How Can We Get Through the Economic Storm of Transition?
By: Desiree Driesenaar
Tags: Systems Thinking, Sustainability, Innovation, European Union, Regenerative Economy

Why do I focus so much on aligning economy, ecology, and the human spirit, do you ask? And why is it now, during and after COVID-19, more important than ever to do so?

Well, there are two main reasons to think about economy and ecology in one breath.

1 The unlimited growth paradigm can no longer hold its ground. The projections of the Limits to Growth Report, 30-years after the initial book was published by the Club of Rome, are alarming.

“We conclude that humanity is dangerously in a state of overshoot” — Limits to Growth, the 30-Year Update.

The most common points of criticism in 1972 were: technology and the adaptive resilience of the free market will prove you wrong. But 30 years later, all projections are still the same or worse…

We are overstepping planetary boundaries big time, as you can see in recent studies by the Stockholm Resilience Center. Nitrogen, phosphorous, climate change, biodiversity loss…

And it can be done differently. We saw the clean air above China when production was closed for a few weeks. Nature herself is very resilient.

2 Ecologists have been warning us for years that viruses will transfer from animals to humans because of our destruction of their habitats.

It’s really a logical conclusion. Viruses have unique animal hosts. We destroy the habitats of these hosts. So they find new hosts. Us, humans. New pandemics are born. We are to expect more of those…

Alternative Routes

So how can we get through the storm taking a different route? I want to address 4 points:

Jobs and Money

Food Security

Responsible Business

Real Estate Speculation

And then I want to give you some real-life transitional examples in Europe.

Jobs and Money

What if we would spend the money not on wasteful, big businesses but on the workers directly? What if we would spend all these trillions on a Universal Basic Income (UBI)?

There’s overwhelming evidence that the most efficient way to pull people out of poverty, is by giving them an income without patronizing them.

Rutger Bregman speaks about it in “Poverty isn’t a lack of character, it’s a lack of cash.”

Rutger Bregman. Ted Talk about the Universal Basic Income.

As Rutger explains, it will get people out of the scarcity mindset that causes bad decisions connected to poverty. Well, that’s what we want: an abundance mindset will define our future…

The bottom line: we can give people a safety net that ensures they won’t drop below the poverty line. It will be enough to afford basic needs: food, shelter, education. Everyone can live a less-stressed life and make better choices.

But can we afford it?

Left and right-wing politicians make different choices and calculations. But both are exploring the possibilities and the bottom line of their calculations seems to be: YES.

Europe can afford a UBI if we implement it via a negative income tax.

And please realize that we will not implement it in an unchanged society. We will transition our societies with it. A UBI will save money as well.

If we start trusting people, we need much less bureaucracy

Many social problems will decrease. Crime, health problems, addictions

Voluntary work will increase if people don’t have to worry about income

Bottom-up entrepreneurship for the transition will flourish

I just hope some of our leaders will have the guts…

And if they don’t, I hope communities will embrace their own money systems. Their own economic models and Universal Basic Incomes. Time for local, tokenized economies? Time for value instruments?

Food security

Food security is very important. At this moment our subsidy system for farmers is complex, bureaucratic, and not achieving what we want to achieve.

Industrial farming is ruining our planet and producing food that’s designed for quantity instead of nutritional value.

We can do better. Farmers are the people who know about soil, know about nature, know how to do it better. But they are stuck in the current system, too. We can help them transition.

With regenerative farming, we can ensure high-quality food production.

We should produce high-quality food by putting the focus on healthy soil

Ecological intensification will help produce enough food and make the business models work. E.g. growing edible mushrooms on organic rest streams can provide healthy proteins and provide extra income

We can restore ecosystems and unleash the abundance of nature again

Restoring water cycles will be much easier with healthy soil around

The use of mechanical energy can be minimized and renewable, so our output of calories will be bigger than our input. We will be creating more calories than we invest

So, what if we would invest our billions of subsidies to help farmers transition to regenerative farming? What if we would redirect the subsidy streams for universities towards agroecology wisdom instead of industrial farming?

Regenerative farmers can build an awesome bridge between the natural systems and our human systems, producing healthy food in the process.

It would certainly give us completely different opportunities for food security within planetary boundaries.

Responsible Businesses

What about the businesses, you ask? Are they left to fend for themselves? My first answer is yes.

It cannot be that big companies make millions of profit, years in a row. And then ask for taxpayers’ money when the going gets tough.

Businesses are responsible for their profits AND all of their costs. Including social and environmental costs. They should solve these issues within their business models.

Blue Economy shows a wealth of innovations and technologies that are systemic and aligned with the natural world. We can change the way we make our products. Make beautiful furniture from kelp, build with bamboo, make batteries from waste streams, make mobile phones without a battery, etc.

Let’s unleash all of our entrepreneurial talents and be makers instead of consumers! We can build resilient, local, active economies like never before!

Why do we need one beer brewer who owns all the pubs and gives us boring uniformity? Why not have multiple beer brewers? Challenge our taste buds? They can make their businesses work with regenerative business models!

And of course, the companies can be helped with laws. Taxing resources instead of labor? Make job creation easier like this?

When employees have a basic income, the rewarding system for employees will shift as well. Properly organizing and rewarding the purposeful, necessary jobs, so people feel proud and satisfied to fulfill them…

Stop Speculation

Our current economies are making a lot of money with speculation. Banking products are complex and speculative. Kerosine prices are kept stable with speculation as you could read in the article about KLM. And land speculation is driving our housing prices through the roof.

It’s like the game Monopoly.

Whoever is first to buy the expensive streets, will win. No doubt about it.

So what if we stopped land and real estate speculation?

Houses would become affordable again. It’s an interesting thought that cities, economists, and banks are actually experimenting with in several ways.