Originally published 2018-09-20.
In August 2018 a team of Finnish researchers delivered a blunt message to the United Nations: rich countries cannot rely on markets and economic growth alone to stop climate breakdown. Their paper, Governance of Economic Transition, was an invited background document for the economy chapter of the UN's Global Sustainable Development Report 2019. It argued that governments should take an active, mission-driven role, much as the United States did with the Apollo programme, and that economies should be measured by how well they support a good life within the planet's physical limits rather than by growth itself.
Below is what the paper actually said, who wrote it, how it fits into the final UN report, and how its ideas connect to other research on wellbeing and planetary boundaries.
Who wrote the paper, and what is its status?
The document was written by six researchers from the BIOS Research Unit in Helsinki, an independent interdisciplinary group: economist Paavo Järvensivu, Tero Toivanen, Tere Vadén, Ville Lähde, Antti Majava and ecosystem scientist Jussi T. Eronen of the University of Helsinki. It is dated 14 August 2018.
It is important to be precise about its status. The paper was commissioned as input to one chapter, "Transformation: The Economy." It is not the UN report itself and does not represent a position adopted by UN member states. The final Global Sustainable Development Report 2019, titled The Future is Now: Science for Achieving Sustainable Development, was written by an Independent Group of Scientists: 15 experts from different disciplines and regions appointed by the UN Secretary-General. Headlines at the time sometimes described the BIOS paper as "a UN report," which overstated its weight. Its arguments are best read as those of its authors.
The core argument: economies have outgrown their physical base
The paper starts from a simple observation that mainstream economics often leaves out. Every economic activity uses energy and materials and produces waste, and the planet's ability to absorb that waste is finite. In the authors' words, the models guiding policy in wealthy nations "almost completely disregard the energetic and material dimensions of the economy."
From there they make three linked claims:
- Cheap energy is ending. Fossil fuels must be phased out, and the alternatives, while essential, deliver less net energy for each unit invested. That makes reducing total energy demand part of the solution, not only switching sources.
- Carbon prices are not enough on their own. A price signal does not coordinate thousands of actors toward one systemic goal, and it is politically hard to set high enough. The authors put it plainly: market-based action will not suffice, even with a high carbon price.
- Growth should not be the target. The economy should be treated as a tool for wellbeing rather than an end in itself.
They also link the current model to social strain, pointing to widening gaps between rich and poor, insecure employment and rising debt as forces that can destabilise societies at the very moment cooperation is most needed.
Why the Apollo programme is the paper's model
One of the paper's most quoted ideas is historical. The Moon landing did not happen because markets found it profitable. The US government set a clear mission, then organised the research, industry and funding needed to achieve it. Drawing on economist Mariana Mazzucato's work on "mission-oriented" innovation, the authors argue that decarbonising whole economies needs the same approach: the state setting direction, coordinating plans and financing large-scale change.
The paper suggests the kinds of missions this could involve:
- a rapid shift away from fossil fuels, combined with lower overall energy use;
- transport built around walking, cycling and electrified, shared public transport, with limits on the growth of freight and aviation;
- diets shifting toward plant-based food, and more construction in wood;
- a job guarantee: publicly funded, locally run work for anyone willing and able, focused on tasks such as local energy projects and flood preparation.
The comparison with wartime mobilisation also appears in other scientists' commentary. Harvard atmospheric chemist James Anderson, for example, reportedly told Forbes in 2018 that the response needed would resemble a Second World War-style transformation of industry, only faster.
What other research says about growth and wellbeing
The BIOS paper did not appear in isolation. A few months earlier, ecological economist Dan O'Neill and colleagues published a study in Nature Sustainability covering more than 150 countries. They found that no country met its citizens' basic needs while staying within planetary boundaries. Rich nations such as the United States and the United Kingdom achieved strong social outcomes but used resources far beyond a sustainable share, while countries like Sri Lanka stayed within limits but fell short on many basic needs. Vietnam came closest to balance.
A key finding was that wealthy countries appear to be past the point of diminishing returns: further increases in resource use add little to wellbeing. That supports the BIOS authors' view that richer nations could cut emissions and material use with little loss to quality of life.
Also in August 2018, Will Steffen, Johan Rockström and colleagues published a widely discussed paper in PNAS, "Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene," often nicknamed the "Hothouse Earth" paper. It warned that self-reinforcing feedbacks could push the climate past a threshold that would be very hard to reverse, and that gradual, incremental policy changes would not be enough to avoid it.
Alternative economic models in the debate
Several frameworks share the goal of good lives within ecological limits, though they differ in detail:
- Doughnut Economics, developed by Kate Raworth, pictures a ring between a social foundation (food, health, housing, political voice) and an ecological ceiling of nine planetary boundaries. Amsterdam adopted a "City Doughnut" in 2020.
- Prosperity Without Growth, the title of Tim Jackson's influential book, asks how rich societies can flourish without depending on ever-rising output.
- Steady-state economics, associated with Herman Daly, proposes stable levels of material and energy use.
- Post-growth and degrowth approaches focus on reducing resource use in rich countries while protecting wellbeing.
Writer Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, makes a related historical point: humans have organised their societies in many different ways, and today's economic system is a recent arrangement rather than a law of nature.
Criticisms and common misreadings
These proposals are contested, and an honest summary should say so.
- "Scientists want to end technology." They do not. The paper calls for faster deployment of clean technology alongside changes in how energy and materials are used.
- "Green growth is impossible." This is the central disagreement. Many economists, and bodies such as the OECD, argue that emissions can be decoupled from GDP, and several rich countries have cut emissions while growing. Critics reply that the decoupling so far is too slow to meet climate targets.
- "A job guarantee is unaffordable." The BIOS authors draw on post-Keynesian and Modern Monetary Theory ideas to argue that a state issuing its own currency has more fiscal room than often assumed. Many economists dispute that framework, particularly about inflation risk.
Where most scientists agree is on the urgency. Since 2018, successive UN assessments have shown that national pledges remain off track for the Paris Agreement goal of keeping warming well below 2 °C. The questions the BIOS paper raised, about the role of the state, the purpose of growth and what a fair transition looks like, remain at the centre of climate policy debates.
Sources: Järvensivu et al., BIOS: Governance of Economic Transition (2018); UN DESA: The Future is Now, Global Sustainable Development Report 2019; ScienceAlert (2018); Dan O'Neill, The Conversation; Steffen et al., PNAS (2018); Wikipedia: Doughnut (economic model).
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