Is money sustainable as the primary means of measuring wealth?

The answer to this question will seem obvious and yet we disagree.

In this recent article from the Guardian posted by Felicity Lawrence entitled 'Big Business Clear Winner in Asparagus Industry', the implication being that if there is a clear winner then there must also be a clear loser, in this case the local people of Peru's Ica Valley, the promise of wealth in the form of money has resulted in depletion of the natural water resources to the extent that any wealth that did exist in terms of land on which you could live has rapidly been eroded.

Everything is connected, as we know. Pull one string and all sorts of things move that you hadn't anticipated... well, in some cases perhaps people have anticipated but their desire, focus, priority is elsewhere.

The Peruvian Asparagus industry, created to serve those wealthy countries who like to eat asparagus out of season, with the help of loans from the world bank, have managed to participate in an 'asparagus economy' in which $0.70 of each $1 spent on Asparagus ends up in US supermarket pockets, whilst much of the remaining $0.30 goes to buy seed and fertiliser from the US, the local profit still being higher than without an industry in cash terms.... but now look at the relative wealth in terms of the sustainability of the environment. Water was diverted from the Ica river to sustain the Asparagus farms. The water is being consumed at a drastically higher rate than previously, upsetting the balance of the ecosystem and causing other indigenous farms, crops, herds, to fail.

The two forms of wealth are directly coupled. The GDP of Peru has gone up due to the amount of money changing hands in the Asparagus economy and the amount of water available for sustaining other agriculture and other life has gone down to the extent that many have been driven from the area.

There can be no one measure of wealth. Any such measure, to be a successful measure would have to balance many factors. The way in which these factors would have to be balanced would vary depending by region - some areas are wealthy in water, others in minerals, and so on - hence the local value of those things, the actual value - not the market value, is different. Clearly water is more valuable than gold in some places as you simply die if you don't get enough of it and it really is that scarce. So there can be no single measure of wealth as to increase that - to increase GDP is to deplete some other resources, which are consumed in the conversion of various other kinds of wealth into GDP. The formula for determining the impact on local communities - on humanity in that region is different per region.

There are no two ways about it; we need to remain vigilant, and aware of the consequences of our actions; we have to keep our eye on the accelerator, and the clutch, and the break, and check what we are towing doesn't topple over as we go around the bend... we can't just look at weather we are going faster than anyone else. Its senseless.


There is a natural laziness in us that leads to band wagon behaviour, and grasping at simplicity - like using GDP or cash as a means of testing "whether you are going to be okay".... when actually what we need to consider is different for all of us for many reasons, and especially in areas where the environment is harsh.

We need to keep our eye on many more factors and recognise wealth in different forms if we are to avoid destroying true wealth in terms of local resources that contribute to a sustainable ecosystem in favour of virtual, made up, forms of wealth like money.

It seems to me that greater consideration needs to be given by organisations like the world bank to consider not just the money economy, or the related asparagus economy, but also the water economy, the energy economy, the carbon economy, ... the sustainability economy.