NGO "ANOTHER WAY" (STICHTING BAKENS VERZET), NETHERLANDS, SUSTAINABLE INTEGRATED SELF-FINANCING DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS AND ADVANCED DEVELOPMENT TECHNOLOGIES

“Les gens qui ferment les yeux à la réalité invitent leur propre destruction.” (Baldwin J., Stranger in the Village, Essay in Notes of a Native Son, Beacon Press, Boston 1955. Accédé auprès www.scribd.com, 08 Octobre 2012.) [Traduction T.E.Manning].

“Endless economic growth driven by unbridled consumption has been elevated to the status of a modern religion.” [ La croissance économique sans fin causée par de la consommation incontrôlée a été élevée au rang d’une religion moderne.”] Renner M., Moving Toward a Less Consumptive Society, Chapter 5, pp. 96- 119 of the State of the World Report, 2004, A World Watch Institute Report on Progress Toward a Sustainable, Society , Halweil B. and Mastny L. (Project Directors), W.W.Norton, New York and London, 2004, copyright World Watch Institute, Washington, 2004, ISBN 0-393-05860-3 and ISBN 0-303-32539-3 (pbk).

“If the desire of acquiring goods and services that at current practises generate waste and promote unsustainable use of the earth’s resources was not present in society, sustainability would not be an issue”. [En absence du désir de l’achat de biens et de services qui selon l’usage actuel est cause de gaspillage et d’utilisation pas durable des ressources de la terre, la question de la durabilité ne se poserait pas.] (Towards Sustainable Consumption : An Economic Conceptual Framework, Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Working Party on National Environmental Policy, Paris, 2002.)

“Society is undermining the ecological foundation of its own food system.” (Alder, J. et al, Avoiding Future Famines : Strengthening the Ecological Foundation of Food Security through Sustainable Food Systems, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Nairobi, June, 2012, sommaire exécutif p. vii). ISBN 978-92-807-3261-0.) “As a rough estimate 100 calories of externally provided energy (mainly fossil fuels) are needed to produce 10 calories of food.” (idem, p. 8).

“We will not significantly change the potentially unsustainable aspects of human activity unless we can develop an economic environment within which they are no longer attractive.” [ On ne changera de manière significative les aspects pas durables des activités humaines que lorsque l’on ne développe un environnement économique dans le cadre duquel ils ne soient plus attrayants.] (Towards Sustainable Consumption : An Economic Conceptual Framework (ci-dessus), citant Heal, G. (1998), Valuing the Future: Economic Theory and Sustainability, Columbia University Press.

Référez-vous de nouveau à la diapositive suivante:

1. La pauvreté.

La pauvreté dont aux citations dans la diapositive semble de nature économique.

1. Opinion.

Comment est-ce que l’argent peut-il devenir un encombrement au marché?

2. Opinion.

Comment est-ce qu’on peut “construire” la privation autrui? Qui la construirait?

On se sert du mot “perception” en relation à la pauvreté. La perception est subjective.

Il existe beaucoup de littérature sur la définition de pauvreté.

“The Programme of Action of the World Summit for Social Development (United Nations, 2006, resolution 1, annex II) characterized poverty as follows:

Poverty has various manifestations, including lack of income and productive resources sufficient to ensure sustainable livelihoods; hunger and malnutrition;

ill health; limited or lack of access to education and other basic services; increased morbidity and mortality from illness; homelessness and inadequate housing; unsafe environments; and social discrimination and exclusion. It is also characterized by a lack of participation in decision-making and in civil, social and cultural life (para. 19). ” Rethinking Poverty : Report on the World Social Situation 2010., Nations Unies, Département des Affaires Économiques et Sociales, New York 2009 (ISBN 978-92-1-130278-3).

“Quality of life includes the full range of factors that make life worth living, including those that are not captured by monetary measures.” Stiglitz J., Sen A, Fitoussi J-P (coordinators), Report by the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress., Report for the President of France, www.stiglitz-sen-fitoussi.fr, Paris, September 2009, p.216 . Le chapitre 2 du sommaire et le chapitre 2 du corps du rapport fournissent une analyse détaillée du terme “qualité de vie”, surtout de ses éléments subjectifs.

Agarwala, M. et al, à la page p. xxvii du sommaire exécutif du rapport Inclusive Wealth Report 2012 : Measuring progress towards sustainability (United Nations University Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (UNU-IDHP) et United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, Juie 2012. ISBN 978-1-107-68339-6) décrivent la richesse (wealth) comme “ the social worth of an economy’s assets: reproducible capital; human capital; knowledge; natural capital; population; institutions; and time.”

La loi des rendements décroissants est cité en relation à la santé et ‘`a l’éducation 07. La fuite financière : la santé et l’éducation.

Selon Larousse, la loi des rendements décroissants est une « loi selon laquelle, si l'on augmente d'une unité un seul des facteurs d'un processus de production, les autres restant inchangés, le supplément de production consécutif (ou rendement) augmente jusqu'à un maximum, puis diminue.» Cette loi s’applique également à notre perception de notre qualité de vie.

Du luxe n’est pas nécessaire à une bonne qualité de vie.

“The whole enormous amount of human labour expended in the search for and the production of gold; the ships which carry out the thousands of explorers, diggers and speculators; the tools, implements, and machinery they use; their houses, food, and clothing, as well as the countless gallons of liquor of various qualities they consume, are all, so far as the well-being of the community is concerned, absolutely wasted…… The larger the proportion of the population of a country that devotes itself to gold-production, the smaller the numbers left to produce real wealth - food, clothing, houses, fuel, roads, machinery and all the innumerable, conveniences, comforts, and wholesome luxuries of life. Hence, whatever appearances may indicate, gold-production makes a country poor, and by furnishing new means of investment and speculation helps to keep it poor.” ( A.F. Wallace, The Wonderful Century : Its Successes and Failures (1898), Digital version : Cambridge University Press, 2011, p. 370. ISBN 878-1-108-03689-5.)

“……beyond a certain threshold, more material wealth is a poor substitute for community cohesion, healthy relationships, a sense of purpose, connection with nature, and other dimensions of human happiness.” (Talberth, J., A New Bottom Line for Progress., Chapitre 2, 2008 State of the World : Innovations for a Sustainable Economy, The Worldwatch Institute, p.21. Washington, 2008.)

On a suggéré qu’il existe dans les pays occidentaux un rapport entre la bonheur et les revenues qui tende à se réduire à zéro au dessous du niveau de relation, US$ 10,000 (2003). (Ed Diener and Martin Seligman, “Beyond Money: Toward an Economy of Well-Being,” Psychological Science in the Public Interest Vol. 5, no. 1, American Psychological Society, Washington, Juillet 2004, graphique Fig. 1 à la page 3.) À la page 2 les auteurs disent :“The purpose of the production of goods and services and of policies in areas such as education, health, the environment, and welfare is to increase well-being.”

“…. people with the highest well-being ‘‘are not those who live in the richest countries, but those who live where social and political institutions are effective, where mutual trust is high, and corruption is low’’” (Diener and Seligman, above, p. 5 citing Helliwell J.F. “How’s life? Combining individual and national variables to explain subjective well-being”, Economic Modelling, 20, 355.)… .) …. “This pattern [increases in income accompanied by smaller increase in well-being] is consistent with the decreasing marginal utility of money (i.e., the impact of an added dollar decreases as the total amount of money increases) (p. 6).

“…communities with high rates of volunteer activity, club membership, church membership, and social entertaining (all thought to be indirect manifestations of social capital) all had higher well-being than communities that were low in these characteristics.(Diener and Seligman, ci-dessus, citant Putnam, Bowling Alone: The collapse and revival of American community, Simon & Schuster. New York, 2001.)

“…meeting one’s physical needs and one’s desires might be the crucial moderator of the effects of income on well-being……economic growth seems to have topped out in its capacity to produce more well-being in developed nations.” (Diener and Seligman, ci-dessus, p. 10).

Dans leur article High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being, (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), vo. 107, no.38, pp. 16489-16493, Washington, 2010) D.Kahneman et A. Deaton arrivent à la conclusion qu’au contexte de la situation aux États Unis, tout en appliquant les valeurs culturelles y dominantes, il n’y a plus de progrès en ce que concerne le bien-être émotionnel au de là d’un niveau de revenu supérieur à $75,000 par famille. Les revenus élevés achèteraient de la satisfaction de vie mais pas de la bonheur. Un revenu bas par contre y serait associé avec une évaluation réduite de la qualité de vie et avec un bas niveau de bien-être émotionnel.

Pour une discussion détaillée de ce sujet, voir Mont, O. et autres, Improving Nordic policymaking by dispelling myths on sustainable consumption, Nordic Council of Ministers, Copenhagen, 2013. ISBN 978-92-893-2589-9, pp. 87-93.)