Planning for a sufficiency economy: lessons from Britain in World War II

Delivered by the most outstanding academics in the UK and beyond, the British Academy’s flagship Lecture programme showcases the very best scholarship in the humanities and social sciences.

About the event

Runaway global heating is accelerating to dangerous levels. While some governments reverse decarbonising plans to boost economic growth, the favoured strategy among others remains 'green growth'. But it is too late now. This ‘efficiency’ approach alone cannot stem dangerous climate change. This lecture develops the principle of a 'sufficiency' economy: a space between a floor of meeting basic needs and a ceiling of consumption and production that will sustain human habitats. It requires rediscovering older concepts including basic needs and unproductive labour. How can this happen within a system of global capitalism? This lecture draws on British planning in the Second World War to show how a capitalist economy can be transformed in under two years and discuss its relevance to today.

Speaker

Professor Ian Gough FBA is a British political economist, political theorist, social policy analyst and pioneer of need theory and ‘eco-social policy’. Educated in Economics at Cambridge University 1961-64 he is now Visiting Professor at CASE in the LSE. He is influential in linking the climate crisis to inequality and social policy.

Chair

Professor Emma Holdsworth, Coventry University