This consultation addressed the fundamental question of how best to resolve (or even think about) the dilemma presented by the simultaneous existence of the following two problems:

1. The changed reality of a full world in which fundamental resources such as earth, water and air suffer widespread destruction due to growth of the world’s economies, and simultaneously,
2. the emergence of widespread unemployment, underemployment, and poverty in many different parts of the world where the only solution appears to be yet more economic growth.

Moving into the twenty-first century, can the world economy go on growing in both GNP and population terms, while ensuring that life on the planet, in all its rich diversity, remains sustainable? From the time of the first report issued by the Club of Rome (1972) on the "Limits to Growth",   through "Our Common Future" (the 1987 "Brundtland Report" of The World Commission on Environment and Development) which articulated the concept of "Sustainable Development", to the Earth Summit (Agenda 21. United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, Rio de Janeiro, 1992) which put environmental concerns onto the center of the world stage, this question has become increasingly difficult to evade. Sustainable growth: is it a contradiction in terms? [The consultation used the working definition of "sustainable society" as one which leaves the world as rich in resources and opportunities as it inherited. This means that renewable resources are consumed no faster than they can be renewed, that nonrenewable resources are consumed no more rapidly than renewable substitutes can be found, that wastes are discharged at a rate no greater than they can be processed by nature or human devices. This definition was included in the report of the first Visser 't Hooft Memorial Consultation, published as Sustainable Growth -- A Contradiction in Terms? Economy, Ecology and Ethics after the Earth Summit by The Ecumenical Leadership Foundation, Geneva, Switzerland. 1993.

As early as 1974, a World Council of Churches consultation in Bucharest pointed to the "time which is coming when more material production and the benefits reaped by increasing numbers of people can no longer be allowed to outweigh the negative effects of economic growth on the other dimensions of economic life." [Bucharest Conference Report, "Science and Technology for Human Development, The Ambiguous Future -- The Christian Hope" published by WCC in mimeographed form.]  Recognizing the complexity of the world in which people live at very different levels of material wealth, the same consultation went on to conclude that "the overall quality of life will at present be increased by material growth among the poor and by stabilization and possibly contraction among the rich." But this recognition of the need to halt, even to reverse growth in rich countries was not widely accepted. Two decades later, however, in 1993 at the First Memorial Consultation, when the contradictions inherent in the concept of "sustainable growth" were confronted, it was clear that reality had changed in fundamental ways that were even more visible than when the Club of Rome issued its first report. The fragility of the planet is no longer in dispute.

The marked expansion of consumption, particularly among the wealthy majority in the North and the elite in the South, together with the increasing power of technology to interrupt and affect planetary processes, plus the rise in population levels, has led to a situation where humanity is now digging deeply into the ecological resources of the planet. Reflection on this reality leads inexorably to the conclusion that it is no longer possible to consider growth in terms of rising GNP per capita and higher throughput of goods and services, as environmentally sustainable.

A number of consequences flow from this new way of seeing the world and its economy. The First Memorial Consultation identified these four:

1. The necessity of seeing the economic system as part of a wider planetary ecosystem which is vulnerable and fragile.
2. Need for a new concept of "abundance" based on sufficiency rather than on growth.
3. Massive poverty -- where millions of people around the globe suffer from lack of such basic resources for life as food, clean drinking water, energy and shelter -- must be seen as an integral part of the environmental crisis.
4. The rich industrialized countries have a primary responsibility to take immediate steps to transform their economic systems such that their level of resource use could be equitably adopted by the whole world without causing ecological catastrophe. (Ibid, Sustainable Growth.)

Wrestling with these consequences, which imply that humanity has to look for less rather than more growth as the solution to the achievement of environmental sustainability, a second major problem appears, which suggests a diametrically opposed conclusion. This is the emergence, in many different parts of the world, of widespread and increasing unemployment and underemployment with all their destructive consequences of marginalisation, exclusion, diminished sense of individual self worth and, indeed, loss of a sense of meaning of life itself. This situation is accompanied by increasing poverty rates, even in countries which until recently had effective social security nets underpinning job losses. The crisis of unemployment, which Martin Woollacott calls a "sickness sans frontières"  [Guardian Weekly, 4 June 1995], is widespread and deeply disturbing as may be seen in the number of major reports focusing on this topic in 1995, whether by the International Labor Organization, the OECD, the World Bank, or by individual governments. [See, for example, World Employment 1995. International Labor Organization. Geneva 1995; OECD; IBRD World Development Report, 1995.]

One profound consequence of the current crisis is a widespread belief supported by mainstream economic analysis, that the solution to unemployment requires more, rather than less, economic growth. Thus, there is an urgent need to focus on what appears to be a fundamental dilemma: how to reconcile the imperative of environmental sustainability with the achievement of a society in which there is employment for all who need it? In this equation, how does the contribution of unpaid workers fit into resource planning and compensation? And if universal employment is not possible or even desirable, how does society cope with the problem of self-identity for those without paid jobs and of economic distribution in the world as a whole?

The fragility of the planet demands informed and immediate action in the face of

• environmental pressures stemming from industrialization and consumption,
• personal and community destruction rooted in unemployment, underemployment and widespread undervaluation of essential human qualities expressed in unpaid work, and
• the instability and suffering inherent in widespread poverty.

There is urgent need to think through and develop the appropriate political approach to ensure that individuals, communities, organizations, churches, employers, and for governments to take the necessary actions.

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