Brosoto, Mark Shainne Paulle M.

09/09/2020
“Forget developing poor countries, it's time to de-develop rich countries”
The author, Jason Hickel argues that we need to stop thinking of growth as the answer to
eradicating poverty, but instead try to encourage richer countries to tone down their excesses. He
explains that growth despite of being always the main objective of the development for the past 70
years, did not work because we’ve already grown too much to the point of “blowing past planetary
boundaries at breakneck speed” so it should not be in our options anymore in terms of
development. What we need to do, according to him is to shift some of the yields of growth from the
richer segments of the population to the poorer ones to even things out a bit.
An economist Peter Edward proposed that- what if instead of pushing poorer countries to
“catch up” with rich ones, why don’t the rich countries “catch down” instead, in order to have more
appropriate levels of development. The idea of “de-developing” to the rich countries might prove to
be a strong rallying cry in the global south, but it will be tricky to sell to westerners even if it is the
hard truth that our ecological overshoot is due almost entirely to over-consumption of them. They
think of the word “de-develop” that is synonymous to the terms-  de-growth and zero growth as a
negative thing; as they feel like it will stop them from learning, improving, and growing as a nation
but on the contrary, “de-develop” is technically accurate term but off-putting for anyone who’s not
already on board. “De-develop” is in fact perfectly name, compatible with high levels of human
development wherein it is entirely possible for the developed and developing countries to shrink
the resource consumption while increasing things that really matter such as human happiness,
well-being, education, health and longevity.
Everyone lives in one planet. We breathe the same air, see the same sun rise from east and
set in the west. However, even with these simple yet essential things, resources are not equally
distributed in different countries. Thus, there are those who belong to the developed nations while
there are others that belong to developing countries. With this unequal distribution, I believe that it
is significant to us, a developing country to start calling on rich countries to justify their excessive
consumptions.