Economic Justice: The Key to the World’s Future Sustainability

This chapter emphasizes the need for a fair and just economic system to achieve sustainability. It will demonstrate that climate change, ecological degradation, population growth, hunger, resource depletion, the issues of financial markets collapsing, and economic recession are all interconnected with the current economic system, which was responsible for transgressing the balance of nature. The chapter highlights that the existence of interest and discount rates in businesses, banking systems, and the world economy as a whole means that the future costs and benefits are less valuable than those in the present and is a clear case of intergenerational inequity and injustice. The chapter then reviews reforms and alternatives, proposed in the literature, to the present economic system to promote sustainability such as steady-state economics, environmental economics, ecological economics, restorative economics, and local self-reliance/alternative currency. The chapter points out that all the reforms or alternatives to the contemporary economic system proposed in the literature do not address the root cause of all the problems, which is the built-in interest-based system, made possible with the paper currency in the economy that creates the worst injustices. The chapter argues that science and technology solutions to ecological problems are constrained because of corporate greed and not fully comprehending the solutions’ environmental consequences. Finally, in the future directions, a broad framework of “fair and just” economic system is laid out, which, if realized, can lead to an ecologically sustainable future for the planet.