G20 leaders must end “relentless growth” to save environment

The government’s environmental watchdog said the developed world’s “relentless growth” was central to the global economic crisis and climate change.

US president Barack Obama and prime minister Gordon Brown

The claim was made in the watchdog’s latest report, Prosperity without growth.

In the same week as the G20 Summit in London, the report author Tim Jackson urged world leaders to “take a long, hard look at the effects of our single-minded devotion to growth.”

Jackson, economics commissioner at the SDC, said the recession was a perfect opportunity to shape a new economic system. He also claimed that around 60% of the world’s ecosystems now faced the affects of climate change because of the pursuit of growth.

Read the full report below.