A group of more than 40 researchers spent 20 months devising a plan for the world to achieve ecological sustainability within planetary boundaries, all while seeing incomes rise for 98% of the global population and reducing working hours for everybody by half to two and a half days a week. The plan to achieve this by 2100 is laid out in the recent “Global Justice Report.” If it sounds utopian, Lucas Chancel, the co-director of the World Inequality Lab and editor of the report, is the first person to acknowledge this, but explains why it’s not only possible — there’s even historical precedent for many of the measures the report outlines. For example, humans used to work almost twice as many hours as they do today for far less pay, and productivity was lower. The reduction in hours worked, plus the increase in productivity, Chancel points out, is the evidence that this could work in the future, namely because the report outlines that productivity must fall. “ If low-income countries increase their productivity and continue to work the same amount of work hours per year, this is going to be a serious problem … from all material constraints that we might have in mind,” Chancel says. Achieving this plan rests on three pillars: decarbonization and the energy transition; a shift towards “sufficiency,” defined here as the reduction of labor and production of superfluous products not needed for human survival; and a “drastic reduction in inequality of income, wealth and power.” Chancel…This article was originally published on Mongabay
