If we want that to change, we need a new global emphasis on well-being metrics rather than pure economic growth
The UN Environment Programme just published an important report called Navigating New Horizons, which is “a global foresight report on planetary health and human well-being” — precisely my main area of work.
My work as a health futurist mainly involved helping people think about a range of plausible alternative futures. From there, people can think about which of the plausible alternatives they would prefer, which they would want to avoid, and what they might need to do to reach their preferable future. But more than 50 years ago, we were warned by the Club of Rome, in the landmark report The Limits to Growth, that “business as usual” would lead to decline and collapse in the mid-21st century — still a generation away. Now we are almost there.
Increasingly, then, “decline and collapse” is the “business as usual” future, the probable future, which is in itself an interesting shift in perception. Indeed, the report notes, “The world is already on the verge of what may be termed ‘polycrisis’—where global crises are not just amplifying and accelerating but also appear to be synchronizing.”
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