Editing IPCC:AR6/WGII/Chapter-18 (section)

==== 18.2.2.1 Development Perspectives ====

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Development is about ‘improvement’. However there have been different and often conflicting viewpoints on the improvement of ‘what’ and ‘how’ to improve. The diversity of positions has resulted in a multitude of metrics to track development, some more influential than others on policy. Alternative measures of development, while numerous, generally seek to nuance the connection between economic growth and human well-being. Because they maintain core notions of progress and, in some cases, economic growth seen in more mainstream models of development, they are less vehicles for transformation than continuations of thinking and action fundamentally at odds with the needs of CRD. These include the Measure of Economic Welfare ( [[#Nordhaus--1973|Nordhaus and Tobin, 1973]] ), the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare ( [[#Cobb--1989|Cobb and Daly, 1989]] ), the Genuine Progress Indicator ( [[#Escobar--1995|Escobar, 1995]] ), the Adjusted Net Saving Index or the Genuine Savings Index (GSI), The Human Development Index (HDI), the Inequality-Adjusted Human Development Index (UNDP, 2016a), the Gender Development Index, the Gender Inequality Index, the Multidimensional Poverty Index, the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW) ( [[#Daly--1989|Daly and Cobb, 1989]] ), the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) ( [[#Kubiszewski--2013|Kubiszewski et al., 2013]] ), Gross National Happiness (GNH) ( [[#Ura--2004|Ura and Galay, 2004]] ), Measures of Australia’s Progress (MAP) ( [[#Trewin--2004|Trewin and Hall, 2004]] ), the OECD Better Life Index ( [[#OECD--2019a|OECD, 2019a]] ) and the Happy Planet Index ( [[#NEF--2016|NEF, 2016]] ).

In terms of their historical trajectory, different perspectives on development can be broadly divided into five categories.

# ''Development as economic growth (1950s onwards)'' : Equating development with economic growth was a natural outcome of the dominance of economics as the major discipline to study problems of newly independent countries in the 1950s ( [[#Escobar--1995|Escobar, 1995]] ), measured through GDP. Environment was not a policy concern in the immediate period after decolonisation. The GDP measure has withstood the test of time, in spite of being an inexact measure of human well-being, and is the widely used metric globally to track development. Recent improvements to GDP have tried to account for environmental factors ( [[#Gundimeda--2007|Gundimeda et al., 2007]] ; [[#United%20Nations--2021|]] [[#United%20Nations--2021|United Nations, 2021]] ).
# ''Development as distributional improvements (1970s onwards)'' : That economic growth does not automatically result in decline in poverty and improved distribution of income became apparent in the 1970s. Welfare measures were thus promoted that involved ‘redistribution with growth’ ( [[#Chenery--1974|Chenery, 1974]] ). These distributional concerns have re-emerged in the last two decades with the widening gap between the richer and poorer groups of the population ( [[#Chancel--2019|Chancel and Piketty, 2019]] ) and also the increased attention to ‘ecological distribution conflicts’ ( [[#Martinez-Alier--2021|Martinez-Alier, 2021]] ). The political economy perspective, highlighting continued dependencies of countries in the Global South on the Global North, now evolved into political ecology highlighting environmental concerns between and within countries. Environment was not yet a policy priority, despite the links between development and environment becoming clearer.
# ''Development as participation (1980s onwards)'' : Bottom-up responses emphasising sustainable livelihoods and local-level development emerged in the 1980s. The movement, which involved independent and uncoordinated efforts by grassroots activists, social movements and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), became ‘mainstreamed’ into development in the 1990s ( [[#Chambers--2012|Chambers, 2012]] ). The multi-dimensional nature of poverty was acknowledged at the global policy level ( [[#World%20Bank--2000|World Bank, 2000]] ) and there was wider acceptance of the role of non-economics social sciences as well as critical approaches in research on development and poverty ( [[#Thomas--2008|Thomas, 2008]] ). Participatory development involved decentralisation and local planning, emphasising protection of local natural resources in addition to improving living standards.
# ''Development as expansion of human capabilities (1980s onwards)'' : The human development and capabilities approach was the first formidable response to the GDP-centric view of development ( [[#Sen--2000|Sen, 2000]] ; [[#Deneulin--2009|Deneulin and Shahani, 2009]] ). Studies showed that improvements in income did not necessarily improve human well-being in other dimensions such as health and education, or more broadly put, ‘freedoms’ (Ruggeri Laderchi et al., 2003). The capabilities idea was influential in global policy making through Human Development Reports and metrics such as Human Development Index (HDI) and Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI). However, environmental sustainability was not a major component in this approach until much later ( [[#Alkire--2018|Alkire and Jahan, 2018]] ). Recent improvements to HDI such as the planetary pressures-adjusted HDI ( [[#United%20Nations--2020|United Nations, 2020]] ) is a step in this direction.
# ''Development as post-growth (2010 onwards)'' : The late 1980s saw a big push towards taking the environment to the centre of the global policy agenda ( [[#World%20Commission%20on%20Environment%20and%20Development--1987|World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987]] ). However, progress in addressing environmental questions has been slow. As compared with Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), SDGs aim to tackle environmental concerns by explicitly tracking progress on multiple indicators. Nevertheless, the approach in these policy propositions sits largely within the economic growth framework itself. The climate change challenge and the financial crisis of 2008 led many scholars, ecological economists and environmental social scientists in particular, to argue for a post-growth world. Post-growth ( [[#Jackson--2021|Jackson, 2021]] ), degrowth ( [[#Kallis--2018|Kallis, 2018]] ; [[#Hickel--2021|Hickel et al., 2021]] ) and other environmentalist scholarship takes inspiration from critiques of development such as post-development ( [[#Escobar--1995|Escobar, 1995]] ). The argument here is not for better metrics but for imagining and working towards systemic change in the wake of the climate crisis. The challenge however is how to account for historical differences in economic growth and living standards between the Global North and the Global South and to protect the interests of Global South in the spirit of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’ to climate change adaptation and mitigation. As empirical studies in the Global South have demonstrated ( [[#Lele--2018|Lele et al., 2018]] ), developing countries face multiple stressors, climate change being just one among them, and there are multiple normative concerns in developing country contexts, such as equity and justice, and not merely resilience ( ''very high confidence'' ).

Achieving CRD requires framings of development that move away from linear paradigms of development as material progress by focusing on diversity and heterogeneity, well-being and equality, not only in contemporary practices, but also pathways of change over time ( [[#Gibson-Graham--2005|Gibson-Graham, 2005]] ; [[#Gibson-Graham--2006|Gibson-Graham, 2006]] ). Such approaches, which are fundamentally aligned with ecological and ecosystem-based environmental assessments that identified heterogeneity of approaches and actions as the most effective path to a sustainable world ( [[#Millennium%20Ecosystem%20Assessment--2005|Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005]] ), emphasise the importance of cultural, linguistic and religious diversity, not merely as alternative sources of information about the world, but as different paradigms of well-being ( [[#Kallis--2018|Kallis, 2018]] ). These include Indigenous and local knowledge that provide alternatives to these framings of the world (Cross-Chapter Box INDIG). This broad reframing of development includes a focus on visions such as ‘buen vivir’ ( [[#Cubillo-Guevara--2014|Cubillo-Guevara et al., 2014]] ; [[#Walsh--2018|Walsh, 2018]] ; [[#Acosta--2019|Acosta et al., 2019]] ), ecological Swaraj ( [[#Kothari--2014|Kothari et al., 2014]] ; [[#Demaria--2017|Demaria and Kothari, 2017]] ; [[#Shiva--2017|Shiva, 2017]] ) and Ubuntu ( [[#Dreyer--2015|Dreyer, 2015]] ; [[#Ewuoso--2019|Ewuoso and Hall, 2019]] ), among others. All are linked by relationships with nature radically different from the Western mechanistic vision, presenting not only framings of development and the environment that yield locally appropriate CRDPs, but serve as examples of alternative ways of living in balance with nature that might inform similar thinking in other places.

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