Happy Planet: A good life is possible without costing the Earth
This morning, after having checked my emails and given some thought to the ecotourism and paper recycling projects that I am working on right now, I switched to reading some environmental news. I found something that I had heard of in my ecology classes, it is called the Happy Planet Index (www.happyplanetindex.org). This thing really captivated me. It consists of a study done by the NEF (New Economics Foundation), an organisation which motto is "economics as if people and the planet mattered". Currently, the world is moving forward into a path of increasing material growth, consumption and environmental degradation. And when this is not the case it is likely to be the ultimate goal.
Why do we pursue this development trend? There has to be a solid reason to pursue something, if it entails the destruction of our life supporting system. Is it happiness? And what if the current growth did not actually promote happiness? Would there be any excuse left for following the current growth-oriented development trend? In order to answer these questions, the NEF had to develop indices which reflect a country's population well-being and that country's environmental footprint. The results show that although the most wealthy countries are amongst the happy ones, there are countries with similar, if not higher satisfaction levels and life expectancy and far lower GDP's and environmental impacts.
Happy Planet Map
- Simply put, green indicates countries with a high rank and brown lowest ranks
Costa Rica is in fact the happiest country in the world, has an average life expectancy of almost 80 years, and an ecological footprint of less than a quarter that of the United States. The Netherlands, interestingly, appears to be the highest ranked western country. There, once more, happiness and longevity are not correlated with ecological footprint, as people live on average one year longer than the Americans, have similar levels of life satisfaction and about half of the US ecological footprint.
The conclusion is, a good and long life is possible without costing the Earth. The pursuit of GDP growth does not actually lead to increased happiness, and considering the fact that environmental degradation unavoidably affects people's lives, it ends up actually undermining people's lives. We have an example of a country which has achieved good lives with an almost sustainable footprint. This shows that aiming for happiness that does not cost the Earth is not an impossible goal, but actually a feasible one. I think that this is a positive incentive to change our paradigm. We need to redefine our goals and use indices to monitor our progress towards these new goals.
