The Poverty of Growth

How do we combat poverty and rising inequality? In our age of impending climate catastrophe, the conventional wisdom around GDP and economic growth is no longer fit for purpose; a rising tide sinks all boats.

Oliver De Schutter argues that we must rethink the fight against poverty. The quest for economic growth not only clashes with the need to remain within planetary boundaries but creates the social exclusion it intends to cure: deteriorating human rights, widening the gap between the richest and the poorest, and merely modernizing poverty without eliminating it.

The Poverty of Growth calls for social movements, trade unions, and environmental NGOs to forge a new pathway towards a ’post-growth’ development and a narrative of progress no longer orientated around wealth and profit.

Olivier de Schutter is the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights. Previously, he has been the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, and a member of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. He has written extensively on the protection of economic and social rights in the context of economic globalization. He is the co-author of The Escape from Poverty: Breaking the Vicious Cycles Perpetuating Disadvantage and Social Innovation in the Service of Ecological and Social Transformation: The Rise of the Enabling State’. Kate Raworth is the author of the best-selling book Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economist. She is Senior Associate at Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute and co-founder of Doughnut Economics Action Lab.