Economic development is generally considered the most important aspect of the development a country. However, as Amartya Sen; the Nobel laureate has explored many years ago in his book ‘Development as Freedom’; the relationship is not that straight forward and it is important to understand the role of freedom and development.
Freedom is both constitutive of development and instrumental to it: instrumental freedoms include political freedom, economic facilities, social opportunities, transparency, and security, which are all different but inter-connected.
Once we understand this then it is clear that concentrating on economic development is not the only goal for development. Development can be better termed as well-being.
We need to remember here that it is easy to understand this in the context of a developed country. However, for a developing country the sequence of freedoms are important too.
One explanation on this is from Atanu Dey:
I don’t know why but some people just draw good cards from the random draw that is life. Singaporeans are lucky. I am sure there are those who will immediately retort that the Singaporeans don’t have the freedoms that are normally associated with a liberal democracy. And I am also sure that the person making that statement is sitting comfortably well-fed in his nice office or home accessing the world wide web for knowledge and entertainment. For the average schmuck in a third world country, he would any day trade in his imaginary freedoms for a decent shot at a full stomach, a roof over his head, and a chance to get his children educated. After the average schmuck has achieved those basic necessities, he would ask for all sorts of goodies that a liberal democracy provides. And that is when the society should become a liberal democracy.
The sequence is important.
In this context, lets look at Geoff Wells’ post about the study by the New Economics Foundation on the relationship between national well being and carbon emissions.
It’s often been assumed that a heavy carbon footprint is highly correlated with levels of national development. Moreover, it’s assumed that economic development is an essential part of building national well-being. The logical conclusions of such propositions is that national well-being must decline if carbon emissions are to be cut…
nef begins by rating countries in the EU on a well-being index, which combines life satisfaction and life expectancy measures…nef then rates these countries by carbon footprint, the amount of resources used by each European nation to support its lifestyles.
[...]
Combining the two indices gives a picture of how well countries are doing in delivering well-being to their citizens with low impact on carbon emissions. Scandinavian countries stand out, as having some of the lowest per capita carbon footprints while delivering high levels of economic, social and personal well-being. Iceland rates highest in Europe, along with Sweden and Norway. The UK sits at 21st (out of 30), just behind France and Germany, with only transition countries such as Portugal, Greece and Luxembourg doing worse. Latvia, despite being a transition country, come a respectable eleventh.
[...]
nef concludes: “Individuals, communities, governments and societies at large can afford to greatly reduce their levels of consumption without it needing to undermine the well-being of the citizens of Europe.”
Once we combine the view point of Sen and this study; it becomes clear that carbon emission reduction is not that worrisome as originally stated.
The majority of the emissions are from the developed countries and it is these countries that need to cut down their emissions. The consequences of carbon reduction has always narrowly concentrated on economic development. Even then the various modelling studies suggests that the effect of carbon reduction will not have a large effect on economic growth in the long run. Considering Sen’s point of instrumental freedoms; developed countries have the option of improving the well-being of their citizens even with a slight reduction in economic development and at the same time reducing their carbon emissions.
I have yet to see this viewpoint of well-being and ‘freedom as development’ discussed in the climate change debate. Carbon reduction has a greater chance of acceptance in this scenario.
