COP 30 – Brazil; Time to Debunk GDP?

Even as we head into COP30 (30th Conference of Parties) at Balem, Brazil, multilateral climate action is at crossroads. Negotiations on contentious issues like transitioning away from fossil fuels and obligations of developed countries to provide climate finance to emerging economies have been put on the back burner, indicating lack of interest of large developed countries in appreciating and preempting the looming climate crisis despite being historical polluters.

One wonders if COPs are reduced to a blame game that is taking humanity nowhere! But as Sathya Raghu, Co-founder of Soul Forest and Kheyti suggests, the solution likely lies in every community examining if the kind of development that we are pursuing is ultimately destroying us. As he says, GDP gave us the rocket ship. But we are flying blind! We have been sold a story.

Growth means success. If the number goes up, everyone wins. But what if that story is broken? Here’s the thing about GDP. It was constructed in the 1930s, in a world short on labour and machines, not nature. The goal back then? Reboot the economy. GDP did its job. But it doesn’t see the world we live in now. Burn a forest? GDP goes up. Bleach a coral with toxic effluents? GDP goes up. Overfish and destroy the oceanic carbon sinks? Still, it’s up. Ecosystem doesn’t count. Biodiversity doesn’t count. Carbon sinks, flood buffers, natural disease regulators – none of it shows up. If it’s alive but unbought like the “clean” air we breathe, GDP ignores it (at least till the elite are felled by polluted air!). We measure progress by what we produce but ignore what we destroy. We gain tech but loose stability with countless commuters gasping for clean air in daily traffic snarls even as their travel gives out carbon monoxide and dioxide, adding to the already crippling level of greenhouse gases. We live longer but feel worse. The numbers tell one story, the planet another. So why do we cling to GDP? Because it rewards extraction and it’s so convenient. And, of course, it works; for people already winning. But why don’t we humans, ostensibly the most intelligent of all species, see the writing on the wall? Or, are we the most stupid species on earth?

As Yuval Noah Harari says, humans are great at solving short-term problems; not slow-motion collapse. GDP keeps the short-term machine humming even as the long-term system collapses. Well, there’s a side show that’s attracting some attention. We have now Green GDP, Happiness Index et al. However, it doesn’t stick with the prevailing myopia in policy making. Nevertheless, this work-in-progress needs to be further worked on, with more determination and imagination. Because first principals are simple. The purpose of an economy is to help people survive and thrive. If it doesn’t account for the ecosystem we depend on, it is not helping us survive, leave alone thrive. If nature stays invisible to money, it stays invisible to decision makers. But there is a shift, as yet marginal. People are beginning to rewrite the story.

New Zealand’s Wellbeing Budget tracks ecological and social health, not just growth. UN’s SEEA (System of Environmental-Economic Accounting) framework helps countries account for nature like they do for capital. Over 70 countries now price carbon. The EU is testing biodiversity credits. The UK’s Dasgupta Review stated what should have been obvious: Nature is an asset and we are mismanaging it. These aren’t hypotheticals, but data points in a new story – one where survival matters more than output. India cannot afford to miss this turn. Its growth is real. So is the risk. GDP need not be scrapped, just stop treating it like gospel truth. Tax destruction, reward restoration. If we don’t measure what matters, we lose what matters. And when we notice it, it’ll be too late. The old story got us here. It won’t get us out. Time to write a better one.

It could be a story that may well take us to the 2050’s where the planet begins to heal after a foretaste of the apocalypse. After decades of degradation, climate policy would have found its footing helped along by public pressure, private innovation and hard evidence of suffering. The Arctic has changed and oceans are not what they were. But forests have grown back in places once thought lost. Urban jungles and rewilding projects dot the landscape. Carbon is tracked like currency. Biodiversity is no longer an afterthought. Human beings are no longer the measure of all things, but part of the broader planetary calculus. 2050, hopefully, will not be a finish line but a point in the rising spiral. Many of us may not be there to witness the healing planet. But many a younger soul will be there, both as participants and as chroniclers of the rhythms of the time.