ABSTRACT

The policy vehicles required to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in domains such as education, health, and welfare rely on fiscal transfers from a growing economy. SDGs also routinely replace less-complex systems in the informal/livelihood sector with more complex systems in the domain of the formal economy, the state, and the market. Such systems are more expensive both financially and in terms of ecological footprint. From any ecological-economic perspective, this dependence of development on growth is problematic. Recent research indicates that there is currently no country that achieves a good life for its citizens at a level of resource use that could be extended to all people on the planet. This tension between growth and ecological integrity suggests a prima facie case for the establishment of new Ecological Economic Goals (EEGs). We argue that a sustainable modernity will necessitate the re-emergence of the domain of reciprocity and informal economy or livelihood; the re-emergence of some early-modern patterns of solidarity and mutualism in the Global North; and the retention and repurposing of pre-modern, agrarian principles of solidarity in the Global South. In place of SDGs, EEGs are advanced as policy vehicles for a sustainable mode of development within biophysical limits.