4. SPSF 2022-2: An Unequal World & Biography of a concept
Textbook
Book 1. Sachs, J.D. (2015).
The Age of Sustainable Development, Columbia Uni Pr
Chap. 2: An Unequal World
GDP per capita is really not a comprehensive measure of economic development, because there are many other important indicators of WB that it does not precisely capture, including the health and education of the population (p.45).
Urban-Rural Inequality: It is important to start by clarifying the definition of "urban." Interestingly, there is no official international definition of what it means to be an urban area (p.51).
Income Inequality Within Countries: The lowest inequality ... tends to be in western Europe and especially in Scandinavia, with a Gini of around 0.25. In comparison with Scandinavia, the US is shaded green (Fig. 2.5), as the US is quite unequal in income distribution, with a recent Gini of 0.45 (p.56).
Practicing SD means both understanding the nature and sources of inequality and setting the goal of a high degree of social inclusion in economic development (p.59).
Measuring WB: UNDP's Human Development Index.
Subjective WB: e.g. World Happiness Report, Social Capital (the quality of the social environment and community), physical and mental health play a very important role.
Convergence or Divergence?: a narrowing of the gap between a poor country and a richer country? The poorer country is becoming even poorer? ... One of the crucial goals of SD is that all of today's low-income countries... should make that transition successfully through convergence to at least middle-income status (p.67).
Book 2. Mulligan, M. (2018).
An Introduction to Sustainability: Environmental, Social and Personal Perspectives, Routledge https://amzn.to/3wLgMcu
Chap. 1: Introduction
- Fig. 1.1 "Three sectors" model: Social - Environmental - Economic (p.4)
...to balance economic development policies and practices with equal concern for environmental impacts and social outcomes. .. While environmentalists worry that many of the ideas associated with the overarching concept of sus. articulated in the Brundtland Report are very human-centred... global climate change is indeed a "wicked problem" that cannot be resolved with particular, short-term, responses.
- Fig. 1.2 Social Ecology model - Social - Environmental - Personal (p.7)
... to bring the personal into view ... Bringing sus back to the personal scale can also help to counter some of the despair we may feel when we contemplate global trends and challenges.
Chap. 2: Biography of a concept
- Timeline: Spaceship Earth to "Limits to Growth"
- Stockholm 1972, Rio 1992, MDGs 2000, Johannesburg 2005, Rio+20 2012, SDGs 2015, Stockholm+50 2022.
- Herman Daly's sus principles:
1) Limit the human scale to that which is within the Earth's capacity
2) Ensure that technological progress is efficiency increasing rather than throughput increasing
3) For reviewable resources, harvesting rates should not exceed regeneration rates and waste emissions should not exceed the assimilative capacities of receiving environments.
4) Non-renewable resources should be explored no faster than the rate of creation of reviewable resources. (p.27)
Data Activities
A. Levels of Urbanization around the world (Group)
Using the country profiles database from UNDESA, Population Division, World Urbanization Prospects at http://esa.un.org/unpd/wup/Country‐Profiles/, answer the below question.
Question: Before the Industrial Revolution, urban dwellers likely accounted for only 10% of the population. Which of the following countries was closest to this pre‐industrial revolution value of urbanization in 2010: Brazil, Burundi, Cambodia, Japan, Viet Nam, Estonia, and the United States?
B. The OECD Better Life Index (Group)
The OECD has created its own index of wellbeing. Information is available at
http://www.oecdregionalwellbeing.org/.
- Explore the website and explain what the Better Life Index is.
- What indicators are used to quantify each of the topic involved in the design of the Better Life Index?
- Choose 3 countries and compare their Better Life Indices; highlight the differences as well as common points.
C. GDP per capita vs HDI (Class)
To complete the exercise below, compare GDP per capita and HDI for countries around the world using the two following data sources:
- HDI ranking in 2018: http://hdr.undp.org/en/data
- GDP per capita ranking in 2018: https://www.cia.gov/
- Plot the GDP per capita rank against the HDI rank. Set the axis in reverse order such that the countries with the highest rank appear in the upper‐right corner of the graph. Name the axes.
- Can you identify a pattern?
- Are there any outliers—countries that do not conform to this pattern?
- Do you think the use of GDP per capita as an indicator for development is justified? Why or why not?
