What Is It?
You might think that “decent” is a strange word to put in the title of a UNSDG. The UN is all about feasible ambition, and this word doesn’t fit in with the rest of the goals at first glance. However, upon further inspection, what this means is that the UN wants to promote sustained, inclusive, and sustainable economic growth to maximize employment and decent work for all. Here, “decent“ means that everyone willing and able to work should have a job that is morally, financially, and physically decent.
Therefore, this goal is all about sustainable economic growth. This is not just about environmental sustainability, which is the main focus of Greenome, but on being able to sustain this level of economic growth for long periods without depleting natural resources, causing high inflation rates, etc.
It’s easy to imagine that COVID-19 has hampered economic growth, and wherever you are in the world, you’ve seen this. It would’ve been impossible for the world’s economy to not be affected so greatly in the face of Covid, given the sheer scale of issues such as lockdowns. Economies are recovering now, and you may think, because masks are off in most places in the world, and Covid it isn’t talked about anymore, that everything is completely fine, and Covid is gone. Of course, this is not the case. When a news program stops covering a case, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the case is closed. In the same way, Covid has not magically disappeared, but it has become accepted, with advancements such as vaccines. Because of all of this, economies are recovering rapidly, and some have even recovered quite fully, but most are still seeing long-term effects of Covid. In addition to this, new waves of Covid, given the relaxation of regulation, e.g. mask regulations being dropped in Hong Kong, I’ve had an impact as well.
Economic recovery is also hampered by supply chain, disruptions, both due to Covid and the Russia-Ukraine war. This means that resources and products are not getting to where they need to be in time, causing issues throughout the world’s economy.
Inflation has also been rising, although of late, there have been measures to decrease it. In developed countries, such as the USA, inflation has been extremely high, reaching record highs of 7% last year, meaning prices are extremely high, which, as you can imagine, causes an issue for consumers wanting to buy, and businesses wanting to invest.
Some other issues are uncertainties about policies the government will follow, and subsequent labor market shortages - meaning there aren’t enough workers.
It’s clear that there are a lot of problems that go into an economy being in recession, or slowing down, and these are the issues that this UNSDG aims to tackle. But why is economic growth so important? Well, if an economy is stagnant (not growing or shrinking), or if there is negative growth, there are a lot of adverse effects for everyone in the economy. Inflation is usually high meaning that prices are high, which makes it hard for people like us to buy anything, from a packet of chips to a house. It also makes it difficult for businesses to invest, reducing the amount of profit they can make. Unemployment increases, because of the lack of profits of businesses, as well as other factors to do with zero or negative economic growth. Unemployment plus rising prices equals… an issue. The government may suffer, too, as their country’s international standing and reputation go down.
How Does It Relate to Sustainability?
Sustainability is still, unfortunately, financially, a luxury for most economies. I don’t mean that economies need to be developed or in a boom to invest in sustainability. What I mean is that to make a sizable and tangible Impact, sustainability is still not accessible to most undeveloped economies. This means that while undeveloped economies can make an impact, finance is a denominating factor. Hence, naturally, bigger and more developed economies will have more power to make an impact on sustainability.
This means that, as fortunate as it is, to make an impact certain economies need to be targeted. It is easy to imagine that the USA’s economy is a target for achieving sustainability targets, as they have the factors of production to make a possible. However, there is a mismatch between where the natural resources are - usually in the less developed countries - and the economies that are targeted. This is because the places that have natural resources intact have not exploited them yet, hindering their development, but also meaning that the natural resources we need are theirs. Going back to the USA’s example, they do not have enough natural resources to make as big of an impact as a smaller, less developed country, that does have those natural resources. However, they have the funding, labor, capital, influence, etc. to make far more of a real impact.
Taking all of this into consideration, the reason this UNSDG is so important in the context of sustainability is realizing that different economies need to grow in different ways to maximize sustainability. Trying to get all developing countries to be fully developed countries, and ignoring the developed countries, may not have as big of an impact on sustainability, as “market, segmentation“ might, where we focus on the natural resource aspect of economic growth in developing countries, and the other aspects in developed countries.
Apart from this, economic growth is important in every single aspect. Without a growing economy, sustainability is a fever dream. An economy in a recession can’t afford to care about sustainability or doing good. The economy is trying to survive, and we cannot focus on them or begrudge them for not prioritizing sustainability in their time of crisis.
What Can You Do?
Unfortunately, the section will be very short. Economic growth is an extremely complex situation, and cannot be influenced by individuals themselves. Things like central banks, changing interest rates to adjust, inflation, or governments introducing new policies, definitely do have an impact on economic growth. However, as for what you can do individually, there is not much in terms of changing the growth of the economy that you were in. However, there are some things you can do to ensure you are not putting it in a worse position.
Crime - Don’t Do It!
Obvious much? Well, I’m not just saying this out of morality. Also, not necessarily talking about armed robberies, and murder. I’m also talking about the smaller “victimless“ crimes. Watching your favorite movie on a pirating website, for example. Paying a bit extra to watch it in the cinemas, or on a streaming service, will be a contribution to the economy that you might think is insignificant, but if this culture of watching illegal movies, for example, got dissuaded it would have a large impact.
Support Local and Small Businesses!
This is another rather high-level UNSDG, but remember any way you can contribute will make a difference, whether it’s to your local business owner down the street, or the economy as a whole.
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