Facing the crisis: Rethinking economics for the age of environmental breakdown

Article

Damaging human impacts on the environment go beyond climate breakdown to encompass most other natural systems, from soil to biodiversity. The current economic model in countries around the world drives this breakdown, and many of its underpinning assumptions, policies and narratives act as barriers to change.

A new model is needed to rapidly create societies that are more sustainable, just and prepared: bringing human activity to within environmentally sustainable limits while narrowing inequality, improving quality of life, and becoming better prepared for the accelerating consequences of environmental breakdown.

This is the first in a series of six short discussion papers that seeks to inform debate about the relationship between policy, politics and environmental breakdown, supporting education in economic, social and political sciences. This paper explores the role of social and economic systems – and the ideas, policies and narratives that underpin them – in driving dangerous environmental change. It discusses how these systems should change in order to improve the response to environmental breakdown.

This discussion paper series is part of a major IPPR research programme – Responding to environmental breakdown– that seeks to understand how to realise a more sustainable, just and prepared society in response to environmental breakdown.

Related items

  1. West Midlands Metro Tram at Victoria Square in Birmingham city centre during 2022 Commonwealth Games

    Transport and growth: Reforming transport investment for place-based growth

    The ability to deliver transformative public transport is not constrained by a lack of ideas, public support or local ambition. It is constrained by the way decisions are taken at the national level.
  2. A view of Glasgow, Scotland, from above.

    More than a safety net: The welfare state as springboard to economic success and a better country

    A perceived conflict between social spending and economic dynamism is deeply embedded in both Scottish and UK political discourse.
  3. The Home Office building in London

    Far from settled: The government’s ‘earned settlement’ consultation

    How long should people have to wait until they can permanently settle in the UK? This is the core question underpinning the Home Office’s ‘earned settlement’ policy, currently out for consultation.