How should the ecotechnic dictatorship measure its progress and define its legitimacy to the people, since continued physical output growth is anathema? How can one reconcile a post-scarcity environment with the sustainably low level of physical throughput that we need to avoid a crash with the limits to growth on a finite planet? Though the eventual destination must remain Green Communism - the shifting social values away from materialism or by achieving a technological singularity – in the meantime, other targets have to be set.
It is eminently clear that GDP is bankrupt as a way of measuring “progress”, an accounting in which wars and prisons and the cleanups after natural disasters constitutes wealth, in which the unsustainable drawdown of the Earth’s natural resources to enrich a few is celebrated. Equally bankrupt is the Human Development Index (HDI), used by the UN to measure human development, and one of whose components is GDP. We need alternative measures. I propose one that I’ll call the Human Sustainable Development Index (SHDI).
1. The GDP per capita component is altered to include the country’s ecological footprint per capita, because stealing from the future to feel rich today is not a viable longterm strategy.
| Consumption of renewable resources | State of environment | Sustainability |
|---|---|---|
| More than nature’s ability to replenish | Environmental degradation | Not sustainable |
| Equal to nature’s ability to replenish | Environmental equilibrium | Steady state economy |
| Less than nature’s ability to replenish | Environmental renewal | Environmentally sustainable |
As such, if the average ecological footprint per capita of a certain country is less than 1.8 global hectares per person (which roughly correlates to global carrying capacity), then its GDP is counted in whole; if it is higher than 1.8, then its GDP component is reduced by the same percentage as its ecological footprint per capita exceeds the global biocapacity per capita. The resulting figure is then fed into the HSDI, as with the normal HDI.
The consequence… the ecotechnic society would allow itself any level of physical throughput, but only as long as it remains within the global carrying capacity. In practice, this means that at some point, further increases in volume industrial production have to be capped (zero growth economy),
…an economy with constant stocks of people and artifacts, maintained at some desired, sufficient levels by low rates of maintenance “throughput”, that is, by the lowest feasible flows of matter and energy from the first stage of production to the last stage of consumption.”
with further improvements only accruing from technological progress.
2. The Health Index (HI) is calculated by taking the average of the Life Expectancy Index (LEI) and the Infant Mortality Index (IMI). The LEI is calculated as normal. The IMI is calculated by the formula IMI = (1000 – (infant mortality / 1000 in a year) / 250. I don’t think it is valid to take just the life expectancy into account, because that greatly depends on lifestyle factors; the infant and child mortality rates are much better proxies of the quality of a nation’s healthcare system. Health is of course a vital prerequisite for a fulfilling human experience and as such features prominently in the HSDI.
3. Enrolment rates mean little, since they say little about the actual quality of a country’s education. Both those and literacy rates are subject to a substantial degree of error, not to mention that literacy is again just the bare minimum. As such, I am foregoing using the HDI’s Education Index in favor of my own Human Capital Index (HCI), which aggregates literacy rates, the results of international standardized test (the best measure of the relative quality of national mass education systems), and tertiary enrolment ratios (these provide the cadres that develop technology). I wrote about the details here. The HCI is important because having an educated society will enable an accelerated innovation in and adoptation of technologies that can enable a sustainable retreat.
Finally, the Human Sustainable Development Index is calculated by adding a third of the ecologically-adjusted GDP index, a third of the Health Index, and a third of the Human Capital Index – just like with the original HDI. The ecotechnic society that wishes to transition to sustainability, while maintaining some decent level of stability and social wellbeing, would be wise to use the HSDI or something like it as targets in place of GDP or conventional development goals.
And now for the most interesting bit… what’s the HSDI of different countries as of now? Note that since the HSDI tries to reconcile “development” with “sustainability”, all the countries with a high HSDI are not actually truly sustainable. Another consequence is that the gaps between nations are much smaller, which goes to show just how hard this reconciliation is.
Very High HSDI
- Sweden 0.925
- Norway 0.915
- Korea 0.901
- Japan 0.896
- Finland 0.895
- Singapore 0.895
- Netherlands 0.891
- Germany 0.875
- Canada 0.874
- Slovenia 0.873
- France 0.870
High HSDI
- Australia 0.868
- Austria 0.868
- Belgium 0.866
- Italy 0.860
- United Kingdom 0.859
- United States 0.858
- Spain 0.857
- Denmark 0.856
- Ireland 0.854
- New Zealand 0.850
Medium HSDI
- Greece 0.845
- Hungary 0.845
- Lithuania 0.843
- Israel 0.841
- Poland 0.831
- Portugal 0.830
- Croatia 0.828
- Czech Republic 0.828
- Latvia 0.817
- Slovakia 0.813
- Estonia 0.813
- Chile 0.801
- Romania 0.792
- Mexico 0.791
- Russia 0.788
- Argentina 0.788
- Bulgaria 0.784
- Venezuela 0.776
- Lebanon 0.775
- Thailand 0.770
- Ukraine 0.764
- Cuba 0.761
- Armenia 0.760
- Turkey 0.756
- Saudi Arabia 0.753
Low HSDI
- Uruguay 0.747
- Jordan 0.739
- Brazil 0.738
- China 0.729
- Tunisia 0.731
- Moldova 0.729
- Colombia 0.725
- Iran 0.719
- Egypt 0.699
- Philippines 0.698
- Indonesia 0.688
- Azerbaijan 0.687
- Vietnam 0.674
Very Low HSDI
- Kyrgyzstan 0.628
- Morocco 0.627
- South Africa 0.601
- Botswana 0.599
- India 0.583
- Nigeria 0.465
Notes: you can access the Excel files here. Note that some data for China, Cuba, India, Nigeria, Ukraine, Venezuela, and Vietnam had to be taken from sources other than those indicated, or extrapolated.
Related posts:
Interesting argument here:
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/2714/