to take into consideration the wider setting in which it operated, and
to focus on more than simply making a profit. The approach of ‘triple bottom line’
4.1 Pioneering Businesses: Common Good Matrix and Balance Sheets 123

reporting refers to an extension of the accounting standards of businesses that also

includes information on the environmental and social impacts of their activities.
Several standards have been developed for this and some, like the Global
Reporting Initiative, have become widely influential reference frameworks.
Campaigns have been launched to make the entire approach obligatory and com-
prehensive, rather than a voluntary and selective endeavor. These campaigns have
also sought transparency on lobbying behavior and a higher degree of account-
ability, which should involve sanctions for corporations violating certain standards.
None of these initiatives, however, have gone as far as to address the general
purpose of corporations and business in society. Triple bottom line accounting is
about slowly reducing so-called externalities—social and environmental costs—in
the process of making profits. This is different from the 2009 initiative on the
Economy for the Common Good or Gemeinwohlökonomie. It starts from the system
view that the overall challenge of societies of thinking and aspiring individuals is to
find a balance between community responsibility and individual freedom. Neither
functions without the other. Individuals need to cooperate to flourish and build
wealth, and the community needs creative deviators in order to keep on diversifying
and adapting.
Some of the uninformed criticism of the Common Good Economy rejects the
‘communist’ ideology behind it. But Christian Felber, the leading proponent of this
movement, sees the path toward sustainability as lying in reconnecting private
entrepreneurship with the overall goal of the common good. Common good as an
output goal can only be defined in democratic political processes, and private
entrepreneurship can, if a business is run correctly, contribute to that common good.
We see that the definition and possible redefinition of ends to which an economy
should contribute are put center stage. This is unlike the mainstream economic view
in which ‘more growth’ is the single abstract pole star.
The website ecogood.org chronicles some historical references to the common
good as an overarching goal for societal development and also puts forward 20
principles or ideas for what putting that into practice could look like. None of these
are seen as fixed rules but are meant to inspire reflection and dialogue on the values,
norms and practices that status quo solutions nurture or even prescribe.
With this starting point, status quo solutions are judged to incentivize egoism,
greed and striving for power, and to reward those who behave most effectively
toward egotistical, greedy or power-hungry ends. What are called ‘competition
rules’ have lost almost all of the com, the Latin word for ‘together’ or ‘we.’ They
are all about ‘I’ and ensure that winners take pretty much all, while making even
hostile takeovers of entirely healthy businesses feasible. The result is a constant
incentive for asocial behavior and a structural driver of the concentration of wealth
and power, because successful, attacking units are better prepared for the next
round of what should be called ‘contrapetition.’
The goal of the movement and the 20 proposed principles are thus “more
intelligent rules of the game.” The first expresses the overall mission purpose:
124 4 Mapping an Emerging New Economic Paradigm in Practice

The same collectively shared values that contribute to fulfilling interpersonal relationships
are the basis for the Economy for the Common Good: confidence building, cooperation,
appreciation, democracy, solidarity. Scientific research proves that fulfilling interpersonal
relationships constitute a key factor to happiness and motivation (Economy for the
Common Good 2010a).

Following from this are the basic paradigmatic changes that lead away from
contrapetition to cooperation, from profit to common good output, and from market
control to democratic decision-making. This is not to be confused with the socialist
centrally planned state that Felber believes suffocated individual freedom. It is also
not about prohibiting asocial business conduct but simply stopping the incen-
tivization of it and making it instead the more difficult solution under an altered
institutional framework. Thus the overall idea is to change the default setting so that
unsustainable behavior, like the externalization of social and environmental costs, is
no longer a competitive advantage. Behavioral economics is full of such ideas and
has coined the term ‘nudging’ for non-regulatory interventions in which the
architecture of choice makes sustainable behavior easier rather than harder.
Supporting evidence on the anti-sustainability impact of the current default has
been delivered by the Global Compact—Accenture CEO Study on Sustainability
cited above.
Changing accounting rules to internalize environmental and social costs thus
seems to be an obvious leverage point that would allow plenty of disruptive inno-
vations to drive ‘dirty’ competitors out of markets while at the same time incen-
tivizing efficiency technology breakthroughs. However, the question remains: can
endless exchange value competition for private profit remain as the overarching goal
of business and lead to sustainable systems? The answer given by the Economy for
the Common Good movement is clearly negative and their prototype for new bal-
ance sheets is far more encompassing. As principle 3 states, “economic success will
no longer be measured with (monetary) exchange value indicators, but with
(non-monetary) use value indicators” (Economy for the Common Good 2010a).
As a consequence, similar indicators for business and societal performance can
align bottom-up and top-down initiatives toward the new purpose on which
economies should deliver:
On the macroeconomic level (national economy) the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) will
be replaced—as an indicator of success—by the Common Good Product. On the microe-
conomic level (company) the financial balance sheet will be replaced by the Common Good
Balance Sheet (CGBS). The CGBS becomes the main balance sheet of all companies. The
more companies act and organize themselves along social, ecological and democratic lines,
the more solidarity they display, the better will be the results of their Common Good
Balance Sheet. The better the CGBS results of the companies within a national economy,
the higher its Common Good Product (Economy for the Common Good 2010a).

The genesis of this movement came from 70 businesses that started reporting
with the first CGBS in 2010. By mid-2015 the number of companies had risen to
1811, in addition to 232 clubs, six communes or regions and over 6000 individual
supporters. An interactive map of the network can be found on the website www.
ecogood.org. The initial experiences of the pioneers has led to slight modifications
4.1 Pioneering Businesses: Common Good Matrix and Balance Sheets 125

to the matrix of indicators and the current version (4.1) has five different categories
and five stakeholder groups for whom principles are formulated. The categories are
human dignity, solidarity, ecological sustainability, social justice, and democratic
co-decision-making and transparency. The stakeholder groups are suppliers, cred-
itors, employees including co-owners, customers/partners/service providers and the
societal environment. Each matrix field has a short description of the type of
conduct that is expected and also gives a point score that expresses the weighting of
this principle in the overall set.
The rather unusual final row in the matrix is one with negative criteria, for which
points have to be subtracted. These are primarily about violations of standards and
principles that have been agreed by the international community, for example, in
OECD, International Labour Organization (ILO) or UN guidelines. These include
human rights, worker protection, environmental standards, tax avoidance,
non-disclosure on subsidiaries, non-disclosure of payments to lobbyists, the pro-
hibition of work councils and dumping prices. They also contain strong normative
judgments about what are considered to be inhumane products such as land mines,
genetically modified organisms, nuclear weapons and nuclear waste, plus unequal
pay for men and women, equity yield rates over 10 %, excessive income inequality
within a business or blocking patents and hostile takeovers.
The negative points that companies can ‘earn’ in this category are much higher
than the positive ones that can be gained through common good activities. This
sends a strong signal that the violation of agreements and the intentional under-
mining of standard practices are worse for cohesion, trust and relationships than not
actively pushing up the benchmarks (Economy for the Common Good 2010b).
While the matrix calculates a final number that can be compared with others, the
entire concept of it lies much more in stimulating a structured conversation and
process within the business about its shortcomings and any room for possible
improvements. Peer learning lies at the center of the concept and businesses decide
themselves if they want to hire one of the growing network of balance sheet
consultants. It is also up to them to add an external audit or not. The mid-term
political goal, however, is to make CGBS reporting mandatory and, in a first step, to
guarantee tax breaks or public procurement advantages for those participating or
faring really well.
The initiative also encourages the surrounding community, as well as the local
government, to support these businesses with customer loyalty, public acknowl-
edgement or even to undertake their own evaluation. These are called ‘Common
Good Regions’ and 45 of them have been launched in Austria, Germany,
Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Great Britain, the United States and
recently also in South America.
In northern Italy and Austria in particular, mayors and communes are now coming
together to develop visions for more regionalized, value-based, participatory and
sustainable supply chains and to see how these could be institutionally supported.
Some of them are considering the introduction of regional currencies to facilitate the
strengthening of ties and trust and to develop local wealth indicators. The goal is to
126 4 Mapping an Emerging New Economic Paradigm in Practice

replace the overemphasis on competition with that of cooperation and to involve the
population in the process of what economies should deliver on and how.
The movement is strongest in Austria, northern Italy and Germany. Felber’s
2011 book The Economy for the Common Good has been translated into Spanish,
Italian, Finnish and French and the website is also available in Polish but not in
Finnish. This rapidly growing movement is a brilliant example of how different
pioneer activities align behind a clearly formulated repurposing of their small
systems with a plan to drive the transformation of the overarching regime systems.
Of course this does not mean everyone involved will and can find the same
incremental steps to become Common Good supporters. While the strongest criti-
cism from the mainstream predicts that the focus on re-localization and regional-
ization will lead to a collapse in productivity and wealth creation, the more nuanced
observers point to the creativity with which the old and unchanged business practice
might now be branded differently. Some measures that would be unavoidable
anyhow, like providing training for employees to, for example, catch up with
newest IT trends, can now be declared common good measures. Using the common
good narrative as an image campaign might then lead to better sales and therefore
more profane profit—while not much else changes (Exner 2011). As mentioned
above, I think it is important to check such practices by flagging them and assessing
if further incremental steps are to follow. I do not think that a movement and vision
should be dismissed unless such practices become the norm. Exner lists two
businesses out of the group of 1811 and his judgment is based on the public
statements of the managers rather than proper investigation.
The vision as formulated by the movement itself is to be an open, adaptive
learning community with potentially global reach. It seeks to create self-reliance
and more independence for each of the regions but also changes in the overarching
regime structures so that the normal or hegemonic way of thinking and doing
business is transformed. Here the participants point to three hegemonic assump-
tions: that humans (should) only pursue their self-interest, that without the intention
of gain there is no entrepreneurial engagement and that competition is always the
most efficient way of organizing production and consumption processes.

4.2 Pioneering Civil Society: Transition Towns

for Resilient Local Solutions

Originally emerging in the United Kingdom, the Transition Towns movement has
spread across Europe and beyond. While the Common Good network already had a
strong focus on the local embeddedness of its members, the Transition Town
movement makes ‘reflexive relocalization’ its core stance. The term ‘reflexive’ is
important because it highlights the way that the process is driven by communities. It
is done with a clear system view that envisions improved resilience of a town and
4.2 Pioneering Civil Society: Transition Towns for Resilient Local Solutions 127

its people in the face of growing megatrends like climate change, rising energy
prices and economic crises.
The term ‘resilience’ is used here to define a particular structural characteristic of
a complex system. Resilient systems are those that are able to bounce back or
recover their strength quickly after a shock or crisis. In the case of human systems,
like cities or economies, this means that the functioning of basic services for the
population will be quickly restored.
Such restorative capacity is higher if several alternative processes can deliver on
important system outcomes (diversity), if these are not all easily hampered by the
same shock (decentralization) and if several processes keep their potential to
increase output if necessary (redundance). Resilience is therefore a very dynamic
and not easily visible or measurable quality. High resilience usually means high
levels of the self-organizing capacity of a system, so that it can learn, create and
redesign processes essential to their functioning. The mechanistic view of systems
in the mainstream economic paradigm will often lead to the sacrifice of this quality
for efficient static stability and higher productivity.
Rob Hopkins, one of the leading figures in the Transition Town movement and
author of The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience
(2008) adds a sociopolitical component to his definition: Resilient sustainable
communities are structured along three principles. These are their ‘diversity’ of
life-supporting solutions or livelihoods, ‘modular structuration’ with buffers to the
outer systems that increase self-reliance possibilities, and ‘tight feedback loops’ that
bring the results of actions closer to those responsible for them (Hopkins 2008: 55–
56). The latter is generally regarded as important to ensure that negative devel-
opments are picked up more quickly.
Resilience has also become a frequent term in the context of natural catastrophes
that destroy infrastructure or limit the possibilities of shipping and flying goods
around the globe. Recent examples are the Japanese tsunami that caused the 2011
Fukushima disaster and energy system breakdown and the Icelandic volcano
eruption that threatened the United Kingdom’s globalized food supply chains in
2010. Here, as in the WEF 2012 Global Risk Report, it was primarily the infras-
tructure and its control chain that was assessed for resilience. The more decen-
tralized units with decision-making powers and local knowledge combined were
much faster in restoring the energy supply to people than centralized ones with
hierarchical control. From an exchange-value-focused perspective on process
design, the latter are of course much more efficient.
We see that the notions about which processes are promising and seem valid
depend on which overarching system view one adopts. Transition Towns do not
treat the economic system as the overarching one but as a subordinate means to
ensure that human need satisfaction can be achieved in alignment with the natural
laws of the ecological system. An explicit part of increasing self-reliance and
resilience means turning away from certain massive economies of scale that are
only possible under systems with a high division of labor. This may lead to
decreases in the overall availability of consumption goods, but could lead to the
higher quality and longevity of each good produced and to lower risks in terms of
128 4 Mapping an Emerging New Economic Paradigm in Practice

supply chain interruptions when transport or credit in one part of the chain is
hampered. Meanwhile, sustainable communities, according to Hopkins, do not
subscribe to a culture of consumerism but seek to link “satisfaction and happiness to
other less tangible things like community, meaningful work, skills and friendship”
(Hopkins 2012: 20–21).
Here we find a direct connection with findings on human well-being and its
origins. It was insightful to see that some workshops of the Transition Town
movement were using Max-Neef’s human need matrix to discuss a diversity of
strategies for a high quality of life beyond ‘having’ things. This also ties back to the
criticism of ecological economists like Paul Ekins and Robert Costanza in Chap. 3,
who state that the social utility gained through the human interactions during
production processes should get much more attention when assessing productivity.
Meanwhile, many resilience researchers also emphasize the importance of trust as a
core ingredient to well-functioning, adaptable communities and individual per-
ceptions of well-being.
The 2012 High Level Panel on Global Sustainability did not get this far in its
report to the UN Secretary-General before Rio+20. Resilient People, Resilient
Planet: A Future Worth Choosing describes the world system as volatile and
uncertain, and suggests that the panel start their recommendations with a call to
“empower people to make sustainable choices” as a response to this. It does not
seek to empower people to build their own communities though, but rather focuses
on how the social safety nets of governments are set up so they can be resilient in
times of structural change, and how disaster risk reduction and adaptation programs
could be improved (United Nations Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on Global
Sustainability 2012: 46–47).
The Transition movement, on the other hand, makes these self-empowerment
processes the essence of its existence and adapts them to systems or communities of
any size, not just towns. Its mission is summarized as follows: “to inspire,
encourage, connect, support and train communities as they adopt and adapt the
transition model on their journey to urgently rebuild resilience and drastically
reduce CO2 emissions.” The seven principles for guiding such processes in towns
are set out by Hopkins and Peter Lipman on the Transition Network website
(transitionnetwork.org) and can be summarized as follows:
1. Positive Visioning: Campaigning for rather than against something.
2. Help People Access Good Information and Trust Them to Make Good
Decisions: Raising awareness and hearing many opinions lies at the core of
rational decision-making.
3. Inclusion and Openness: Banning ‘them and us’ thinking and reaching out to all
subsystems in the town, early in the process.
4. Enable Sharing and Networking: Acknowledge everything, including stories of
failure.
5. Build Resilience: With the primacy of environmental resilience, change food,
energy and economic systems in the town and across governance levels.
4.2 Pioneering Civil Society: Transition Towns for Resilient Local Solutions 129

6. Inner and Outer Transition: Worldviews and belief systems can change and
create something different and need not cause fear.
7. Subsidiarity: Self-organization and decision-making at the appropriate level
(Hopkins and Lipman 2009: 7–8).
We can clearly see how many of these principles fly in the face of mainstream
models. Actors are explicitly requested to change their way of thinking and being
and to share instead of compete. The processes of providing energy and food are
intentionally made less efficient so that they become more resilient. The economic
system is analyzed as a subset of SES’s that can and should fundamentally change
if it hurts the balance of ecological reproduction circuits. It is therefore not the
resilience of the economic system that successful development strategies should
pursue but that of the ecological systems with biophysical qualities that can be
irreversibly altered.
This point is important because otherwise ‘resilience,’ as a concept, might be
used in as undifferentiated a fashion as ‘efficiency.’ Resource efficiency is basically
always desirable, but making efficiency a core value in and of itself, for all pro-
cesses, is taking it too far. The same holds true for resilience, as the financial system
shows nicely. From a sustainability perspective it is utterly damaging, but its
immaterial qualities mean that very quickly many new financial products and
instruments emerge if others are ruled out. It thus shows a great self-organizing
capacity and has bounced back from the 2008 crisis without significantly changing
its functions, structure, identity or internal connections. Instead, the financial system
would require a decrease of resilience so that transformation could take place.
Thus, the goal of improved resilience can only be of added value for sustain-
ability when the purpose and setup of the system in question is one in line with
what sustainable development on the macro scale requires. The Transition Town
principles make this distinction (see point 5) and the idea has been exported to
many places across Europe. Out of the ongoing experiences a number of guidelines,
ingredients and practical steps have emerged on how to set up a community ini-
tiative. These can be found on transitionnetwork.org. Each transition or transfor-
mation of a community is expected to take 20 years or longer. The website also
includes a map of where initiatives from across the world are registered, and in
mid-2015 it had 479 official initiatives in 43 countries, which can be located
through an interactive map at http://www.transitionnetwork.org/initiatives/map.
From the MLP point of view, these initiatives form perfect niches ready to build
coalitions for regime change. Yet, some critics lament the absence of a more
explicit political agenda that would be able to reach just that. They find the ‘any-
thing goes’ character behind the initiatives too lofty and the building of windmills,
barter trade networks and permaculture gardens too individualistic. Moreover, even
if single towns become more resilient this would not necessarily change the
overarching regime structures that push economies out of Planetary Boundaries.
Some of this criticism may be true, in particular when rich communities work on
making their own backyard lovely but do not feel much responsibility for those
worse off.
130 4 Mapping an Emerging New Economic Paradigm in Practice

On the other hand, I find it important to maintain the distinction between pio-
neers and change agents made by the WBGU report reviewed in Chap. 2: one and
the same group or individual cannot necessarily do everything. Testing deviating
practical solutions or business models is much more work than following the
well-trodden path dependencies; it often binds all of the available resources. To
expect the same pioneers to also develop political campaigns might well be unre-
alistic. During my time in Brussels, for example, politicians in favor of rewriting the
green policy framework were urging civil society to provide studies and commu-
nicate how, for example, renewable energy technology or biologically degradable
products could replace many dirty solutions if regulation allowed for them to be
scaled up. These innovations are typically developed by SMEs that simply do not
have the spare resources for significant lobbying. On the other hand, the big
potential losers (the polluters and so on) do, and they shout loudest. Thus, while
some people in Transition Towns can focus on experimenting with the new prac-
tical solutions, others could engage in political processes.
Or other change agents, like myself, could pick up on these examples to make
them known and fit them into a political agenda. Networking support, political
engagement, and visibility have been growing significantly in recent years.
Transition Towns or initiatives are crucial examples of how system innovations that
link an update in physical technologies like renewable energy with those of the
social technologies around them, will have much more impact for sustainability
than solar panels alone.
If the ecological systems and their importance for future human well-being are
prioritized and the least destructive technologies chosen for need-satisfaction
strategies that do not rule out sufficiency, we have a great example of
system-repurposing. It echoes the two key points in the Brundtland definition of
sustainable development: satisfying human needs in the long term and choosing
processes that will not threaten the planet’s ability to replenish the resources to do
so. Such progress can only be measured with indicators that go beyond GDP.

4.3 Pioneering Governments: Beyond GDP Measures

as Development Frames

Indicators frame the way we view things, which aspects we pay most attention to
and which rationales are reproduced. Since the Brundtland Report there have been
many indicator initiatives aimed at going beyond GDP at all levels of governance
and some of them have gained quite a lot of public attention. The UN HDI, for
example, first launched in 1990, expanded per capita GDP measurement to include
education and life expectancy in its overview of successful country development.
The GPI discussed in Chap. 3 seeks to correct GDP numbers according to the
natural capital destroyed and the negative social impacts that this method of wealth
generation causes people.
4.3 Pioneering Governments: Beyond GDP Measures as Development Frames 131

Many of these ‘headline indicators’ are meant to capture public attention, which
is more easily done with one number than with a dashboard. Amending or cor-
recting GDP numbers with indicators has been an incredibly important step in
expressing the fact that capital substitutability accounting—the essence of weak
sustainability processes—fails to capture the real state of natural, social and human
capital and therefore the prospects of future development. The headline indicators
or indices are, however, not the right tools for the design of actual system inno-
vation processes. For this we need disaggregated information about causalities and
correlations between the different elements measured and also sociopolitical
engagement with the questions of how to weight potential trade-offs between these
elements. If we do not dissect statistics and models in this way, their values and
information are difficult for non-experts to understand and they can become a
source of hegemonic power, rather than a telling insight for improved governance
capacity and consensus-building.
The actual design process of measurement schemes with which to monitor future
developments is therefore at least as important for democratic system innovation
governance as finding exactly the right numbers. The biggest challenge is appar-
ently to dethrone the dominance of economic indicators over social and environ-
mental aspects of development. This observation held for all countries in the UN
Synthesis of National Reports for Rio+20 on the implementation of sustainable
development strategies:
Today’s challenge is chiefly implementation.. .. This is largely due to integration, inclusion,
and coherence challenges.. .. Economic growth is still the chief priority for most govern-
ments, and although they increasingly integrate poverty alleviation and other social con-
cerns into development planning, the integration of environmental considerations has
lagged. The review of national reports revealed little evidence that countries see sustain-
ability as contributing to growth; at best, governments see sustainability as compatible, or at
least not interfering, with growth, but there is little indication that these countries see
environmental sustainability as necessary for long-term growth (UNDESA and UNDP
2012: 2).

The report lists five priorities for tackling this implementation roadblock and
brings new measurements of progress and improved democracy and empowerment
for bottom-up change to the forefront:
If national systems look only at economic performance, then people cannot hold their
leaders accountable when it comes to progress on social and environmental matters. New
and more tailored metrics as well as bolstered data collection systems and capacities are
needed in both public and private sectors. Such metrics will be critical to the post-2015
development agenda, in particular to the sustainable development goals (UNDESA and
UNDP 2012: 5).

Unfortunately, the SDGs only list the development of GDP-complementing

measurements for progress as the very final target (17.19) under SDG 17 on means
of implementation and global partnerships. This gives it much less prominence than
the multifarious targets on GDP growth scattered across the other 16 goals (UN
2015).
132 4 Mapping an Emerging New Economic Paradigm in Practice

This does not mean, however, that the progress metrics community is not
continuing its work. Reports like that of the Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Commission on
the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress in 2009 have
already shown a growing consensus that a small dashboard of lead indicators that
are easy to understand would be most helpful. These should mix monetary as well
as physical measures for objective progress. There is still more debate about if and
how to include subjective happiness data from surveys. Some regard it as too vague
and qualitative for statistics, others say that this is indeed the problem: You can
never understand a system and actor motivations if you do not ask people about
their experienced reality (Stiglitz et al. 2009).
One astonishing example supporting the latter argument is the OECD’s 2013
Health at a Glance report in which a question about whether respondents felt
healthy was answered positively by 89.5 % of Americans but only 30 % of
Japanese. According to objective data, however, Japan has the second highest life
expectancy figures in the world and very high scores in terms of the number of
hospital beds, MRI and CT scanners, the length of stay in hospital, and the number
of times people go to the doctor. In the United States life expectancy is four years
shorter and rising much more slowly than in other OECD countries. Its obesity rate
is twice that of others and 15 % of the population live without health coverage,
despite the world’s highest per capita expenditure on health care (OECD 2013a).
So without talking to people directly, much insight about experienced well-being
and need satisfaction may be missed. In addition, the processes of creating indi-
cators with the people whose development they should measure already involve
many mindshifting effects for better understanding of trade-offs or even the possible
overcoming of trade-offs if goals and processes were changed. These effects create
ownership and better acceptance for future policy measures and would rank high in
the categories of social or human capital improvement for economists.
OECD and UNDP consultants Jon Hall and Louise Rickard have studied seven
beyond-GDP indicator processes around the world for the Bertelsmann Foundation.
They have pointed to the following happy side-effects of the bottom-up partici-
pation recommended by the UN: the strengthening of democratic processes with the
direct inclusion of the population in the overall goal and purpose-setting of future
policy directions, which also allows for a widening in perspectives on all sides as to
how different single aspects hang together and why they are important to whom;
policy coherence and acceptance are also increased through ongoing processes
toward finding common ground or a clear identification of antagonistic positions
and trade-offs that can then be dealt with explicitly rather than remaining as
unresolved undercurrents. Linking this back to resilience, the study also found that
such processes build capacity for constructive deliberation and enable participants
to become more proactive in other sociopolitical contexts as well (Hall and Rickard
2013: 11–12).
Thus, if carried out in a participatory manner, many such indicator processes
already lead to social benefits and reflexive processes around which values, norms
and the goals a community wants to base its development. It also improves
4.3 Pioneering Governments: Beyond GDP Measures as Development Frames 133

potentials for monitoring, communication and innovation, since more people know
about the drivers of current challenges.
These paradigm-shifting and change-inducing effects have also been summa-
rized by Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning economist and head of the
commission mentioned above, in a presentation to the Australian Productivity
Commission:
Part of the objective of rethinking our measurement systems is to generate a
national and global dialogue:
• On what we care about
• Whether what we are striving for is achieving what we care about
• And whether this is reflected in our metrics (Stiglitz 2010: 15).
However, these sociocultural benefits are still not reaped in many indicator
schemes, as many examples of rather technocratic sustainable development strate-
gies show. In a major research endeavor between 2012 and 2013, the Bertelsmann
Foundation and the Canada-based International Institute of Sustainable
Development (IISD) developed an extensive criteria set for the analysis of 35 sus-
tainable development strategies from around the world. They found that the best
practice examples included those that have a clear mission statement or Leitbild
connecting the otherwise abstract goal of sustainability with culturally vibrant local
notions of what constitutes a good life.
The top examples here were the GNH Index from Bhutan, the Buen Vivir (Good
Living) social philosophy in South American countries like Bolivia and Ecuador
and the Finnish vision of “quality of life within sustainable societies.” In general
terms the importance of linking sustainable development ideas with notions of
quality of life was a common theme among the successful examples (Bertelsmann
Stiftung 2013: 15–16).
A review of the Bhutanese case follows, as it was the most successful strategy in
the Bertelsmann/IISD study and served as a pioneering example in UN high-level
roundtables for a “new development paradigm” for the post-2015 development
agenda and its SDGs. It highlights how a development goal different from that of
GDP has played out since the 1970s.
The development aim of GNH was set out in 1972 by Bhutan’s fourth king,
Jigme Singye Wangchuck. He presented it as the logical outcome of the legal code
which sealed the unification of Bhutan in 1729, and stated that, “if the government
cannot create happiness (‘dedidk’) for its people, there is no purpose for the gov-
ernment to exist” (Ura et al. 2012: 6). This is not very different from the US
Constitution of 1776, which declares “life, freedom and the pursuit of happiness” to
be the basic rights of each individual and their protection to be the duty of the state.
However, Bhutan has made this duty an explicitly monitored and societal endeavor
instead of the individualized consequence of high economic growth.
Before the creation of their indicator system, Bhutan’s general idea was
understood as being “development with values” that were conducive to promoting
collective happiness by the creation “of enabling conditions where people are able
134 4 Mapping an Emerging New Economic Paradigm in Practice

to pursue well-being in sustainable ways.” Five of these values were, and are,
fundamental. They are a holistic view of people’s needs, be they spiritual or
material, physical or social; balanced progress toward GNH with an emphasis on
preventing one dimension from outstripping others; a collective and
all-encompassing view of happiness; sustainability, so that well-being is pursued
for current and future generations; and a notion of equity such that levels of
well-being should be similar across society (Ura et al. 2012: 7).
The big difference from Western concepts lies in the idea that spiritual and
material development are viewed as two complementary and mutually reinforcing
elements of human progress. Responsibility for nature and motivations regarding
the well-being of others are integral to this view of happiness because, say
researchers of The Centre for Bhutan Studies in the book An Extensive Analysis of
GNH Index (2012): “We know that true abiding happiness cannot exist while others
suffer, and comes only from serving others, living in harmony with nature, and
realizing our innate wisdom and the true and brilliant nature of our own minds”
(Ura et al. 2012: 8). This view was already present in the 1999 government strategy
paper Bhutan 2020: A Vision for Peace, Well-being and Happiness, which had a
very explicit focus on the long-term and recognized the importance of economic
growth for such a poor country but sought to keep the balance between material and
non-material as well as spiritual development. The five overarching goals then were
human development, culture and cultural heritage, a balanced societal development
benefiting everyone, good governance and protection of the environment
(Bertelsmann Stiftung 2013: 70).
The overall development strategy was always embedded in environmental
programs and sustainable development strategies until the 2008 constitution
declared GNH to be the official guiding principle of the country’s development and
introduced the new measurement system. It is important to note that this index is
not intended to measure happiness as such, but to “orient the people and the nation
toward happiness” by improving their conditions (NDP Steering Committee and
Secretariat 2013: 30).
In practice this has led to the formulation of four strategic pillars of policy
planning. These are sustainable and equitable socioeconomic development, envi-
ronmental conservation and the preservation and promotion of culture and good
governance. In order to specify and measure progress in these areas, an index with
nine dimensions was created. They include rather common dimensions like living
standards, health and education, ecological diversity and good governance, but also
unique and important elements: psychological well-being, which includes, but goes
beyond, subjective well-being reporting; time use; community vitality; and cultural
diversity. Each dimension has a set of between three and five indicators or questions
which are used for taking representative surveys and are analyzed according to a
total of 124 variables.
Except for the cultural, psychological and spiritual components, we find a lot of
similarities between the Bhutanese dimensions and the 11 dimensions of the OECD
Better Life Index which launched in 2011. These are housing, income, jobs, work–
4.3 Pioneering Governments: Beyond GDP Measures as Development Frames 135

life balance, health, life satisfaction, safety, civic engagement, environment, com-
munity and education (OECD 2014a).
In an ongoing, non-representative online questionnaire, the OECD asks visitors
to their website (oecdbetterlifeindex.org) to weigh the importance of these
dimensions. Regardless of country or age group people put health, education,
life-satisfaction and work—life balance highest. Income is the second lowest and
community the least important. This of course is a snapshot of opinion of a small
group of people who are probably already interested in the issue or they would not
have ended up on the website. Also, this approach is strongly focused on today’s
experience of life and lacks indicators that could delve deeper into the sources of
what could sustain delivery on those dimensions in the future. The environment, for
example, is reduced to nothing more than clean water and clean air.
The OECD’s How’s Life? 2013 report has therefore added a long section on this
in which it discusses how measuring social, environmental, human and economic
capital stocks is essential to securing quality of life in the future (OECD 2013b).
Yet, this economic perspective leaves one with the impression of a basic collection
of input factors rather than a systemic understanding of how the various dimensions
relate to each other and co-develop as embedded systems. This is the strength of the
Bhutanese approach, with its focus on values and culture.
Maybe the most innovative feature of the GNH strategy, however, is the fact that
the survey results inform the core of government practice. Five-year policy plans
respond to findings that can be differentiated by region, gender, profession, age
group, etc., to identify which interventions and resource allocations are important to
support those reporting the least happiness (Ura et al. 2012: 8–11). They are for-
mulated in multilevel, multi-stakeholder processes and local consultations while
each new law is evaluated in terms of its impacts on GNH dimensions and indi-
cators. Important strategy plans include complete electrification, tripling
hydro-power generation, improved independence in food provision, 100 % organic
agriculture, a low ecological footprint, economic diversification, reduction in the
use of fossil fuels for transport and the development of sustainable expensive
tourism (Bertelsmann Stiftung 2013: 61–83; Ura et al. 2012: 1–15). All of these
strategies are assessed from the holistic GNH view.
Since Bhutan’s surveys have only been done twice to date, clear trends within
these metrics are hard to map. But on conventional measurement schemes its
development is better than other South Asian and comparable states worldwide in
terms of poverty reduction, improving HDI rates, constant economic growth and
successful environmental protection. The prior GNH framework has also guided a
stable and still ongoing transition since the 1970s that involved moving from an
absolute monarchy to a constitutional monarchy and finally into a constitutional
democracy. This process was initiated by the fourth king and finished by Jigme
Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, the fifth and current monarch in 2008, when a widely
discussed constitution was signed into law and first elections were held.
Since the 1980s, Bhutan’s life expectancy has gone up by 20 years, its birth rate
has gone down from 6.55 to 2.4 children per woman, infant mortality has halved
and years spent in school have gone up by seven to the OECD average of 11 years.
136 4 Mapping an Emerging New Economic Paradigm in Practice

Its per capita GDP is 13 times higher and unemployment is a mere 4 %. At the
same time Bhutan has managed to increase the area under forest cover from 50 % in
the 1970s to 80 % and inserted into its constitution a clause that this must not fall
below 60 %. The total of its protected nature areas amounts to 50 % of the surface
of the country and the ecological footprint of each Bhutanese is 0.8 ha, well below
the world average of 2 ha. It has pledged to keep its development climate neutral
and hydro-power is supposed to be the prime energy source by 2020, even allowing
for exports that would reduce Bhutan’s still significant dependence on official
development aid.
All is not rosy in Bhutan, however. In the 2010 GNH survey only 41 % of
people passed the sufficiency threshold for happiness as defined by the government,
which included only 37 % of those living in rural areas. Climate change is
threatening hydro-power plans and floods risk damaging the main towns as most of
them sit at the bottom of a long valley in the Himalayan mountains. Urbanization
and the lack of jobs for educated young people wishing to work in offices leads to
problems and a lot of migrant workers from India doing the hard physical work.
The media and tourism-based exposure to the mainstream global culture of con-
sumerism seems to increase tensions. Young people who have studied abroad are
also more critical of the lack of entrepreneurial spirit and availability of goods.
This is one of the core reasons why the promotion of GNH values and ideas in
educational institutions has become a strategic goal. All teachers have been given
training in green ideals, which involve ecology as well as intellectual, academic,
social, cultural, spiritual, aesthetic, and moral values (Bertelsmann Stiftung 2013,
61–83). All schools have meditation on their curricula, even if only for a minute for
small children. Bhutan’s 2013 report to the UN, Happiness: Towards a New
Development Paradigm, makes reference to well-being and neuroscience study
results on the positive effects of regular mindfulness practice on health and quality
of life and also social relationships and productivity (NDP Steering Committee and
Secretariat 2013: 35).
In the report, Bhutan also freely admits that “as with any new attempt at mul-
tidimensional social assessment,” there are still a number of technical and
methodological challenges in GNH implementation, both the measurement, (in-
terpretation of its mathematical formula, questions about correlations between
results when comparing regions and groups, robustness of data on the small scale
and the wording of particular questions) and the communication of policy-relevant
results and their translation into concrete political measures (NDP Steering
Committee and Secretariat 2013: 31).
However, the GNH data confirms many of the well-being studies referred to in
Chap. 3. Happiness is high when people live in conditions providing safe areas
where they trust their neighbors, have ample economic security to provide the
necessities of life to their families, health, clean air to breathe, safe water to drink,
green spaces for recreation, healthy natural resources to provide the necessities of
life, knowledge rather than ignorance, strong social networks and a sense of
belonging to a culture and community (NDP Steering Committee and Secretariat
2013: 33). In addition to these objective conditions great emphasis is put on the
4.3 Pioneering Governments: Beyond GDP Measures as Development Frames 137

inner transformation of mind-sets and behaviors so that individuals can skillfully

enjoy these potentials, otherwise people may well continue to feel miserable even
under such circumstances.
The report concludes that mindfulness as the “cultivation of non-judgmental,
non-reactive, metacognitive awareness of present-moment experience” is one
important “happiness skill” as are the conscious practices of gratitude, empathy,
and patience. Referring to studies documenting higher levels of life satisfaction,
meaning and happiness from volunteerism and community service, the report adds
that “these and related skills combine to build the capacity for citizenship, and
hence for engagement in processes of social change, that help people develop ‘not
just better goals, but better means as well.’” (NDP Steering Committee and
Secretariat 2013: 35) Five principles were suggested for an alternative vision rec-
ognizing the complexity and interrelatedness of human reality and developed into a
proposed paradigm for the UN negotiations around the Post2015 development
agenda (now 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development):
(1) transformation in what we value;
(2) reconsideration of the purpose of development;
(3) re-orientation of humanity towards service;
(4) recognition of our interconnectedness; and
(5) an ethos of cooperation (ibid.: VI–VII).
This view is very much in line with the mind-sets of common-good orientation
and community resilience discussed above but another total deviation from main-
stream ideas on humans and their relationships. Figure 4.1 encapsulates the para-
digm with the nine outcome dimensions of GNH and their wider conceptual
embedding.
Transformation researchers will particularly appreciate the arrow pointing from
‘societal happiness’ back to ‘needs’ and the ‘Holistic Development Agenda’
described as transformative with interconnected solutions: none of these are viewed
as independent, natural or universal laws but as an integral part of continuous
change, depending on the state of societies and the planetary resources drawn upon.
What struck me when visiting Bhutan was the humility with which even high
officials like the princess or ministers say that they have not reached the state to
which they aspire. The phrase that reflexive transformation researchers might find
most impressive was that they are conducting a “living experiment with the truth.”
Of course, there is also plenty of criticism. The least qualified still sneer that a
country with a monarchy lacks the credibility to speak about good governance,
ignorant of the fact that democratic elections were introduced almost a decade ago.
Others point out that small agricultural and Buddhist Bhutan can hardly be a role
model for huge industrialized countries of multiple religions. Then the refugee
drama of the early 1990s remains a massive black spot on Bhutan’s history.
A movement toward the democratization and possible independence of the south,
where many Nepalese people lived, was countered with a nationalist movement by
the king. Apparently when he found out about connections the underground
138 4 Mapping an Emerging New Economic Paradigm in Practice

Fig. 4.1 A new development paradigm of well-being and happiness. Source Based on NDP
Steering Committee and Secretariat (2013: 20)

activists had developed outside Bhutan (especially in India), he ordered in the

country’s newly trained army and up to 100,000 people fled the country. The
numbers are unverified but would amount to one sixth of the population at that
time. Critics argue that this event casts such a shadow that cherishing Bhutan as a
positive development pioneer is impossible. Speaking to government representa-
tives during my stay gave me the perspective that this country of 800,000 people
stuck between the competing super powers China and India was worried about its
very existence when it found out about the Indian support for the movement for
government reform and possible independence.
I am far from able to judge any of these events in the early 1990s. What I can say
is that the later policy frameworks, and even the GNH index itself, are the result of
international collaboration. What I can also say is that people are quick—far too
quick—to talk about the scheme being discontinued. After the elections in May
4.3 Pioneering Governments: Beyond GDP Measures as Development Frames 139

2013 the new prime minister, Tshering Tobgay, was less enthusiastic about making
GNH the top priority and not interested in touring the world to promote it. But the
scheme is inscribed into the constitution and thus I found it surprising to see the
Wikipedia entry for GNH quickly changed into past tense, claiming that it had been
abolished. The only source for that was a New York Times article in which no proof
was to be found. Later articles and speeches of Tobgay, like this quote in The
Guardian, cast a different light:
What’s changed with our government is that we believe our priority must be at home … We
must remove the obstacles to GNH and be true to it within the country… But the job of
government is not to lead debate; it is to implement the principles at home. The world
should not expect too much from us, and we should not expect too much from ourselves
(Confino 2014).

So instead of using GNH as a brand and becoming complacent about it, Tobgay
believes Bhutan should work on the unprecedented divorce rates, domestic vio-
lence, drug abuse and suicide (ibid).
Reading such statements makes me wonder when Western countries will learn
from this cultural trait: a respectful culture of experimentation seems like the best
humus for radical incremental transformation strategies. One global movement that
also works in this direction but originated in the West is On the Commons. It shares
many of the same values and the community well-being mind-set. It can thus serve
as an inspiration for all those who feel that Bhutan’s model is too dependent on its
Buddhist culture to have wider appeal.

4.4 Pioneering Governance Systems: Commoning

as a New Stark Utopia

The term ‘commons’ is mentioned in economic thinking and governance primarily

in the context of the idea of a “tragedy of the commons” in which freely available
natural resources like land, forests, oceans or the atmosphere are used unsustainably
because everyone can pursue their own benefits by exploiting them or dumping
emissions and waste onto or into them. The selfish-competitive actor view therefore
concluded that only private property rights or strict state control was suitable to
deter such action. As a consequence we frequently hear about market failure or state
failure when this is not successful.
Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom, one of the leading thinkers that inspired this
movement, rejected the universal law that all humans are selfish and that policy or
competition somehow have to rein in their destructive actions. She and her col-
leagues also took a closer look at whether there are really only two types of goods
that would justify being satisfied with two prototypical governance solutions. In her
2009 Nobel speech, Ostrom summarizes the amendments that she and her col-
leagues made to mainstream economic ideas. First, they widened the definition of
140 4 Mapping an Emerging New Economic Paradigm in Practice

Table 4.1 Four types of goods and their forms of scarcity

Subtractability of use
High Low
Difficulty of High Common-pool resources: Public goods: peace and
excluding groundwater basins, lakes, security of a community,
potential irrigation systems, fisheries, national defense, knowledge,
beneficiaries forests, etc. fire protection, weather
forecasts, etc.
Low Private goods: food, clothing, Toll goods: theaters, private
automobiles, etc. clubs, daycare centers
Source Based on Ostrom (2009: 413)

‘means’ or ‘goods’ so that they captured real accessibility and scarcity or

non-scarcity (Table 4.1).
The mainstream paradigm differentiates private goods that are both excludable
and rivalrous (people can be excluded from usage unless they pay) and public
goods that are both nonexcludable and nonrivalrous (even if people do not pay they
can consume the goods and this does not limit the consumption by others either).
The excludable/rivalrous would have to be organized by the market and the
nonexcludable/nonrivalrous by government control. In the latter case, people could
influence the usage either by consuming or voting. Table 5 shows that Ostrom
rejected this clear-cut juxtaposition and argued for more differentiated characteri-
zations. Substractability of goods replaces rivalry of consumption and refers to the
notion that consuming a good will reduce the level of the resource available for
others and can be either high or low, not simply on or off. In addition, two more
goods are defined: “common pool resources” contain most of the ecosystems and
their provisions for human survival whereas “toll goods” have also been called
“club goods” as they involve a smaller group of individuals or groups providing
themselves with nonrivalrous goods and services from which only they benefit and
non-members are excluded (ibid).
Ostrom and her colleagues then went on to define an analytical framework of the
most general set of variables that institutional analysis would need in order to
capture a diversity of human-made institutional settings, including markets, private
firms, and governments, but also families, community organizations, and civil
society organizations. These captured rules in use and the ways they evolve over
time, the attributes of a community in terms of knowledge, social capital, partici-
pation, heterogeneity, and also biophysical conditions. The results show that there
are many ways to avoid the tragedy of the commons. Common pool resources may
not need to be divided up into private ownership or state control, especially once
one assumes that actors know each other, can communicate and learn. So while
Ostrom acknowledged that turning one or two rules into seven or eight “has been
upsetting to scholars who wanted to rely on simple models of interaction among
humans,” her team’s extensive research of case studies led them to distill eight
“design principles” for successfully sustained governance regimes (ibid.: 421–422).
Their summary is so short that I cite it completely:
4.4 Pioneering Governance Systems: Commoning as a New Stark Utopia 141

1A. User Boundaries: Clear and locally understood boundaries between legitimate users
and nonusers are present.
1B. Resource Boundaries: Clear boundaries that separate a specific common-pool resource
from a larger social-ecological system are present.
2A. Congruence with Local Conditions: Appropriation and provision rules are congruent
with local social and environmental conditions.
2B. Appropriation and Provision: Appropriation rules are congruent with provision rules:
the distribution of costs is proportional to the distribution of benefits.
3. Collective-Choice Arrangements: Most individuals affected by a resource regime are
authorized to participate in making and modifying its rules.
4A. Monitoring Users: Individuals who are accountable to or are the users monitor the
appropriation and provision levels of the users.
4B. Monitoring the Resource: Individuals who are accountable to or are the users monitor
the conditions of the resource.
5. Graduated Sanctions: Sanctions for rule violations start very low but become stronger if a
user repeatedly violates a rule.
6. Conflict-Resolution Mechanisms: Rapid, low-cost, local arenas exist for resolving
conflicts among users or with officials.
7. Minimal Recognition of Rights: The rights of local users to make their own rules are
recognized by the government.
8. Nested Enterprises: When a common-pool resource is closely connected to a larger
social-ecological system, governance activities are organized in multiple nested layers (ibid.
422).

While these are the empirical results of researchers observing and coding vari-
ables, there is now a movement that translates these design principles into a prin-
cipled approach to governance that could be applied beyond the typical common
pool goods. Commoning thus captures a mind-set that favors collective ownership
and development. Regarding freely available natural resources, it holds the view
that they are the common heritage of mankind, so that everyone has an equal
entitlement to use them but also equal responsibility to protect them. Each gener-
ation should only take to the extent that leaves future generations with similar
wealth. Also, jointly produced output is viewed as a common good rather than an
asset to be divided up into individual returns on the production factors invested.
Thus, in addition to being co-stewards of that which Earth and our ancestors have
provided, everyone is seen as a co-proprietor of wealth created. Commoning
solutions therefore seek to define new systems for reproduction that go beyond the
typical market and state patterns in political economy. They break with their private
or public ownership logics by creating governance and entitlement structures tai-
lored to the type of good and local circumstances. Often this will lead to envi-
sioning and enacting non-commodified production and consumption solutions
among peers that are marked by joint responsibility for the maintenance of the
system created.
The book The Wealth of the Commons: A World Beyond Market and State
comprises 73 essays from thinkers and practitioners in the commoning field (Bollier
and Helfrich 2012). The commonalities within this community are described as “an
overarching worldview.” They comprise a set of social attitudes, commitments and
political philosophy, and even a spiritual disposition, all shaping an experimental
means of strategic change (Bollier and Helfrich 2012: xii–xiii).
142 4 Mapping an Emerging New Economic Paradigm in Practice

While a single definition of the commons or commoning does not exist, one
website, onthecommons.org, is central to the movement and summarizes the core of
this paradigm or framework in Fig. 4.2.
The inner core principles characterize all commons initiatives:
• Equity—Everyone has a fair and just share of social and natural resources that
belong to us together.
• Sustainability—Our common wealth must be cared for so that it can sustain all
living beings, including future generations.
• Interdependence—Cooperation and connection in our communities, around the
world, and with our living planet is essential for the future (On the Commons
2012).
The second ring describes practice characteristics and hints at what social life
(Lebenswelt) would feel like if commoning became the common-sense or normal
way of viewing and doing things. Here we find quite a few overlaps with the
‘novel’ dimensions of the GNH index like cultural and community vitality (be-
longing), the connection of one’s own happiness with that of the wider community
(responsibility), and the spiritual aspects of psychological well-being. The fol-
lowing examples are given for the quality of relations and processes:
• Shared Governance—Everyone is engaged in gathering information, making
decisions and exercising power to steward common resources.
• Deepened Responsibility—Together we claim the power to repair inequity,
restore our common inheritance and expand opportunities for human fulfillment
and planetary resilience.

Fig. 4.2 The Commons Framework. Source Based on On the Commons (2012: 1)
4.4 Pioneering Governance Systems: Commoning as a New Stark Utopia 143

• Belonging—A more expansive view of belonging fosters broader understand-

ings of what ownership means and new structures for how it works.
• Co-Producing—A spirit of common purpose lets us realize that abundance, not
scarcity, prevails when we invite wider participation in our endeavors (On the
Commons 2012).
The outer ring expresses the general notion that all wealth is the result of our
heritage and collaboration and therefore a common outcome. The emphasis is on
acknowledging the abundance of many resources instead of declaring their scarcity
as the norm. The premise that there can be ‘enough’ of something is also intro-
duced. The introduction to the commoning book of essays gives plenty of numbers
that show how much ‘overwealth’ or ‘Überfluss’ there is in the world and that the
unsustainable outcomes of today are not created by scarcity but by unsound patterns
of production, distribution, and consumption. Change, once again, is less a question
of better physical technologies than one of improved processes and systems with
their psychological, sociocultural and institutional path dependencies.
In this context, commoning approaches take a very critical stance toward the
organizational logic of markets. To them the profit motive and the individualistic
competition processes discussed in Chap. 3 are core drivers of unsustainable
solutions. At the center of this critique is the ongoing enclosure of natural resources,
and therefore the ballooning creation of private goods out of the plenty of the
Earth’s resources. This creates and perpetuates the notion of scarcity that undergirds
economic thinking as a foundational law. Instead, the idea is to align human sys-
tems of production and consumption with nature’s reproductive laws so that there
can be enough for all now and in the future. The aim is to reduce dependence on
non-renewables to the minimum and ensure that the use of renewable resources is
attuned to their natural circuits of replenishment. As a consequence, rivalry over
resource access is significantly reduced.
This view is perfectly in line with what I had dubbed the radically different
purpose of ‘recoupling.’ Relational qualities like sharing and the notion of sufficient
or ‘enough’ output are frequently discussed in this community. Both are, of course,
absent from the mainstream economic paradigm but very much the backbone of the
imaginary of a safe and just development corridor that is captured in the sustainable
development doughnut (Fig. 3.6). Also, the prime question (calculus) behind
decision-making and thus the imaginary of the system is not set up around
exchange value (what can be sold and bought) but use value (what do I/we need to
live well) (Helfrich 2012: 36).
When researching criticism of this approach, I mostly found complaints that it
would not be sufficiently critical of structures of domination and would not work
strongly enough toward redistribution of wealth, instead inspiring self-defense
strategies that remain eternally at niche level. The design principles do seem to
suggest a cap on size in order to ensure their proper functioning. Ostrom and
colleagues found that the mainstream assumptions of non-cooperation and egoistic
strategies tend to emerge in settings where individuals do not know each other, do
not communicate effectively, and thus cannot develop agreements, norms, and
144 4 Mapping an Emerging New Economic Paradigm in Practice

sanctions (ibid.: 419). Processes of globalization, commodification, financialization

and also computation have led to the situation in which these settings have become
the default organizing structure of our economic systems.
But this cannot count as a criticism of the concept as such if one embraces the
idea that human-made productive institutions can and should change if they hamper
the alignment of human need satisfaction with respectful and successful resource
governance. Commoning is an ideal for processes of contextually fitted governing
solutions and thus cannot be benchmarked with reference to the standard organi-
zational appearances of today that, one might want to remind the critics, are defi-
nitely not sustainable. Something different will emerge. Given the increasing
attention to the concept—as well as the abuse of it for solutions that do not adhere
to the principles outlined here—only history can reveal how much of this radical
imaginary will be embedded in the transformed systems.

4.5 Summary: System Innovations for Sustainability

by Double-Decoupling

The goal of this empirical assessment was to track which foundational ideas about
human needs and the quality of nature one can find among various initiatives that
explicitly reject the mainstream economic paradigm of ‘good development.’ I have
been surprised by the degree of similarity between the ideas, missions and prin-
ciples as they emerged from different disciplines and cultures.
What we can see is a wave of ‘repurposing’ differently sized and shaped systems
and their institutional design with the radical imaginary that productive processes
can be ‘recoupled’ with human needs and nature’s laws. The Economy for the
Common Good starts by turning the purpose of business outputs from private profit
accumulation toward serving the socio-ecological and economic systems around
them. Transition Towns originally started with the redefinition of the purpose of
energy systems—from providing cheap and limitless amounts of energy to gener-
ating long-term resilient and sustainable systems. GNH is couched in long-standing
cultural and religious traditions whose basic idea of what human happiness is marks
a paradigm shift not so much for Bhutan but for the Western world and the
dominant development paradigm with respect to the purpose of government—
turning away from ensuring private property and limitless consumption possibilities
toward building circumstances in which all members of the community feel con-
fident of leading their lives successfully. The Commoning movement, on the other
hand, starts by turning the purpose of institutional design away from controlling
selfish, unchanging competitors into one that seeks to enable people and commu-
nities to bring out the best in themselves.
None of these initiatives claim that they already represent sustainable develop-
ment in practice. But all of them have a clearly defined beyond-growth purpose that
properly integrates rather than subjugates social and ecological dimensions of
4.5 Summary: System Innovations for Sustainability by Double-Decoupling 145

development. These are spelled out, not only in quantitative key performance
indicators, but also in qualitative details. These numbers, heuristics and principles
change the reference frameworks against which performance and proposed solu-
tions are judged. In effect, the strategic smaller steps amount to what I have called
double-decoupling: doing better when it comes to reducing the negative impacts of
economic production processes on nature, animals, and humans (first decoupling)
and doing well when seeking to establish human need satisfaction strategies that do
not depend on exponential growth (second decoupling).
Of course, changing the benchmark changes judgments as to what is promising
or acceptable. In the newspapers we usually read that ‘productivity,’ ‘competi-
tiveness,’ and ‘value creation’ need to be constantly increased. But these are empty
container terms that can be filled with very different interpretations: what is the
benchmark against which I am productive or competitive and create value? One
where I am doing the least harm to ecological systems and contribute most to
human need satisfaction—or one where my production costs and therefore market
prices are as low as possible and my share prices go up? The latter usually means I
seek to not account for my environmental damages and push the costs of labor per
produced unit as low as possible. These strategies are not very aligned with the
purpose of integrating environmental and social concerns with economic ones. Still,
externalization is rational if my benchmarks are standards and measures counting an
endlessly growing amount of monetary quantifications that are blind to uneconomic
real world effects.
The same holds true for politicians. One important economic tool in political
decision-making is cost–benefit analysis. In the context of the SDGs, for example,
the Copenhagen Consensus Centre, an economic think tank in Denmark, has put
forward a cost–benefit analysis of which of the proposed goals will “do the most
social good” relative to their costs. They grouped the goals into the categories
‘phenomenal,’ ‘good,’ ‘fair,’ ‘poor,’ and “not enough knowledge.” They claimed to
identify the goals in which the money spent would save most lives. This sounds like
a great idea. Yet, the analytical tool and mainstream economic mind-set they use is
totally inept for transformational strategies. Overturning deeply embedded path
dependencies will always produce higher transaction costs, at least in the short
term. And what comes across as objective number-crunching entails massive ethical
decisions and weighting. Luckily, in this case, key aims were made explicit. So the
goal of “achiev[ing] full and productive employment for all” was ranked as ‘poor’
because “some unemployment is necessary for efficient labor markets”
(Copenhagen Consensus Center 2014: 1).
This may be true under current market structures. But it falls short of any
ambition for transformational change that might ask why we accept an economic
system that necessarily renders some people superfluous. Especially since unem-
ployment can lead to death in countries without social welfare, and is the most
important depressor on well-being and quality of life in rich countries. I am not
saying that such reasoning is necessarily unethical or wrong. I am saying that unless
we pull such assumptions and value judgments out into the light from behind the
‘economic evidence’ and its key performance indicators, we should not be surprised
146 4 Mapping an Emerging New Economic Paradigm in Practice

by the solutions that ‘economic evidence’ supports. In order to achieve deliberative

processes of transformation toward sustainable economies and dignified lives, we
need to make transparent what has found recognition as cost and benefit, value,
utility, or capital, and so on.
The pioneers reviewed above hold assumptions and ideas about humans, their
needs and relationships as well as the natural settings in which they operate that are
very different from the Homo economicus and natural capital of mainstream eco-
nomics. They see human behavior and needs as falling more in line with the
ontology of reflexive transformation research discussed in Chap. 2 and the criticism
of mainstream economics presented in Chap. 3.
None of the pioneering examples subscribe to the three-pillar icon for sustain-
able development but instead to one of embedded systems (see Fig. 3.4). It is not
about dividing the world into pieces and freely moving them around until the
balance sheets are optimized. Instead, each element will look and behave differently
according to the context in which it happens to sit, and this context will change if
parts are removed.
None of the movements accepts the quantifying and monetizing lens as having
universal applicability. Market prices are viewed as historically grown institutional
set ups with as many distortions, power relations and socializing effects as public
institutions. Understanding these is a prerequisite for the determination of which
productive relations, goods, and services are best governed by financialized
mind-sets and institutions, and which are not.
None of the initiatives subscribe to the idea that maximizing growth forever by
accumulating monetized value is a good or even feasible idea. Growth is one of
several possible means of securing human happiness and well-being. Its pursuit
through the creation of much disutility for many people and by overshooting
Planetary Boundaries does not deserve the label ‘successful development.’
None of the pioneers ascribe to the idea that comparing and ranking monetary
value expressions can provide suitable indications as to what is really happening.
All insist on qualitative and physical measures for what is going on in the real world
of resources and relations. Instead of pushing a cost–benefit lens onto everything,
they seek to understand and find governance and incentive solutions suitable to the
actual problem and the relationships in place.
Comparing these respective repurposing decisions for business, communities,
governments and civil society initiatives we see a lot of similarities with Sachs’ 4
D’s of sufficiency as introduced in Chap. 3: deglobalizing and decelerating pro-
cesses that do not allow for sustainable, resilient and social ways of creating output
and solving dilemmas, decommodifying beings and relationships whose primary
reason for existence is not that they should be sold in a market, and decluttering the
narratives of the future by shedding the dogma that what is here today can never be
enough.
For me, such differentiated approaches qualify as trailblazing experiments on
how a new, properly integrated sustainability paradigm could be lived in practice.
All of them are continuously confronted with creating something new and different
while being surrounded and connected with the strong path dependencies of
4.5 Summary: System Innovations for Sustainability by Double-Decoupling 147

overarching and neighboring systems operating along the old ways. In such con-
ditions, radical incremental transformation strategies are more promising than too
fast or too drastic changes that would likely cause the old systems to push back or
the new parts to be separated off.
Yet, the new purpose of true system innovations should never be left out of
sight. As the Global Scenario Group aptly summarizes: “the curve of development
must be bent twice. A radical revision of technological means begins the transition.
A reconsideration of human goals completes it” Raskin et al. 2002: 95).
So we do not instantly have to set up new businesses, transition our towns or
establish new indicators. The second bending requires engagement in what the Germans
call ‘Deutungshoheit,’ which essentially means that we can start exposing the flawed
assumptions on which present solutions and plans are built. Work on the reconsider-
ation of humanity’s goals or the upset of the human self-image, as the Brundtland
Commission foresaw it, remains an open opportunity for all of us, every day.
Where exactly it will lead in the end no one knows. But we do know that the old
development model will not lead to sustainability. The final chapter ties key
insights of this book together in an attempt to support the clarity, creativity,
courage, trust and persistence that radical incremental transformation work requires.

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Chapter 5
How to Work a Great Mindshift
for Sustainability Transformations

A transition to sustainability demands profound changes in understanding, interpretative

frameworks and broader cultural values, just as it requires transformations in the practices,
institutions and social structures that regulate and coordinate individual behaviour. In this
context, it is essential to get to the position where people, industry and governments can
easily distinguish between objective facts and opinions that are presented as facts to
advance particular interests, and rely on the former to make informed decisions.

UNEP, Geo 5 (2012: 447).

Magical leverage points are not easily accessible, even if we know where they are and
which direction to push on them. There are no cheap tickets to mastery. You have to work
at it, whether that means rigorously analyzing a system or rigorously casting off your own
paradigms and throwing yourself into the humility of Not Knowing. In the end, it seems
that power has less to do with pushing leverage points than it does with strategically,
profoundly, madly letting go.
Donella Meadows, Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System (1999: 19).
By virtue of the authority with which they are endowed, i.e., as experts, they are able to
influence the definition of social reality others hold … the authority of logic and, therefore,
of the expert as a practitioner of logic, is what carries weight. This source of authority
legitimizes the stories they tell. But the source also tends to subvert the storytellers’ own
recognition that they are telling stories.
Don Michael, With Both Feet Planted Firmly in Mid-Air (1985: 96).

By tying pioneer practice back to the scientific basis of Chaps. 2 and 3, we see how
essential the role of worldviews or mind-sets are in the formation of individual
identity, collective vision and strategies for systemic change that have a mobilizing
effect. Thus, to really innovate a system, transformation strategies also need to
include futures literacy and the acknowledgement of mental path dependencies.
This means engaging with core human aspirations, beliefs or values and what they
mean in the historical context of any activity.
Sociologists and neuroscientists cited earlier show how different stages of civ-
ilization have influenced the formation of personalities and even psychological
needs (Elias 1982). Filters of how we perceive and thus feel in situations and
habitualized circuits of interpretation are modeled in our brains in parallel to our
experiences in the environments we happen (or choose) to live in (Hanson 2009).
© The Author(s) 2016 149
M. Göpel, The Great Mindshift, The Anthropocene:
Politik—Economics—Society—Science 2, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-43766-8_5
150 5 How to Work a Great Mindshift for Sustainability Transformations

The canonized knowledge that comes with education impacts rational search
strategies for alternatives and becomes part of our mind-sets. These encompass
basic assumptions about what we say exists, what its characteristics are and which
development solutions seem possible or rational, including guiding values.
In scientific contexts this is what paradigms entail: epistemological questions
surrounding what we can know and ontological ones on the state of the world will
be combined into methodological approaches to capture reality or seek truthful
answers. Some researchers explicitly add axiological value questions when pre-
senting their research designs.
Worldviews or paradigms serve as central reference frameworks for epistemic
communities in research but also for the pioneers or situated groups that transition
researchers observe taking action on strategic change. The worldviews and para-
digms inform the narratives of where this social system or economy is heading,
what its purpose is and why a particular ordering of roles, technologies, remu-
neration structures, and infrastructures are promising, or at least acceptable for this
destination. Reflexive theory sees them as the mediating ‘glue’ between actors and
structures in a society.
We have seen that all the pioneering practitioners reviewed above started with
principles, guidelines, indicators and measuring tools to express the purpose of their
particular initiative and how it can be enacted. Gradually, such enacting is changing
the productive processes and system setups that people encounter in their ‘reality,’
which will foster different experiences of how life ‘is.’ The imaginary space of pos-
sible human–human, human–nature and human–technology relations is widened and
thus creativity and courage expand in the innovation of systems organizing economic
activities. As a consequence of learning from such experimental test cases, it becomes
easier to change regime rules and path dependencies, which all transition and trans-
formation scientists agree is necessary for lasting changes. This potentially virtuous
spin on the materiality of ideas (Fig. 2.5) is summarized in the UNEP GEO-5 report:
Coordinating deep and enduring system change is neither a single pathway nor a linear
process. For example, the rules of a system often arise from a change in mindset, but in turn
help support mindset shifts. At this level of system intervention the emphasis is on getting
the signals right. Because rules and incentives can institute structural change, they represent
the game changers that can catalyse and retain a strong influence on system behaviour over
time (UNEP 2012: 422).

In democratic societies in particular, individual and collective sense-making and

narratives are crucial for an understanding of which rules and incentives are put in place
and accepted. They create the “discursive face of politics” (Fraser 2013) and influence
the development of “consciousness-personality-structures” (Hahnel 2002), both of
which will determine how policies and technologies are innovated and which solutions
appear as economically sensible or normatively justified. Low leverage points that can
accelerate or balance feedback in a system—and thus also existing development tra-
jectories—involve tweaking technological solutions or economic incentives. But they
will not be the source of any intentional bend of a trend. This requires a deeper
repurposing on the levels of imaginary and sociocultural belief systems.
5.1 The Role of Mind-Sets in Unlocking Path Dependencies … 151

5.1 The Role of Mind-Sets in Unlocking Path

Dependencies: Antonio Gramsci’s Heritage

One scholar I have found particularly insightful for an understanding of the gov-
erning role of a dominant paradigm or common sense is Gramsci (1891–1937). An
Italian political economist of the twentieth century, he wrote most of his work while
imprisoned by Benito Mussolini’s fascist regime in the 1930s. His quest was to find
an answer to the phenomenon of democratic orders whose citizenship rights were
presumed to be democratic, but in which a small number of people enjoyed far
more privilege than the majority (Gramsci 1971: 377).
For Gramsci, shaping or changing regime structurations or governing institutions
requires a “collective will” that can mobilize sufficient support, either in numbers of
people or in politico-economic power. This collective will is represented by a group
of people whose political program “presupposes the attainment of a ‘cultural-social’
unity through which a multiplicity of dispersed wills with heterogeneous aims are
welded together with a single aim, on the basis of an equal and common conception
of the world” (Gramsci 1971: 349).
The essential ingredient is the common conception of the world, and from it
springs the agreement that a particular program, its aim and its underpinning values
and norms are of general interest for the given community—or at least the best
possible solution for it. Of course here we find a resemblance to what I discussed as
paradigms or worldviews, and the role of narratives in generating collective action.
Gramsci uses the term ‘aim’ for what I formerly described as the declared
purpose of systems or strategies. Successful aims would have the quality of a
“social myth,” which is “a political ideology expressed neither in the form of a cold
utopia nor as learned theorizing, but rather by a creation of concrete fantasy which
acts on a dispersed and shattered people to arouse and organize its collective will”
(Gramsci 1971: 126). This “concrete fantasy” is close to what I used the term
‘imaginary’ for in this book, and both are essential for the emergence of the will to
act and change.
In successful transformation processes, slowly but surely, the originally new aim
or purpose becomes the norm or basis of consent that I have called the ‘default.’ It
is produced and reproduced through a set of institutions, social relations, and ideas
that live in science or canonized knowledge as much as culture. Here we find the
analogy to the changing yet objectified role of old ideas in today’s path dependent
systems, taking the shape of infrastructures, technologies, political regulation,
market patterns, sociocultural norms, and mind-sets (Fig. 2.5).
Gramsci puts most emphasis on the sociocultural aspects when seeking to
understand why capitalism, despite its clearly unequal distribution of benefits and
power, was not leading to the revolution that Marxists had predicted. This is what
he coined the term ‘hegemony’ for: it is the soft or invisible factors like values,
ideas, knowledge, and norms about what is good and right that filter which solu-
tions appear to be of general interest or acceptable. A successful collective will’s
narrative thus provides “not only a unison of economic and political aims, but also
152 5 How to Work a Great Mindshift for Sustainability Transformations

intellectual and moral unity, posing all the questions around which the struggle
rages not on a corporate but on a ‘universal’ plane, and thus creating the hegemony
of a fundamental social group over a series of subordinate groups” (Gramsci 1971:
181–182).
This means that the governance of societies is anchored at very deep and
informal levels (as highlighted in the s-curve presented here) and the groups whose
particular interests are best served by the currently accepted social myth will benefit
from an effect that Gramsci called “leadership with least resistance.” Even in highly
unequal societies control is maintained not so much by violence and political or
economic coercion as through an ideology that expresses the idea that there is no
valid or realistic alternative (Gramsci 1971: 242).
Gramsci’s concept of hegemony is therefore very close to that of the uncontested
paradigm of Meadows, who says: “The shared idea in the minds of society, the
great big unstated assumptions—unstated because unnecessary to state; everyone
already knows them—constitute that society’s paradigm, or deepest set of beliefs
about how the world works” (Meadows 1999: 17). While Meadows leans more to
the camp of overcoming paradigms and path dependencies by learning, Gramsci
highlights political interest and domination when thinking about the persistence of
paradigms. He therefore argues against restricting the idea of coercive rule to
official laws but to understand how the private context equally defines codes of
conduct and shapes the way in which individuals fit in. He explained that the
concept of the law
will have to be extended to include those activities which are at present classified as
“legally neutral,” and which belong to the domain of civil society; the latter operates
without ‘sanctions’ or compulsory ‘obligations,’ but nevertheless exerts a collective pres-
sure and obtains objective results in the form of an evolution of customs, ways of thinking
and acting, morality, etc. (Gramsci 1971: 242).

Contemporary political economists like Stephen Gill from York University in

Canada have used Gramsci’s work to track manifestations of the mainstream
economic paradigm in contemporary societies. Gill’s concepts dovetail nicely with
the original three levels of the MLP, and help us sharpen our understanding of the
degree to which the mainstream economic mind-set has been encoded into our
societal systems. They also show why I think that changing this paradigm would be
one of the most powerful leverage points for transformational changes in devel-
opment. In his analysis, the mind-sets component is inherent in all three levels, but
given their important role in understanding system perpetuation and change, I
decided to single them out into the meta- and mini-levels as well as cutting across
them (Fig. 2.6).
On the landscape level, Gill’s “market civilization” resembles Polanyi’s stark
utopia of a market system. It describes the ongoing structuration in which social
relationships, and relationships with nature, are commodity-shaped, fitting every-
thing into the pathway of price-governed exchange value growth. According to
Gill, this institutional setup and with it the personality-shaping effects nurture an
5.1 The Role of Mind-Sets in Unlocking Path Dependencies … 153

ahistorical, economistic and materialistic, me-oriented, short-term and ecologically

myopic perspective on how the world works (Gill 2003: 119).
In this setup the regime level is marked by what Gill calls “new constitution-
alism,” referring to the reifying establishment of laws and regulations necessary to
create fictitious commodities or market patterns in ever more areas of life. These
rules and norms armor the market civilization’s imaginary with legitimized options
of coercion against those unconvinced by its promises and unwilling to conform. As
a consequence, these institutions protect not only the interests of those groups and
individuals benefiting most from a market civilization, but also, slowly but surely,
turn the experienced reality of humans into what the theory foresees: ubiquitous
market patterns in which everyone has to possess and sell capital, labor or nature in
order to make a life (ibid.: 120–124).
The effect that this has on individual identities was described as psychogenesis
in Sect. 2.1 and dubbed “disciplinary neoliberalism” by Gill. He refers to Weber
(1864–1920) instead of Norbert Elias. Weber, the famous German sociologist,
analyzed how classes, status groups, political parties, etc., are all social phenomena
expressing the distribution of power in society and embodying typical customs.
They discipline without employing coercion those who wish to be part of them,
something that Gramsci also pointed out when arguing for the expansion of the law
into the private realm. In the words of Weber: “What is decisive for discipline is
that obedience of a plurality of men is rationally uniform” (Weber/Eisenstadt 1968:
28). In effect this means that everyone seeking to fit in with the standard groups of
society will, in a self-governing way, seek to master ideas, habits and social
practices in line with market society and new constitutionalism patterns (Gill 2003:
128–130).
Gill’s neo-Gramscian concepts offer a particular political-economist-style
interpretation of current path dependencies from mental to regime infrastructures
commensurate with the general MLP concept of transition studies. They show how
expressions of the mainstream paradigm and mind-set cut across the different levels
of structuration. Some present-day examples of the hegemony of market civilization
and disciplinary neoliberalism come to mind. You may not even have found any-
thing awkward about some contemporary instances of fictitious commodification—
not even when someone talked about making the labor market more flexible,
improving the return on investment on financial products or expanding the
Emissions Trading System. And great examples of new constitutionalism can be
found everywhere. One of my favorites is the 2013 coalition agreement of the
parties making up the current German government. It refers unabashedly to a health
‘economy,’ a culture ‘economy’ and a ‘bioeconomy’ as if this was the natural way
of viewing and organizing what were formerly public goods, human rights, the arts,
or nature and agriculture.
After fictitious commodities, Polanyi of course also singled out the importance
of the idea or social myth of endless gain and growth for the democratic governance
of highly unequal societies: eventually, everyone should benefit from the expanding
cake, and as a consequence everyone contributing to growth is serving the common
good, regardless of what is hiding behind the numbers.
154 5 How to Work a Great Mindshift for Sustainability Transformations

So how does Gramsci say we can escape hegemonic rule? As a political

economist he of course refers to structural problems within the production pro-
cesses. Resource constraints or too high levels of inequality might challenge their
smooth continuation and therefore the acceptance of the division of labor and
revenues within them. But, most relevant for this book, he also suggests the
weakening of the cultural and ideational consensus or dominant paradigm that helps
to justify the unequal distribution patterns and provide moral hazard on a socio-
cultural rather than structural level.
Public discourse after the financial crisis, at least in Germany, was full of
statements—for example, that human nature is simply greedy and that it was not the
fault of individual bankers but of regulatory loopholes that they basically had to
use. The question these articles never answer is which of these implacably greedy
humans should then suddenly be enlightened enough to write laws without loop-
holes. Nor do these articles suggest how it might be possible to find laws without
loopholes for globalized systems. The moral hazard discussion so far points out that
systems too big to fail and contracts with golden parachutes are not very conducive
to good governance.
But there is also a sociocultural moral hazard perpetuated by a narrative and
proclaimed common sense in which people are innately greedy. The ethical default
changes from one of ‘intending no harm’ to one of ‘do everything that is not
explicitly forbidden because this is legitimate.’ Even regulatory and judicial con-
sequences will differ from those of a society in which egoistical behavior to the
detriment of the great majority is considered an individual and civilizational failure.
Different sentences for corruption or rape in different cultural settings are just one
example of this hazard effect.
German philosopher Richard David Precht offers a forthright view on the effects of
the widespread adoption of mainstream economic ideas and the commodification of
human relationships: “Strict and tough calculation of utility, ruthlessness and greed
are not man’s main driving forces, but the result of targeted breeding. One could call
this process ‘the origin of egoism by capitalist selection’, following Charles Darwin’s
famous principal work” (ibid., here cited by Habermann 2012: 15).
More subtly, Gill writes: “a change in thinking is a change in the social totality
and thus has an impact on other social processes; a change in the social totality will
provoke change in the process of thought. Hence the process of thinking is part of a
ceaseless dialectic of social being” (Gill 2003: 22). This means that many of the
ultimate drivers of societal change are located within each one of us. Here, as
indicated in purple and blue arrows in Fig. 2.6, we find the connection between the
big picture of meta-level paradigms and hegemonic narratives on the meso-level
and the mini-level of individual thinking and acting: everyone can challenge the
declared system-purpose and the ideas and assumptions it needs to appear as
beneficial or legitimate. By questioning the standard answers and ways of doing
things we can drive change from below, within and above, at the same time.
5.2 Transformative Literacy: Hacking Systems and Their Purpose 155

5.2 Transformative Literacy: Hacking Systems and Their

Purpose

We saw from Meadows’ list of leverage points that shifting the paradigm is the
most difficult and yet most effective or radical leverage point for system innova-
tions. She paraphrases Kuhn when describing it as long and tedious work:
In a nutshell, you keep pointing at the anomalies and failures in the old paradigm, you keep
speaking louder and with assurance from the new one, you insert people with the new
paradigm in places of public visibility and power. You don’t waste time with reactionaries,
rather you work with active change agents and with the vast middle ground of people who
are open-minded (ibid.: 18).

The good news is that even if there might not be visible changes for a long time,
this work is not undertaken for nothing. Think back to the development and also
ignition phase in the s-curve. Each choice to do differently, each questioning of the
stated purpose or reasons, impacts the former reference frameworks, mind-sets and
knowledge reservoirs. It offers alternative meaning, delegitimizes the notion that
there are no alternative claims, and offers ideas about other ways of acting or doing
things. Of course much structural power rests with those who benefit from the status
quo and its hegemonic paradigm. But as Meadows wrote, many individuals—
change research suggests about 60 % of people in a system—are open minded and
willing to learn.
This is where radical incremental transformation begins, as illustrated nicely in
Fig. 5.1. It stems from Ray Ison, professor of the Systems for Sustainability pro-
gram at the Monash Sustainability Institute in Australia. I was fortunate enough to
sit next to him at a conference on decoupling human well-being from resource use
and after my presentation he told me he had just finished an article that he felt was
relevant to my thinking. The following illustration (Fig. 5.1) is indeed spot on, even
though his terminology is of course different:

Fig. 5.1 Processes of radical incremental transformations. Source Ison 2016 forthcoming, Fig. 2.4
156 5 How to Work a Great Mindshift for Sustainability Transformations

Ison’s article summarizes 14 years of experience in transdisciplinary research on

system innovation processes. As a result, he and his colleagues put “social learning”
at the heart of their framework: humans engage in making sense of a situation by
socially constructing the issue at stake. Through this process they either reify or
change both their understanding of a situation and the practices in which they
engage. Sometimes this entails amending the institutional setup (made visible as
elements of a situation in the right hand graph). Change and dynamic adaptation is
the normal state of being in a complex living system. So each alternative viewpoint,
each act done differently, amends the framework for action in the future.
So, in essence, we cannot not be part of changing the world. The decision that
lies with us concerns our choice to become aware of this and use it intentionally—
even if cause and effect are not always visible or impressive. Over time and through
collective or concerted action, the situational amendments transform the system in
question even if each shifting from one dynamic stage to another is in itself not very
radical or disruptive (here indicated as S1 to Sn in the left hand graph). As part of
this process, the boundaries of one system may also be adjusted and thence the
scope of what a particular transformation process involves.
So each questioning sparks thought processes in others—an inspiration or irri-
tation that influences the dynamics. Each silence might be interpreted as others
please. And we never know when exactly that last incremental activity necessary to
prompt a social or ecological tipping point for wider and deeper—radical—regime
changes occurs. Social scientists’ research findings suggest that 10 percent of the
people in any given system provides the critical mass where new ideas or opinions
start spreading rapidly (SCNARC 2011).
In order to strategically influence these permanently ongoing processes of
learning and adaptation, it is important to open up a target system: to assess and
understand the crucial path dependencies and which purpose or generative imagi-
nary they are serving. This involves infrastructures and technologies, as STS
research would point out, the ecological embeddedness that SES approaches
highlight, and the enforceable laws, role definitions, and mind-sets that political
economist emphasize.
To capture this holistic view I created an image with 5 P’s that are important to
bear in mind when opening up a system in order to repurpose it (Fig. 5.2). It is
supposed to serve what Uwe Schneidewind, president of the Wuppertal Institute in
Germany, called “transformative literacy”: “the ability to read and utilize infor-
mation about societal transformation processes, to accordingly interpret and get
actively involved in these processes” (Schneidewind 2013: 83). He argues that
those seeking to understand and plan sustainable development need to consider not
only economic and technological solutions but also put more emphasis on the
cultural and institutional dimensions of societal development. These will eventually
determine if and how technologies are used and how many material goods people
aspire to in the first place.
Schneidewind’s four-dimensional perspective fits that of the STS camp of
transformation research and was meant to complement what Roland Scholz, former
ETH Zurich professor called “environmental literacy” in a book with the same title
5.2 Transformative Literacy: Hacking Systems and Their Purpose 157

Fig. 5.2 Transformative Literacy—5 P’s to map SETSs. Source Own illustration

(2011). Scholz discusses what has been introduced here as the SES camp’s view of
embedded systems, and provides analytical tools for a better understanding of the
inseparable systemic relationships between humans and their natural environment.
His definition of ‘environmental literacy’ captures “the ability to read and utilize
environmental information appropriately, to anticipate rebound effects, and to adapt
to changes in environmental resources and systems, and their dynamics” (Scholz
2011: 540).
In line with my ambition to integrate relevant SES and STS concepts and
combine them with political economy, I also introduced futures literacy, as defined
in the 2013 WSSR: “people’s capacity to imagine futures that are not based on
hidden, unexamined and sometimes flawed assumptions about present and past
systems” (ISSC/UNESCO 2013: 8). With reference to the Global Scenario Group
report (2002) I discussed this view as SETS camp: without checking for biases and
differences in these assumptions, no change agent will understand how and why
people expressing the same goals can so utterly disagree on the best ways forward.
Although my intention is to bring all of these perspectives together, I refrained
from adding a fourth literacy concept. The definition of transformative literacy
captures exactly what I am after and I am thus suggesting that the realm of what is
required to attain it should be amended with the key points of the other two
158 5 How to Work a Great Mindshift for Sustainability Transformations

literacies—understanding ecological embeddedness and differences in mind-sets.

These are essential for active involvement in transformational activities for sus-
tainable development. So Fig. 5.2 integrates Schneidewind’s approach as ‘institu-
tional literacy’ into an amended understanding of what transformative literacy for
sustainability involves.
The bottom half-circle (Planet) is the home of environmental literacy. It repre-
sents the fact that humans need to interact with their environment for survival and
well-being. No system innovation for sustainable development can ignore these
relations. A system innovator would be interested in understanding the actual
physical ties in the problem that she is tackling as well as the paradigm with which
nature’s reproductive capacities and role is captured by influential evidence or
people in the system she seeks to change.
The top half-circle (People) illustrates my conviction that system innovation
theory is well advised to recognize the role of humans as social beings when
wishing to capture agency behind the nouns that dominate the explanation of
change there, for example: “innovation cascades,” “knock-on effects,” “diffusion of
new technologies” and “(re)alignments between multiple elements and interactions
between multiple actors” (Geels et al. 2015: 2). It captures the fact that humans
make history and in doing so influence the future development of people and the
planet. Actors reason and struggle with each other over how to organize people–
people–planet relations, and create and apply technologies, infrastructures and
institutions intended for particular purposes.
The results are the self-stabilizing path dependencies that can afford continuity,
but can also lead to crises (Processes). Schneidewind’s institutional literacy
approach is a reminder that not only technological and economic dimensions are
important to consider, but also political and sociocultural ones.
Since there are always many possible ways to organize such processes, opening
up a system also entails a historical perspective that seeks to deconstruct which
goals and imaginary are wired into the processes in question (Purpose). Futures
literacy thus entails—as the first step—becoming sensitive to the existence of
different mind-sets and thus different rationalities. The second step is to understand
how each point of view leads to different interpretations of what is at stake, and how
a purpose might best be served—and the link with the overarching Paradigm.
This is why Fig. 5.2, in line with Meadow’s work on leverage points, lists
paradigms as both the sources and stabilizers of systems and peoples’ mind-sets,
but also as drivers of transformative engagement toward innovating them.
Transformative literacy can inform both types of analyses, those mapping a
given organization or society from a systemic point of view, and the
problem-driven approaches in which scholars define system boundaries according
to the challenge they seek to address. It is equivalent to hacking the system: hackers
take systems apart to understand their inner workings and see where they can
manipulate them to change their performance. For human systems, this means
going back in history and deconstructing which ideas, actors, technologies, eco-
nomic or environmental factors and institutional as well as cultural aspects were
instrumental in their emergence and how they now interact in a mutually
5.2 Transformative Literacy: Hacking Systems and Their Purpose 159

reinforcing manner. In both types of analyses checking for the 5 P’s helps develop a
thorough understanding of path dependencies: which ones lie at the roots of the
development trajectory of the system or thorny problem one is tackling? Where in
their dynamic interplay do stabilizing feedback loops or the potential to unlock
them lie? And, linking it back to humans as the loci of change: where do the power
potentials to achieve that unlocking lie?
Each specific system setup harbors different types of power potentials that will
make it easier to induce change for some actors and less so for others. Of course,
money and role-defined authority come to mind, but following Gramsci’s guide-
lines also means being sensitive to the structural power enjoyed by those privileged
under the status quo and its overarching paradigm: it tends to be perceived (or
presented) as the default position against which proposals for change have to argue
their case, and the arguments have to fit with the prevailing common sense.
With this in mind, the following provides a slightly more detailed description of
what ‘hackers’ should look for in each of the P’s, and also serves as a very brief
summary of the arguments in this book:
• ‘People’ and ‘Planet’ are more explicit reminders that this is what sustainable
development is about. Also, that these elements exist independently of the
human-made institutions in the process circle. Yet, the manner in which they
exist and develop lies exactly in the contextually and historically diverse ways
that processes are set up. Statements that humans are just x, y, or z, or analysis
based on this kind of assumption signal a difficult mind-set for repurposing
work.
• ‘Processes’ comprise the dynamic workings that ‘defend’ particular behavioral
patterns and development trajectories over time. The term ‘path dependencies’
highlights that this encompasses physical infrastructures and technology choices
as much as politico-economic rules and incentive configurations like remuner-
ation standards or interest-bearing money. This book makes the point that they
also include sociocultural and individual role definitions, identities, habits, and
mind-sets that shape what seems possible, justifiable or desirable. Usually, an
alteration of some process configurations will impact the dynamics of the entire
system, and change that is too abrupt or intense will lead to resistance or crisis.
Given the multiple mutually reinforcing feedback loops behind path depen-
dencies, existing systems show a high degree of resistance to transformational
change. This is especially high if the system’s generative rule or aim is
challenged.
• So ‘Purpose’ lies at the heart of any system’s behavior because it encapsulates
its raison d’être. It connects overarching paradigms (assumptions about how the
world is) with collective choices (which processes should we therefore set up)
and individual values, beliefs, and actions (is this good and what is my role).
A change in purpose is therefore a radical decision, and due to the multiple
limiting factors referred to above, will usually require incremental steps to be
successfully accomplished. Another possibility is not so much that the purpose
will be changed, but the overarching paradigm changes and thus makes the
160 5 How to Work a Great Mindshift for Sustainability Transformations

processes in place seem ineffectual. Or the purpose is changed but not the
paradigm, so the paradigm is inapt for informing proper strategies to get to the
declared purpose. This is the case that I made in this book: if the main paradigm
informing development decisions—mainstream economics—is not updated, the
declared purpose of sustainable development cannot be reached. The main-
stream economic paradigm is blind to key aspects of this purpose (human needs
and nature’s integrity).
• ‘Paradigms’ are thus the source of system designs. Hegemonic ones stabilize
processes and work as reference frameworks for the narratives with which actors
engage in the creation and application of institutions and technologies. They
translate into unconscious programming and routine habits that psychologists
and neurologists explain are necessary for coping with the complexity of life. So
holding paradigms or biased mind-sets is both unavoidable and helpful in
organizing social life. However, there are always alternative paradigms, and
with them alternative individual and collective wills that have the potential to
incrementally irritate the status quo until windows of opportunity for conscious
questioning and more radical political action arise. Depending on how the
system is re-stabilized—a change in default or not—one might speak of a
paradigm shift and radical system innovation, or not.
The speed with which a system purpose can be changed—and the likelihood of
this change lasting—will depend substantially on the support or resistance of
powerful actors in the SETS. Power, here understood as the capacity to influence
processes and their purpose, is unevenly distributed in any SETS. It can be dis-
persed or concentrated, and has many facets that vary with each system’s config-
uration; control over production sites, infrastructure or land are obvious loci, but
outlets of public opinion, a recognized expert status in strategic discussions, or good
connections with key decision-makers can be equally important. Describing such
qualities as power potentials expresses the notion that one and the same aspect can
convey considerable influence in one system, but not in another.
One example for this could be fiat money: it needed new laws and regulations to
come into existence and many incremental changes in regulation and strong
paradigm support to become the powerful tool of private rule that it is today. Yet, if
a financial crisis wiped out trust in virtual wealth, this tool would cede its power to
material possessions or to human capabilities to actually plant food, educate chil-
dren, build houses, and fix cars.
To sum up, large-scale transformations are tremendous, conflict-laden and
long-term tasks. The outcomes will typically be different to what the individual
actors in the processes foresaw. Nor are the processes linearly predictable.
A comparably small change in one subsystem may have huge ripple effects in
another. Often there are time delays between cause and effect, especially between
small single causes and the accumulated effect of a tipping point. No one knows
exactly when a critical mass or threshold is reached at which the fetters of the old
can start thriving, but the estimates of 10 percent of the people being sufficient are
rather encouraging (SNARC 2011).
5.2 Transformative Literacy: Hacking Systems and Their Purpose 161

The MLP shows that each large scale system is composed of many, many
subsystems, and reflexive research and action frameworks help to connect the big
sustainability challenge of a Great Transformation with the small sustainability
potentials of each individual’s decision to learn more, be mindful about his or her
intentions, speak truth to power or organize change initiatives. In essence it means
that a transformational 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development begins with
challenging and changing our self and inspiring those that we can reach. Gramsci
called this the “progressive self-consciousness,” explaining that: “The awareness of
self is reconstituted through an appreciation of prevailing thought-patterns and the
nature and distribution of life-chances. Hence the moment of self-awareness leads
to a more complex and coherent understanding of the social world and is a form of
historical change” (cited by Gill 2003: 31).
Such a change in personal mind-sets might bring about exactly what all inno-
vation needs: the energy-sparking imaginary of what could be if x, y, or z were
different. Offering alternative ideas, interpretations and practice experiences also
means offering alternative meaning, legitimacy and knowledge about solutions.
This can foster deliberative co-creative processes—or at least delegitimize claims
that there are no alternatives. The future constellation of imagination, rationalization
and justification patterns in which decision-making processes take place is changed.
And even if it does not trigger alternative decisions or practice right away, the
mind-sets of the people involved are altered. A spark of inspiration or resentment of
complacency has been planted. The radical intention fuels another incremental step.
Award-winning complex system and leadership researchers
Margaret J. Wheatley and Deborah Frieze of the Berkana Institute found that from
separate local efforts might arise networks which solidify into communities of
practice once people join them not only out of self-interest but also for a jointly
aspired-for outcome and out of concern for the others. From these networks might
emerge new “systems of influence” that possess qualities and capacities that did not
exist in the individuals before and were not anticipated: “the system that emerges
always possesses greater power and influence than is possible through planned
incremental change. Emergence is how Life creates radical change and takes things
to scale” (Wheatley/Frieze 2006).
What Wheatley and Frieze call the “aspired outcome” equals Gramsci’s ‘aim’
and my purpose: it can unify different expectations into a collective will for change.
This outcome imaginary is not understood as a blueprint. Those, as complex system
researchers agree and empirical research will show, are not available for living
systems. Rather, when there is clarity about which default practice and arguments
can be jettisoned, a corridor of steps that qualify as going in the desired direction
can emerge, and movement both as a team and in a strategic fashion is facilitated.
This brings me back to the radical imaginary of recoupling, a common thread in
twenty-first century science (Chap. 2) and one suitable for capturing the contex-
tually different repurposing efforts of the pioneering initiatives presented in Chap. 4.
Under current circumstances, their incremental strategies are ones of
double-decoupling: doing things better when it comes to treating nature and
162 5 How to Work a Great Mindshift for Sustainability Transformations

humans and finding ways to free their systems from the growth-for-growth’s-sake
imperative in order to do be able to do things well in the longer run.
In most of the Green Economy discourse, also in the context of reaching the
SDGs, ‘decoupling’ is stated as the prime goal rather than a strategy. Also, the term
only refers to single- and not double-decoupling. The GDP growth imperative
remains the uncontested default. From my point of view this falls short of a
paradigm shift and thus transformational leverage. It keeps one trapped in the
mental model that created unsustainable solutions of uneconomic growth in the first
place: can economic processes really be disconnected from nature or people?
Also, single- rather than double-decoupling means strategies claim success when
more fictitious commodities are created: more natural life and resources are priced
and thus push up exchange value output statistics, while ‘immaterial’ growth often
stems from the same effect in social relations or the yet further financialization of
the economy.
Of course, every paradigm, theory, model, or narrative is invariably a distortion
of the real world. But it is important to reflect on them and decide whether the blind
spots are acceptable given the declared purpose that one seeks to achieve. To me, a
mind-set suitable for guiding transformational strategies for sustainable develop-
ment can only be one that helps illuminate the qualities of human–human, human–
nature, and human–technology relations so they can be governed toward thriving in
harmony. The monetized growth imaginary of the mainstream economic paradigm
fails miserably. The recoupling imaginary qualifies. It can become the radical
backbone of a new narrative that organizes incremental transformation strategies for
sustainable development.

5.3 Summarizing Outlook

Given the magnitude of change required to reach sustainable development, a focus

on ideas and paradigms may seem a bit lofty. But a systematic exposure of the blind
spots in the paradigm most influential in imagining futures today enables critical
reassessments of common sense and the way the institutions built around it shape
developments. Opening up today’s SETS’s to understand on which basic ideas
individual positions as well as institutional designs rest will also shed a different
light on joint interests, decision-making patterns, and coalitions—especially in
contrast to the typical container concepts of ‘government,’ ‘business,’ ‘civil soci-
ety,’ ‘science,’ and ‘media.’ While these institutions have been set up for particular
purposes and thus carry mandates and role expectations (some of the famous path
dependencies) that differ from each other, the way that individuals carry them out
will depend on their respective mind-sets, evidence sourcing, and ethics.
Deciphering political dynamics by using such paradigmatic factors rather than
institutional affiliation is thus very helpful for the transformative literacy needed to
conduct system innovations. Also, on the individual level I believe that once we
have started to see the world differently, the old ways will not feel ‘right’—or at
5.3 Summarizing Outlook 163

least will not seem inevitable. The term ‘mind’ captures all of those less intellectual
aspects of human existence, too: sense, meaning, soul, intention, or spirit. The seeds
of imagination, belief, and argumentative ammunition for becoming a change agent
have been planted.
The emphasis in this book lies on exploring the transformational potentials of a
Great Mindshift in mainstream economics for the agenda of sustainable develop-
ment. Of course one could also open up the blind spots and contingencies in other
dominant paradigms of the development agenda, like nationalism and sovereignty
or human rights and individualistic justice systems. But none of these are built on
ideas or ‘scientific concepts’ that involve such a degree of flawed assumptions about
the things to which they are applied: human-need satisfaction and natural resource
governance.
Sustainable development is about integrating social, environmental, and eco-
nomic goals in the short and long term. So while the monetized numbers and
mathematical equations appear to provide a high degree of scientific certainty and
predictability, they do not say much about the trade-offs behind the cost–benefit
weighting that happened in the quantification process. The models running pre-
dictions of growth, employment, productivity, and competitiveness are equally
intransparent and based on the assumptions that nature and humans can be freely
substituted and should move around in the correct amounts needed for efficient
markets. This is very unhelpful for informed decision-making. For democratic
decision-making, it is a real problem. It means one can present computational
graphs and numbers instead of having to make serious ethical and moral judgments
explicit because they might be politically risky or detrimental for the justification of
one’s privileges.
Concepts such as utility, capital, market price, and growth are, as discussed,
laden terms. Whether we like it or not they include many value judgments. Also,
according to the mainstream economic theory, only more is better. Any idea of
enough or sufficiency necessarily translates into limiting and unsatisfying results.
Any vision of arriving at steady-state equitable prosperity is ex ante excluded from
the imaginary. This is at least ideological. When looking at the triple crisis in
environment, social equity, and economic stability today it seems
future-foreclosing. History is an open-ended process and the security-, justice-, and
well-being-providing potentials of sufficiency strategies become imperative for a
world of nine billion, in particular with regard to future generations. They should
not be qua theory excluded from the choice set of rational actors.
Interestingly, some important economic thinkers like Mill (1806–1873) and
Keynes (1883–1946) also had sufficiency ideas for the scenario in which economic
output growth led to a certain degree of material saturation. At levels of sufficient
supply, they reasoned, humans would work and produce at a constant level and
efficiency or technology improvements would lead to more time with family and
friends, cultural events, education, recreation, and so on. These thinkers also always
limited the realm of an economy, and therefore economics. Neither the governance
framework nor the paradigm were foreseen to impact all of human existence and
natural life.
164 5 How to Work a Great Mindshift for Sustainability Transformations

In 1844, Mill criticized a too-narrow and too-widely applied definition of

political economy: “Political Economy considers mankind as occupied solely in
acquiring and consuming wealth,” and it would seek to explain all realms of
societies, even “though many of them are really the result of a plurality of motives.”
He went on to say that “with respect to those parts of human conduct of which
wealth is not even the principal object, to these Political Economy does not pretend
that its conclusions are applicable” (Mill 1844, Essay V. V.38). I am sure he would
be rather surprised by how matter-of-factly the public discourse today speaks of the
culture economy, the wellness economy, the health economy, or the nursing
economy.
So I hoped to show that this overstretched application of the mainstream eco-
nomics mind-set has produced framings and frameworks of reference that limit
rather than expand creativity, innovation, caring, resilience, and even happiness.
There are a lot of things about human beings and nature that are much better
experienced if economic mind-sets are shed and much better captured with
non-quantified variables. So while recent amendments to economic models might
improve the predictive capacity of econometrics, their universal application to
everything and everyone in this world cannot continue. Neurosciences, psychology,
and sociology show the detrimental effects of living with a quantifying cost–benefit
mind-set for both individual well-being and that of societies.
Empirical economics like the work of Elinor Ostrom has been dam-breaking in
showing that the assumptions of rational choice models, for example, are fit for
highly competitive markets for private goods but not for public goods or common
pool resources like most of our ecological systems—or for a financial system
serving the real economy. Ostrom also pointed out how the political-institutional
de- and re-regulations of the last four decades in particular have been influenced by
the mainstream model and its Homo economicus assumptions. Such ongoing
‘deregulation’ has done its very best to reregulate societies into resembling
Polanyi’s stark utopia of the market system, a world composed solely of highly
competitive markets for private goods. But this is not proof of the rational choice
model’s validity. On the contrary: the sustainable development agenda is proof and
evidence of the problems that this is causing, and urges us to stop this totalitarian
approach to running the world.
Transforming a system in full operation without risking its collapse is, of course,
a dire task and I am not saying that the structural path dependencies behind growth
economies can simply be thought away. Too rapid or too sudden interference with
interdependent value chains and relationships would have devastating effects. But I
am saying that the cultural and political dominance of a worldview and paradigm
that has led us to building these institutions can and needs to be quickly and
radically challenged. It obfuscates or even justifies utterly unsustainable behavior
and developments while being void of any meaningful insight about the quality of
good lives for all, led in harmony with nature.
What I am therefore saying is that the normative underpinnings and impacts of
predominant science and political narratives need to be put firmly on the table. They
are the ideas that shape future realities. In her 1978 book The Life of the Mind,
5.3 Summarizing Outlook 165

philosopher and political theorist Hannah Arendt expressed this as follows: “The
activity of knowing is no less related to our sense of reality and no less a
world-building activity than the building of houses” (Hannah Arendt Center 2013).
This is different from today’s ubiquitous call for an unspecific boost in education
that is supposed to somehow bring all the unemployed young people into struc-
turally unavailable jobs and transform the wealth gap between the rentier class and
working people. Instead, the first challenge is to jointly identify which kind of
knowledge is important to quickly spread transformative literacy and the courage
and connections to help unlock the unsustainable path dependencies that keep
societies hostage today. Arendt unequivocally declares such normative aspects to be
part of any scientific endeavor: “Thinking, no doubt, plays an enormous role in
every scientific enterprise, but it is a role of a means to an end; the end is deter-
mined by a decision about what is worthwhile knowing, and this decision cannot be
scientific” (Hannah Arendt Center 2013).
This is what The Great Mindshift stands for. Since thinking does not happen in a
vacuum, it needs to be embedded in a great institutional shift. Not only, as dis-
cussed in detail in this book, is a particular way of seeing and experiencing the
world turned into the powerful default by enshrining it into ‘the ways things are
done.’ These ‘ways in which things are done’ will also either support conditions for
change or inhibit them and host unevenly distributed forms of power for different
groups or individuals. There exist brilliant scientific studies on the politically
motivated and strategic build-up of the mainstream economic worldview through
think tank funding, lobbying and financing of elite university chairs, political
campaigns and media outlets (e.g. Gill 1990; Scherrer 1999; or Sklair 2001). The
perception of what is the ‘right’ thing does change with believes about how the
people and the world work—and of course with intended outcome. So thinking and
knowing differently is a necessary but not sufficient precondition for behavioral
change. Complex system theory as well as empirical studies in sociology, psy-
chology, and institutional economics show the importance of feedback mechanisms
that reinforce positive or negative learning and create anticipation about the relia-
bility of others changing as well (Ostrom 2009: 431).
But so far, collective action theory, once again influenced by the mainstream
economic paradigm, has placed more attention on transaction costs and
payoff-functions than on how individuals can build the trust that allows them to take
the risks of actually doing things differently. That would lower both structural and
sociocultural moral hazards and could keep power abuse in check.
All of the pioneering examples in Chap. 4 have design principles that emphasize
the reflexive-adaptive aspects of navigating change in complex systems: explicit
learning and amendment of their indicators or matrix or principles through ongoing
engagement with the groups that decided to be governed by them. All of them were
conscientious about their governing structures and how these would enable or
inhibit sustainable development principles. This also meant that their benchmarks
for progress made the integrated perspective explicit, and contained qualitatively
differentiated and contextually fitted ideas and measures of value, productivity,
cost-benefit, or progress. Furthermore, the benchmarks involve the scrutiny of
166 5 How to Work a Great Mindshift for Sustainability Transformations

which types of competitiveness and growth in any given circumstance are

promising, and which are harmful. All of them engage with the potentials that
principles and goals of enough or sufficiency can bring to a development ideal and
strategy. Also, all of them put a great emphasis on processes instead of products in
order to ensure that utility can increase by economic activity and that the latter
meets jointly defined ends.
To me, these are pioneering initiatives from which a transformational 2030
Agenda for Sustainable Development can learn. Of course there are many, many,
many more around the world. These have already inspired significant movements
that easily make it onto the radar screen of a Europe-biased scholar searching for
radical incremental change examples in practice. They share the conviction that
changing the management of our economies and our relationship with our one and
only planet—the declared purpose behind the SDGS- cannot happen without
changing our dominant development paradigm and its institutional embedding.
It is this insight that I think is spreading quickly around the globe right now. The
old way of doing things will not deliver. Something new is needed, even if we do
not know yet what it can and should look like. It provides a renewed window of
opportunity for the deeper and wider changes that the 1992 Rio Declaration in parts
clearly foresaw. The late 1980s and early 1990s thus had a moment of
paradigm-shifting potential, but it was overrun by the fall of the Soviet Union and
the subsequent ‘End of History’ claims.
In his review, Simon Dalby asked me why I think that deeper changes should be
possible today. I think we once again face the conditions of a structural crisis that
Gramsci said was necessary to break the hegemony of a particular system
setup. And we have the experience of a first round of less radical responses to the
ecological and social costs of the market system utopia. In all three dimensions of
sustainable development—also in the economic one—even rich countries are
experiencing setbacks and widespread disbelief in the promises of the ruling elites.
The typical North–South divide, the patronizing distinction into ‘developed’ and
‘developing countries’ starts giving way into either the acceptance that not one
country can keep its development strategy (the universal approach behind the
SDGs), or into something that resembles feudalism on a global scale. In both cases
we reach the tipping points where the power of the default cedes: the burden of
proof starts shifting toward those who still claim that the continuation of the status
quo is possible and desirable.
The gap between the top 1 % and the rest of the world is too great, the impunity
of the haves too visible and the increasing squeezes on the have-nots too strong, as
the recent upsurge of conflict refugees and desperation-based migration shows. The
war zones are too suspiciously concentrated in oil-rich areas and other resource
reserves and the weather changes, droughts, floods, and storms experienced across
the globe are too much of a physical sensation.
Thus, I would say we are already experiencing the preconditions in which more
strategic and conscious paradigm shifting work can boost the emergence of a
development vision that finally lives up to the integrated perspective of sustainable
5.3 Summarizing Outlook 167

development. This makes me less pessimistic than sociologist Harald Welzer, who
recently wrote:
For the time being, the transformation necessary today lacks guiding principles of the kind
that early industrialized societies had in terms of progress, freedom, prosperity and growth.
It will not be possible to establish new mental infrastructures without guiding ideas, yet if
they do not dovetail almost naturally into day-to-day lives and lifestyles, visions of the self
and frames of reference for the future, they will remain just that—ideas (ibid. 2011: 32).

For me it is not so much that we have to find an alternative to freedom and

prosperity, or even growth. We have to reclaim their meaning for a world with 9
billion instead of 1 billion people who have too little spiritual guidance rather than too
much, and a degree of commodification and homogenization in productive activities
and consumption that limits need-satisfying possibilities rather than expanding them.
In the midst of this, functioning as a great positive feedback for these trends, the next
technological revolution, digitalization, is unfolding. With it comes an overturning of
former standards of communication, speed, size, and reproducibility of goods and
services. At the same time, knowledge and evidence about the dimensions of human
impact on the pattern of oceans, greenery, and soils that make up the fragile ball of
Earth has led to the emergence of a new term: the Anthropocene.
The political, cultural and economic circumstances from which the
Enlightenment movement sought liberation simply no longer exist. A Second
Enlightenment in the twenty-first century would seek liberation from very different
types of totalitarianism and limitation to human potential. So which imaginary
could progress, freedom, prosperity, and growth, the principles mentioned by
Welzer, carry for the era of the Anthropocene? In my view both theory and practice
reviewed in this book offer the tenets of the guiding ideas a Second Enlightenment
could foster:
• Instead of being an output measured only by money, progress can mean the
equitable and balanced progress of the whole SETS as measured by differen-
tiated social, environmental, and cultural indicators.
• Instead of freedom meaning the absence of obstacles to individual purchasing
desires, it can embody human security and sufficiency: freedom from the fear of
falling behind in the race for resource accumulation, and freedom from the
culturally created endless want that impedes well-being.
• Instead of prosperity embodying ever more consumption choices, it can stand
for a holistic and adaptive understanding of human needs and resilient access to
diversified need-satisfier strategies.
• Instead of economic growth being an end in itself, different types of economic
output and activity grow, stay steady, or also de-grow as means to the end of
securing well-being within Planetary Boundaries.
Many of the SDGs and their targets speak to these principles, albeit with the
exception of the dogmatic clinging to GDP growth and greater income for even the
rich. Many say they are not specific or binding enough. But in system innovation
strategies, it is more important to map where not to go (anymore) and then outline
168 5 How to Work a Great Mindshift for Sustainability Transformations

several acceptable trajectories for change. The ‘instead of’ in the list may well mark
such no-go areas and fit well into the double-decoupling strategy: freeing economies
from both human and natural overexploitation and growth-for-growth’s-sake
financialization.
The actual repurposing work comprises three key aspects that can also be done
in a division of labor: delegitimize the traditional arguments, offer alternative
meaning, and shine a light on alternative practice options. This means the Second
Enlightenment does not happen solely in universities and institutes while everybody
else applies the instructions they’re given. Polanyi’s account of The Great
Transformation showed how many of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
thinkers or philosophers he cited were also factory owners, priests or involved in
politics. The Second Enlightenment can thus emerge from networks of pioneers and
engaging innovators from all walks of life.
Finally, a successful Great Mindshift for sustainability does not mean replacing
old universal theoretical laws with new ones. Instead, the emerging twenty-first
century paradigm is about reflexivity and transformative literacy: working on a
properly integrated perspective with clarity and transparency about one’s own
assumptions and value judgments. Shunning commodification, corporate interests,
and contra-petition from scientific inquiry would allow for precaution, respect for
diversity, and remaining open to what emerges. Donella Meadows called this
“transcend[ing] paradigms” and positioned it as her highest leverage point for
system change. Engaging in a Second Enlightenment therefore needs to be married
with futures ethics: what are the novel frames and imaginaries that I am proposing
—and with which intention?

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Wuppertal Institut

Sustainable development requires an integrated approach to policy and science

because many of the issues it raises cannot be addressed within a single department
or using the tools of individual scientific disciplines. This is where the Wuppertal
Institute’s research programme begins—by taking an interdisciplinary approach and
working towards systems understanding. Designing transitions to a sustainable
development at local, national and international level is the Wuppertal Institute’s
stated mission. Its research focuses on the resources, climate and energy related
challenges and their relation to economy and society. Special emphasis is put on
analysing and stimulating innovations that decouple economic growth and wealth
from natural resource use.
Research focus are the transition processes towards a sustainable development.
This requires an integrated approach to policy and science because many of the
issues it raises cannot be addressed within a single department or using the tools of
individual scientific disciplines.
Since 2010 Professor Uwe Schneidewind has been President of the Wuppertal
Institute. The Institute was founded in 1991 by Professor Ernst Ulrich von
Weizsäcker who directed it until 2000.
Professor Peter Hennicke headed the Institute from 1 November 2000 until the
end of January 2008. Until the appointment of Professor Schneidewind, as from
March 2010, the Vice President Professor Manfred Fischedick provisionally headed
the Institute’s research. The Business Manager is Brigitte Mutert-Breidbach. The
institute’s seat is in Wuppertal. It is represented in Germany’s capital by its Berlin
Office since 2004.
An scientific International Advisory Board supports the Institute in defining
fundamental research strategies as well as ensuring the quality and independence of
its research.

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178 Wuppertal Institut

The Wuppertal Institute has the legal status of a non-profit limited company
(gemeinnützige Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung, according to German law)
and receives basic funding from the Land North Rhine-Westphalia. Third-party
funding supports most of the Institute’s budget and projects.

Address: Wuppertal Institut, Döppersberg 19, 42103 Wuppertal, Germany Email:

info@wupperinst.org; Website: http://wupperinst.org/en.
Wuppertal Institut’s Research Focus
on Sustainability Transition

Sustainable developments require integrated policy and economy approaches.

Questions regarding developments that are fit for the future can most likely not fully
be answered or addressed within departments or individual science disciplines.
That’s where the Wuppertal Institut’s research programme with its transdiciplinary
and system knowledge oriented approach begins. As part of a transformative sci-
ence, it is aimed at designing transitions towards a sustainable development.
Transformative research contributes to solving societal problems and is char-
acterized by an explicit aspiration to get involved: The aim is to catalyse processes
of change and to actively involve stakeholders in the research process. In this way,
transformative research generates “socially robust” knowledge needed for sus-
tainability transitions. Research at the Wuppertal Institut thus follows a transdis-
ciplinary concept of knowledge: it does not only serve to generate “systems
knowledge” (e.g., technological or resource-oriented systems analysis), but also
integrates stakeholders in the process of generating “target knowledge” (visions and
guiding principles) and “transformation knowledge” in concrete settings of urban or
sectoral transitions to sustainability.

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M. Göpel, The Great Mindshift, The Anthropocene:
Politik—Economics—Society—Science 2, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-43766-8
180 Wuppertal Institut’s Research Focus on Sustainability Transition

Transformative research contributes to solving societal problems and is char-

acterised by an explicit aspiration to get involved: The aim is to catalyse processes
of change and to actively involve stakeholders in the research process. In this way,
transformative research generates “socially robust” knowledge needed for sus-
tainability transitions. Research at the Wuppertal Institut thus follows a transdis-
ciplinary concept of knowledge: it does not only serve to generate “systems
knowledge” (e.g., technological or resource-oriented systems analysis), but also
integrates stakeholders in the process of generating “target knowledge” (visions and
guiding principles) and “transformation knowledge” in concrete settings of urban or
sectoral transitions to sustainability.
The quality of transformative research must be measured on the basis of its own
aspiration to catalyse societal change for sustainability. Assessment schemes for
transformative research thus include not only academic quality criteria, but also
new forms of measuring societal impact. At the Wuppertal Institut, transformative
research approaches and innovative methods of assuring their scientific quality are
being developed. This is done in cooperation with leading national and international
institutions in the field of transdisciplinary sustainability research.

See at: http://wupperinst.org/en/research/transformative-research/.

About the Author

Dr. Maja Göpel is head of the Berlin Office of the

Wuppertal Institut. For the past 20 years she has been
following the quest to find out why humans collec-
tively do not create the sustainable societies that they
individually state to wish for. This took her back and
forth between theory and practice, reflection and
change making in different sectors. She visited six
universities in four countries for a Ph.D. in global
political economy and a diploma in media and com-
munications and still enjoys lecturing and learning. For
several civil society organizations she served as a
campaigner, advocate, and expert in world trade, cli-
mate change, financial reform, and sustainable development. From 2006 to 2012
she helped start up the World Future Council, created its Future Policy Award
celebrating integrated policy solutions and the Future Justice programme tackling
today’s short-termism in politics and economics.
This enabled work with change leaders from all walks of life, took her around
the world and into EU and UN policy-making. In 2013 Maja went back to research
with the Wuppertal Institut where her work focuses on the role of mind and
paradigm shifts in transformation processes and the translation of large system
change analysis into local change maker strategies. She is a member of the Club of
Rome and the Balaton Group and currently serves on the steering committee of the
German Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) and the scientific
advisory boards of terre des hommes Germany and Development and Peace
Foundation. Her daughters are 1 and 4.
Among the selected English publications are:
“Shifting paradigms: unpacking transformation for climate action; a guidebook
for climate finance and development practitioners, working paper, Wuppertal
Institute, 2014, at: http://epub.wupperinst.org/frontdoor/index/index/docId/5518;

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182 About the Author

“Navigating a new agenda: questions and answers on paradigm shifts and

transformational change, working paper, Wuppertal Institute, 2014, at: http://
epub.wupperinst.org/frontdoor/index/index/docId/5517;
“The Responsibility to Prevent: Early Warning Systems to Protect Future
Generations”, in: M.C. Cordonier Segger, S. Jodoin (Eds.) ‘Sustainable
Development, International Criminal Justice and Treaty Implementation
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013);
“The Tragedy of our Growth Saga”, in: F. Hinterberger, E. Pirgmaier, E.
Freytag, M. Schuster (Eds.): Growth in Transition (London: Earthscan, 2011):
147–153;
“Shared responsibilities and future generations: beyond the dominant concepts
of justice”, in: Council of Europe (Ed.): Towards a Europe of shared social
responsibilities: challenges and strategies,’ Trends in social cohesion
No. 23 (Strasbourg: Council of Europe Publishing, 2011): 135–155, at: http://
www.coe.int/t/dg3/socialpolicies/socialcohesiondev/source/Trends/Trends_23_
EN.pdf;
“Guarding our Future: How to Protect Future Generations”, in: Solutions, 1,6,
2011: 62–70: http://www.thesolutionsjournal.com/node/821;
“Formulating Future Just Policies: Applying the Delhi Sustainable Development
Law Principles”, in: Sustainability, 2,6 (2010). 1694–1718; reprinted in Indian
Economic Journal, 57,4 (2010), at: http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/2/6/1694/
pdfhttp://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/2/6/1694/.
Her recent German publications include:
“Warum wir der Zukunft einen Platz am Verhandlungstisch geben sollten:
zukünftige Generationen in der Post-2015-Agenda”, in: Michéle Roth (Ed.):
Globale Trends 2015 (Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch, 2015): 155–160;
“Vordenker einer nachhaltigen Gesellschaft: Karl Polanyi und die “Große
Transformation”, in: Gaia, 23,1 (2014): 70–72, at: http://epub.wupperinst.org/
frontdoor/index/index/docId/5276;
“Ombudspersonen für zukünftige Generationen: Diktatoren oder
Bürgervertreter?”, in: Bernward Gesang (Ed.): Kann Demokratie
Nachhaltigkeit? (Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2014): 89–108;
“Mitweltkommunikation 2030 als Beitrag zur Bürgerbeteiligung: Themen,
Akteure, Methoden”, in: Paul Bellendorf (Ed.): Nachhaltigkeit gestalten: Trends
und Entwicklungen in der Umweltkommunikation (München: Oekom, 2014):
359–367.
Address: Dr. Maja Göpel, Wuppertal Institut, ProjektZentrum Berlin der Stiftung
Mercator, Neue Promenade 6, 10178 Berlin, Germany.
Email: maja.goepel@wupperinst.org.
Website: http://wupperinst.org/kontakt/details/wi/c/s/cd/1301/.
About this Book

Sustainable development is the 21st Century’s wicked problem. For over 40 years,
the world has known about ecological limits to economic growth and social limits
to economic inequality. Yet, our attempted solutions—mostly more efficient tech-
nologies—have reversed few unsustainable trends. So sustainability advocates now
call for a paradigm shift, Great Transformation, radical change or system inno-
vations—changes which evolve the current design of incentives, policies and
institutions.
This book describes the path ahead. It combines system transformation research
with political economy and change leadership insights when discussing the need for
a great mindshift in how human wellbeing, economic prosperity and healthy
ecosystems are understood, illustrating its nature through mapping pioneering
practices and their commonalities.
Maja Göpel places individuals and their world views centre stage and shows
why empowering individual’s through transformative literacy is essential for the
Great Transformations ahead to lead to more sustainabiltiy. She presents the case
for radical incremental strategies in the socio-ecological-technical systems which
humans shape the planet’s future.
This book
• Combines a scientific critique of what needs to change and why (here: the
economic paradigm) with an equally scientific discussion of how this change
can happen and who can engage in it (here: system transformation theory).
• Brings a political economy lens into sustainability transition research that
highlights how system innovations cannot be understood without addressing
economic drivers, vested interests and power relations.
• Puts human transformative literacy centre stage when proposing radical incre-
mental transformation strategies for large-system change.
• Showcases empirical assessments of pioneering movements working for a
recoupling of economic processes with nature and human wellbeing.
• Provides an easily accessible introduction to system transformation research and
key aspects of an emerging new economic paradigm for sustainability.

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184 About this Book

Contents
1 Introduction—2 What Political Economy adds to Transformation Research—
3 Why the Mainstream Economic Paradigm Cannot Inform Sustainability
Transformations—4 Mapping an Emerging New Economic Paradigm in Practice—
5 How to Work a Great Mindshift for Sustainability Transformations
Wuppertal Institut—About the Author—About this Book
On this book: http://afes-press-books.de/html/SpringerBriefs_APESS_02.htm