Ethical Gifts This Holiday Season
Our friends at FOE Europe have organised a very interesting conference on eco-suffiecny and degrowth in November and since the gift-giving season is approaching, I wanted to share a bit about these concepts.
Eco-sufficiency means going beyond being the efficient use of resources. As technological advances are made, we are becoming more efficient in various areas such as in our means of production, energy generation, energy consumption of electronic devices, etc. In an isolated system, the efficient use of resources would mean that as a whole, less resources are being consumed, but as the global population is continuously increasing and due to the process of economic growth and more disposable income in pockets of individuals of certain social classes, people are becoming more affluent. Efficiency in itself is only one variable in the equation of the environmental impact we have on our planet. If you look at the past years in Europe, we have indeed strived to become more efficient, but there still has been am overall increase in waste generation and consumption patterns.
Our planet has finite resource, and we cannot continue being ostriches, putting our heads in the sand and ignoring the fact that at some point we would have exhausted this planet’s material resource.
Eco-sufficiency is the space in which all human beings should exist. It’s about having enough wealth and resources shared by all individuals so that we all have our basic needs covered (which is not currently the case for a large percentage of the global population), but at the same time live within out planetary boundary, which are real and quantifiable.
At this point in time we are already consuming way too much for us to be within the limitations of our world’s resources, so one way of mitigating this is to have a new paradigm and shift towards economic degrowth. Do we really need more? Isn’t there enough of what we need in this planet already? Are material possessions making us more happy? It has been proven through that beyond a certain amount of disposable income, happiness is no longer coupled to the increase in this monetary figure.
What I’d like to propose this giving season, is to think about what brings most joy to your life and to those you love. Let’s focus not on materialism but shift towards experientialism, and create memories together, share joys, give more time to each other. When we are buying gifts, let’s make sure they are ethical both environmentally and socially. Support companies who are not exploitive, who are not using slave labour, who do not deforest areas for the production of a consumable. This world is interconnected, that the choices we are making in our country is affecting lives in others.
Share these thoughts at the dinner table this Christmas.
