Why It Makes Sense to Build Ecosystem Restoration Into Economic Growth Plans
It's increasingly clear that there is something fundamentally wrong with the way humans run the world. There are many contradictions experienced daily that prove this: the widening social gaps between rich and poor, the paradox of obesity next to starvation, and the ongoing destruction of the planet for short-term private profit.
Most of us have become willing prisoners of the prosperous economy that we had hoped to build. Meanwhile we are largely unaware that this apparent growth came at a huge cost to the environment and labour. This economy was structured to benefit elites rather than trickle downto the middle class and the poor.
As Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz makes clear, the current economic paradigm of a "rising tide" of prosperity and growth undermines the well-being of billions of people. It also endangers societal stability and the survival of other species. The time has come to ditch the current economic paradigm, for one in which people and the planet actually matter.
Asian Development Bank
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