Cross-Posted from Chinadialogue.

Last month, Sri Lankan scientist Dr M Munasinghe made an innovative proposal at the discussions for the 2012 UN Sustainable Development Summit: the creation of Millennium Consumption Goals to task the rich with using less “stuff”.

Just as the eight Millennium Development Goals were designed to tackle some of the challenges of “underdevelopment”, which include extreme poverty, inadequate healthcare and widespread illiteracy, the “MCGs” would target the symptoms of so-called “overdevelopment” such as widespread environmental degradation, social deterioration, high levels of obesity and unbalanced lifestyles.

Currently the richest 20% of the world’s population consume more than 80% of the Earth’s resources (60 times more than the poorest). By reducing such demand amongst the rich, said Munasinghe, the MCGs would provide poorer parts of the world with better access to their share, resulting in more balanced and sustainable growth.

It is not a new idea that our relentless consumption of Earth’s natural reserves spells trouble. Back in the 1950s, economist EF Schumacher warned that “infinite growth of material consumption in a finite world” was impossible and furthermore undesirable for human well-being. Similarly, Indian revolutionary MK Gandhi famously argued that humanity has “enough for its needs, but not for its greed”.

With the global rich consuming resources three times faster than the Earth replenishes them, straining ecosystems and driving climate change, these predictions are playing out.   But as well as the environmental impacts, it is argued that our unquenchable demand for “stuff” ultimately takes away from the deeper meaning in life. In other words, past a certain point, getting richer doesn’t mean getting happier – in fact, it may even make us less happy. As the author Tim Jackson put it at a recent TED talk: “We are spending money we don’t have, on things we don’t need, to make impressions that don’t last, on people we don’t care about.”

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