Enough! Global challenges and responsible lifestyles

Development Dialogue

Volumn , Issue 47, 2006, Pages 97-146

  Bäckstrand, Göran ^a   Ingelstam, Lars ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CONSUMPTION BEHAVIOR; DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY; ECONOMIC GROWTH; GLOBAL ECONOMY; LIFESTYLE; SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT;

EURASIA; EUROPE; NORTHERN EUROPE; SCANDINAVIA; SWEDEN;

EID: 33846042224     PISSN: 03452328     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (54)

1. A parallel article, published in immediate conjunction with ours, dealt with Tanzania's development strategy: self-reliance and ujamaa. The latter concept has, as we now know) created both enthusiasm and confusion in Tanzania and elsewhere. It might serve as yet another example of a common dilemma: the tension between Utopias, 'blueprints', visions and political reality.
2. Bäckstrand, G., and Ingelstam, L., 'Mow much is enough? - another Sweden', Development Dialogue 1975:1/2, Dag Hammarskiöld Foundation, Uppsala, pp. 44-53.
3. We are aware of debates in some Scandinavian countries, and several years later (1993) in Japan.
4. A favourite expression and an important idea from our admired friend Robert Jungk (1913-1994). The basic idea is to identify small changes that may prove important for the future. Jungk referred most often to weak signals as the first steps towards changing the world into a better one.
5. Tinbergen, J. et al., Reshaping the International Order, A report to the Club of Rome, Dutto n, New York, 1976.
6. For a full account of the statements we have to refer the reader to original documents. A readable and fairly complete version is found in Tinbergen et al., op. cit.
7. This phase of the debate as reflected in the Swedish press has been studied scientifically, and the results published in English as well as in Swedish. See Lindholm, S., The rich man who roared. An analysis of the reactions to the proposals of "Another Sweden"', Development Dialogue 1976:1,
8. Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation, Uppsala, and Allard, B., and Lindholm, S., Lagom? Pressdebatten kring förslaget om ett lagom Sverige, Pedagogiska institutionen, Stȯckholm, 1976.
9. We gave the paper both to Prime Minister Olof Palme and the advisory cabinet minister Carl Lidbom, not for approval but for their information. They both reacted in the same way: you are free to publish but also have to deal with the debates yourselves. Olof Palme also expressed interest in the approach. The Minister of transportation and communication, Bengt Norling, was not informed, however, and demanded angrily in public that the report should be thrown in the waste-paper bin immediately.
10. The term 'folkhem' (literally, 'home for the people') means the Swedish welfare state.
11. See Popper, K., The Poverty of Historicism, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1957.
12. Quoted from Larry Lohmann, informal submission to the What Next project, 2005.
13. The term 'the Third System' was frequently used at the time to describe people, organisations and networks working for a new and more equitable international order, They were by definition based outside government and business, but could often exercise considerable leverage founded on knowledge of international affairs and also positions in international NGOs, governments and UN organisations. The Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation functioned as one of the most important nodes in this Third System, as did the Club of Rome.
14. Popper, K., op. cit.
15. Development Dialogue 1975:1/2,
16. op. cit.
17. Meadows, Dennis L., et al., Limits to Growth: A report for the Club of Rome's project on the predicament of mankind, Universe Books, New York, 1972.
18. In the framework of the Club of Rome, this dilemma was handled resolutely. As a counterpart to the 'one world' approach of the Limits report, a Third World study was launched. It was eventually published and is commonly referred to as the Bariloche report. See Herrera, A. O., Catastrophe or new society? A Latin American world model, International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, 1979.
19. Stowart, F., and Fitzgerald, V., eds, The Economic and Social Consequences of Conflict, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000.
20. To this Declaration was later added an International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966).
21. Brundtland, G., ed., Our Common Future: The Report of the World Commission on environment and Development, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1987.
22. UN Millenium Declaration and Development Goals, www.un.org/ millenniumgoals/, 2000.
23. Quoted in Urquhart, B., 'Mrs. Roosevelt's Revolution', The New York Review of Books, 26 April 2001.
24. 'Proposal for a Seminar on Ethical and Spiritual Dimensions of Development', issued by the Secretariat of the World Summit for Social Development, United Nations, 31 March 1994.
25. This expression has been used for some time for a loosely defined group of countries, including the Nordic countries, Canada and the Netherlands.
26. Sustainable Development: Administrative Conditions for an Activating Policy, Report to the Government (Netherlands) from WRR (Scientific Council for Government Policy), 2002, www.wrr.nl.
27. Brundtland, G., op. cit., p. 49.
28. Hajer, M., The Politics of Environmental Discourse: Ecological Modernisation and the Policy Process, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1995.
29. Regarding the relation between social welfare and growth, we can refer to Jansson, J. O., The Economics of Services: Development and Policy,
30. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, 2006 for a simple economic explanation, and to Baumol, W. J., 'Macroeconomics of Unbalanced Growth: the Anatomy of Urban Crisis', The American Economic Review, Vol. 57, No. 3, 1967 (1987)
31. For instance, in Cochabamba, Bolivia, popular uprisings broke out in 2000 when the government decided to privatise water. In India, activists recently forced Coca-Cola to close down one of its factories, since its considerable consumption of water prevented people to use water to which they had previously had access.
32. Globe-girdling is an expression coined by Gayatri Spivak. See her book, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present, Harvard University Press, 1999.
33. Such figures, in a convincing electronic format developed by Professor Hans Rosling, can be found, for example, on www.undp.se or www.ki.se.
34. This is a recommended translation of the Swedish 'snuttifiering'; nowadays a household word describing the phenomenon of information being offered and taken in small packages with little or no relation to one another.
35. See also Douthwaite, R., The Growth Illusion, Council Oaks Books, Tulsa, 1992.
36. Nordhaus, W., and Tobin, J., Economic Growth, Columbia University Press, New York, 1972.
37. This information has been supplied by Sten Johansson, professor of sociology and later head of Statistics Sweden (SCB).
38. TIME Magazine devoted a large part of its February 2005 issue (Vol. 165, No. 6; European edition) to The New Science of Happiness'.
39. See Vogel, J., op. cit.
40. See Vogel, J., op. cit.
41. Layard, R., 2003, Happiness: Has social science a clue? The Robbins Lectures, see http://cep.lse.ac.uk/layard.
42. McKibben, B., Enough - Staying Human in an Engineered Age, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 2003.
43. Etzioni, A., The Moral Dimension: Toward a New Economics, The Free Press, Macmillan, New York, 1988.
44. See, for example, Dolsak, N., and Ostrom, E., The Commons m the New Millennium, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2003.
45. Layard, R., op. cit.
46. Keynes, J. M., 'Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren', in Essays in Persuasion, the Collected Writings of J M Keynes, Vol. IX, Macmillan, London, 1972.
47. We should note, of course, that efforts in this direction are very much part of the work of Sida and other state and private organisations in the development field. Projects and initiatives in schools, universities and elsewhere are numerous.
48. The assistance budget has been built up over quite a long period of time, and only a small fraction (in some years up to 10 per cent) of the Increase in national income has been diverted to the aid budget. Hence it is not possible to claim that aid money has considerably halted growth (for example in consumption). But it is equally impossible to claim that we need high growth in order to afford development assistance.
49. See 'Shared Responsibility - Sweden's Policy for Global Development', Government Bill 2002/03, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Stockholm, p.122.
50. SOU 2004:119 Hållbara laster [Sustainable Consumption] (in Swedish with English summary).
51. Altman, Vivien, 'Worlds Apart', Insead Quarterly, No. 9, 2004.
52. We refer here to Globala skolan (the Global School), a project sponsored by Sida and the Central Board for School Development in Sweden.
53. A few campaigns back, the environmental issue (in a precise sense) triggered some comments about the need to change our lifestyles. Even that has been absent during the last 10 years or 50.
54. Cf. footnote 11.