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
166
5 How to Work a Great Mindshift for Sustainability Transformations
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
166
5 How to Work a Great Mindshift for Sustainability Transformations