ABSTRACT
If an assault on growth is one half of the Green economic agenda, sustainability, providing an alternative to constant expansion, completes the whole. Economic systems should be infinitely sustainable, cyclical in nature and able to recycle energy and resource inputs. Rather than being based on quantitative measures of gross national product, their goals should be ecologically centred and qualitative. Above all, preservation of, and interaction with, nature are vital. The reduction of human wants and the abolition of degrading, alienating work are also sought. Social justice and the creation of a sense of community are equally important; the end goal of a sustainable economy may in a sense be the abolition of economics as a category separate from other areas of life. In contrast to conventional development theory, the concept of underdeveloped ‘third world’ nations in need of ‘aid’ (both intellectual and financial) from a more advanced ‘first world’ is rejected. Traditional economies, operating largely outside the market, using barter or gift exchange and producing a diversity of crops and products on a local level, had many virtues. Apparent backwardness and underdevelopment have been caused not by lack of technology but by systems of colonial exploitation (Trainer. 1985).
