2001 Growth in material well-being is a central element in advancing human welfare and reducing poverty.
Growth requires investment in productive physical capital.
And a development strategy focused narrowly on physical investment and growth can be successful for a period. However, if policies to increase aggregate wealth waste natural resources, inflict unnecessary damage on critical environmental processes, undermine social cohesion, or fail to rapidly reduce poverty, they can generate serious problems. These problems can be ignored for a while, but not indefinitely. Unattended, these social and environmental problems can fester to the point where they gradually or abruptly undermine the scope for improvements in human welfare. Sustaining growth over the long term therefore requires that such problems be addressed integrally in current growth strategies and investment programs.