Researcher on GDP: "An increase can have a negative effect on the environment"

- We measure the wrong things.

We steal the future and that's what we call GDP growth.

What we need to measure are qualitative things.

Not quantity, says the author and environmental debater Anders Wijkman, who was the chairman of Romklubben until 2018.

Anders Wijkman has previously been a member of parliament for the Moderates and an EU parliamentarian for the Christian Democrats.

Instruments for long-term consequences

After reading the latest report from the UN Climate Panel, he thinks it is even more important to focus on how we measure growth.

- It is a far too short-term economy.

We have very few instruments in the economy that try to take into account long-term consequences.

We are destroying the natural system, including the atmosphere, he says.

According to Wijkman, the goals of increased growth and gross domestic product that have been absolutely central to the development of the Western world over the past hundred years have become problematic.

- This economic model worked quite well when we were quite a few people and the economy was small.

But it does not work today, he says.

Outdated goals can affect the environment

Mikael Malmaeus is a researcher at the partly business-funded Swedish Environmental Institute.

He has researched GDP and climate.

- We should not have a goal of increasing GDP.

As the connections look, emissions increase with GDP.

Nor should we aim to reduce GDP.

I think we should set goals for our environmental impact and then the economy must adapt and the probable result if we want to limit our environmental impact is that we get a lower GDP than we have.

Is growth not needed to keep jobs and welfare?

- Some have the idea that the economy crashes without growth.

But there is not much evidence for that.

There are countries like Japan that have had almost no growth for many years.

It is more about what level of consumption we want to maintain, which is the big problem, says Mikael Malmaeus.

Thomas Sterner is Professor of Environmental Economics at the University of Gothenburg. In an earlier interview with SVT, he considered that growth is necessary, among other things for globally lifting people out of poverty. At the same time, he believes that growth can be controlled in a more sustainable development.