ANP / Philip Koschel

Some countries have shifted resources to stimulate ‘green economy’ opportunities, looking to capitalize on societal concerns about the spillovers of profligate consumption during the recent speculative bubble. Cleaner technologies offer opportunities for new growth and employment in productive sectors, as well as among consumers and homeowners. Under the banner of a ‘Global Green New Deal’, the UN has called for refocusing the economy so that the next growth cycle is less damaging to humans and to nature. Other initiatives are looking for new ways of measuring welfare that include the value of biodiversity and social equity.

Could these initiatives mark a paradigm shift in global economics, or are they merely happening in the margins of mainstream economics? After all, as signs emerged that their models were fatally flawed, many economists abandoned their free-market views in favour of Keynesian counter-cyclical prescriptions. But soon they started to hope that things would get back to ‘normal’ so the business-as-usual model could be revived. They asked how soon can be get back to a bull market, and what the recovery growth curve would look like, rather than whether the economy is on the right path to satisfy human needs.

The Broker invited Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, and Peter May, past president of the International Society for Ecological Economics, to offer their views on the possibility and necessity to develop a new, green economics. The Broker will follow up on this special report by exploring cutting-edge research in areas such as new indicators and measures of welfare, green accounting in developing countries, and the controversies surrounding de-growth.