At this national roundtable dedicated to the quest for a sustainable development model, it was noted by way of preface that overcoming the crisis and returning to past growth is the outlook – or imperative, hope or delusion, depending on your point of view – which has dominated public debate, analyses, scenarios and action plans in Western countries in recent years. The recurring motif has been the overused and misleading metaphor of “coming out of the tunnel”, almost as if, once the storm is over, everything could go back to being perfectly serene without any damage or debris to clear up, nor any need to rebuild from scratch whatever has been destroyed. Indeed, the participants felt that the use of this tunnel metaphor, on closer reflection, reveals a widespread misunderstanding regarding the origins, nature and impact of the global crisis, seen initially as simply a brief interlude between one economic cycle and another, then as a persistent yet transitory phenomenon, and only recently as involving a momentous and unprecedented transformation for contemporary generations.
Hence, the sense that after the crisis nothing will ever be the same again has only relatively recently gained common credence. Recent too – and at any rate belated, including among experts – has been the inception of a high-level debate over a new social and economic model capable of healing the wounds afflicting the Western 20th-century brand of democracy and capitalism. Traditional concepts of growth have thus been brought into question, with new metrics being proposed for measuring the tangible and intangible wealth of nations. Even a spurning of the concept of growth itself has been posited. Yet despite the wide range of stances taken on the subject and the heated debate these often fuel, there would seem to be a prevailing consensus on one point, namely, that development post-crisis needs to be sustainable, particularly in terms of its ability – in the medium-to-long term – to weather the global scenario that emerges if and when the recession comes to an end.
It was suggested that macroeconomic and financial stability, geopolitical order, sound democracy, social cohesion, environmental balance, and equitable distribution of resources are the ingredients that need to go towards making up this new sustainability, which could be graphically represented as an equilateral triangle, with each side standing for the economy, society and the environment respectively. Positioned in the middle of the triangle would be, naturally, populations, people, or human capital, whilst at the top, by definition, would be the decision makers and leaders, who must inevitably be capable of learning from past errors, whilst maintaining a steady and constant proportion between the three abovementioned elements as a function of the public interest in a system that is hopefully more durable and sturdy than all those that have gone before.
It was stressed, however, that although this is clearly a very basic representation, it could – now more than ever – prove effective in demonstrating the requisite features of the new paradigm of sustainable development that is increasingly more widely being pointed to as the model to work towards, especially in a Europe that has been so sorely tested by a crisis that has more to do with politics and perspectives than economics and financial stability. This paradigm is only similar in form to those of the same name on the basis of which statements of intent have been formulated for decades, starting with international summits on the environment and climate change. It is a paradigm geared first and foremost to promoting human capital to the fullest, intelligent exploitation of available resources, and receptiveness to innovation, as well as being underpinned by a prudent planning of the strategies to be put in place to reform economic and social processes. All this is consistent with the etymological origins of the notion of development – développement, desarollo – which evokes an evolving process, an “unfolding” of untapped social potential, taking on much more meaningful qualitative connotations than the mere quantitative associations of growth.
In conclusion, the participants expressed the view that for a country like Italy, which has been stalled for over a decade in terms of national wealth production and has always struggled to promote its human, social, material and cultural capital, it is essential to forge a new mission for the nation based precisely on this parallel between growth and sustainable development, as part of the hoped-for resolution of the European crisis – a mission that finally has the public interest and a painstakingly-built future at heart, notwithstanding any temptation to maintain the status quo and to resist the by-now unstoppable wind of change.