In the beginning of Part III of "The Civilization of Power," Bertrand de Jouvenel wrote in 1976:

"When emerging from the Second World War, all the countries thought of economic growth as the high-priority objective of national government, conditioning all the other objectives to this. The medieval notion of "common good" was embodied in the GNP, and the most recent notion of progress in the increase in GNP. The nations were classified, as for their socio-economic level, according to their GNP per inhabitant expressed in dollars, and as for the improvement of their level according to the rhythm of growth of the GNP. Putting the emphasis on economic growth in this way, the States of capitalist regimes did no more than follow the example given, from 1928, by the Soviet Union. And as the countries that had been colonies escaped to this condition, they adopted this objective of economic growth."

The global task of integral economic development consists however of discovering, extracting and increasing, by means of coordinated cooperation of all physical, organizational, intellectual and reflexive work, the degree of order of natural resources to human necessities and objectives. The economic value to increase is no more than the orientation of what is at our disposition towards man's objectives. The variable that we should attempt to increase is not the quantity and quality of goods and services but their orientation, their proportionality with regard to ultimate human objectives. It is about increasing, not the goods in themselves, but their relationship, their tension towards human purposes. (Franch, 1990) Economic development is equal then to improving in that human "vocation" that natural resources have, eliminating the slight or serious deviations from the objective and fomenting correct orientations. To improve economically does not consist of having more indiscriminately but is about increasing the degree of humanization of living conditions, especially the material ones.

In this environment, the need is clear (and the celebration of this congress is another example) for reorienting the same concept of economic growth understood as mere growth of the real GDP towards the proportionate growth of that human relationship or order. "Because what happens is that such a growth only indicates that on average individuals have a greater amount of some types of goods and services available. But that does not mean that they have necessarily experienced an increase in their well-being, since at the same time, that growth can be found in the figure of the GDP at the cost of the deterioration of other elements, of other values in use (to use the old denomination of the classic economy) that also form part of and have an influence on the individual well-being." (Esteve Mora, 1990)

The goal of indiscriminate and limitless quantitative growth is questioned by the capacity of the natural, highly interrelated environment, to absorb the high degree of interference that material mammoth production with current technology entails. However, in this communication, and in the general framework of reconsideration of the objectives of growth, style and mood of the use and exploitation of natural resources, I would like to stress, not so much the necessity and convenience of the improvement of the natural environment (that is rightly studied and examined), as in the necessity of improvement of the human environment. In fact, the studies on the environment have no other purpose than to achieve a harmonic human environment.

The degree of well-being, or better, of human development, does not depend exclusively on the quantity and quality of the private goods and services that we can acquire, nor on the quantity and quality of the public goods that we can use and enjoy. There is a growing importance on citizens' working conditions, the quantity and quality of the natural environment available, the level of confidence or security that one has that the well-being achieved will not be threatened in the future... etc. Among these variables, not included in the habitual indexes and that are impossible to measure quantitatively by any "well-being meter" but of certain incidence, I would like to highlight the extension and quality of the social environment and of the human environment that individuals create in their personal interrelations. The "well-being" of an individual, family or community, not only depends on that reflected in the GDP but especially on the volume and quality of what Uhlander (1989) referred to as relational goods. We could sum them up in the habitual disposition that is breathed in interpersonal human relations at work as well as in the home, and throughout the whole social environment.

The influence of these factors on the individual and community well-being is more and more outstanding if we consider the continuous and growing process of urbanization that is taking place throughout the entire world. The fundamental characteristic of big cities is that practically all that we see around us is basically organized mineral and therefore man only finds life in the form of his fellow men. It is not difficult then to fall into the forgetfulness of the ecological conditions of human existence and all the fighting and competition for survival or a better life is not guided towards fighting against other forms of life or dominating nature, but rather there is a greater tendency to cold and distanced competition between people.

With all the nuances that the doctrine presents, we could admit that a real growth of GDP will probably mean, as we have said, a greater abundance of public and private goods and services, but what is not at all clear is how that growth will affect the improvement of relational goods. The recognition, although it is only intuitive, of their possible deterioration allows to incorporate it as a new social cost of merely statistical growth. In addition, due to the strong influence of the empiric orthodoxy, the difficulty of valuation and quantification of such degradation leads to the under-valuation of its real importance and the adoption of a certain passive attitude in the face of its apparent inevitability.

To redirect ecological problems towards more convenient situations, the more and more productive modern science and technique offer a multitude of feasible solutions and alternatives for putting into practice. But that whole baggage of resolutions comes up against a wall, difficult to climb over, created by the inertia of human customs. These customs are dazzled by the illusion of the "homo aeconomicus", who bases his enjoyment on a more and more short term basis, continually nourishing and regenerating himself in an almost mechanical race towards a material consumption which is more and more ephemeral, variable and instantaneous. The market economy by itself is neutral regarding objectives. The orientations are marked by actors with personal freedom. Such an age-old system of free exchange guides productive resources automatically towards the increment in the flows of goods and services of great demand. In the very market mechanism there is not, however, an impersonal and automatic system that causes the decrease of undesirable flows. It is the people who make the decisions in that framework that should tinge such flows and their reordering with common sense.

The solution of environmental problems is not only a technical problem but fundamentally a problem of improvement of human conduct, and the difficulty lies in that customs are not easily changed since a high degree of reflection is required on ultimate goals and personal, family and social self-control. Rectifying the mechanical direction of en masse rules of conduct is more complicated and necessary than contributing technologically efficient ways of improvement. It is utopian to think of lasting success in the ecological environment without a deep transformation of our customs and ideas.

Our managerial civilization exalts material and monetary accumulation; it gives priority to forms over background, to the present over the future, to the short term over the long term, the ephemeral prevailing over the perennial and the continent over the content. This not only harms the physical-natural ecosystem but rather it destroys disinterested social relationships and corrupts human contacts, impregnating them with a utilitarian meaning that drains them of their contemplative meaning. That ignored contemplative vision and intention would be that which simply values friendship for friendship, conversation for conversation itself, or knowledge for knowledge as the classics liked to practise. For them knowing was not being able to but rather knowing was simply knowing and knowledge in itself was good. Such a gradual degradation of human relations and therefore of that "human environment" is necessary to note down as a significant social cost of the activist behaviours that are generated by unilaterally economic rules of conduct.

For the analysis of these interdependences, the widespread neoclassical economy is not valid, or at least it is insufficient. As Mario Bunge indicated (1992) these more and more sophisticated models treat the economic system as if were closed and self-regulated, ignoring environmental and human social costs, when it is more and more patent that economic organization cannot isolate nor free itself from nature and society. They also consider that profit is a purpose in itself and not a means to live better and they postulate that the objective of all companies is to maximize their earnings instead of surviving, growing or serving.

If the neoclassical analysis is at least insufficient not to say that the so-called socialist system is totally unsatisfactory as soon as it generates permanent inefficiencies, it suffocates individual initiative and creativity, and it bears rigid planning that implies an absence of political, personal and cultural relational freedom. In these nationalising models, homogeneity and control endeavour to maintain the old concepts of machine predominance and Taylorism. These concepts consider peoples' lives as more or less adjustable machines in a determinist and predetermined way, by a few utopians chosen from the Cartesian and Hegelian rationality harshly criticized by Hayek.

The new processes of solution, hard to systemise, are clearing a third road in the environment of integral and sustained development that is (as the text of the World Strategy for Conservation indicates) a process of economic and social improvement that satisfies the necessities and the values of all the interested groups, maintaining future options and at the same time conserving the resources and diversity of nature. Economic maintenance that demands efficient and equal development is not sufficient, nor is ecological maintenance that demands development compatible with the maintenance of ecological processes, biological diversity and resources. Social support that requires development to increase peoples' control over their own lives and to maintain and strengthen the identity of the community, and cultural support that imposes compatibility of that development with peoples' culture and values, are more and more necessary. Likewise we could add the convenience that development is compatible with an ethical maintenance of personal conduct towards each other and with regard to Nature. To be able to establish ecological harmonization in reality, it is necessary to firstly establish it in the human mind and behaviour. Schmacher already expressed himself in this way in 1973: "It is not necessity to say that wealth, education, investigation and many other things are necessary in any civilization, but what is more necessary today is a revision of goals to which it is supposed these means serve. And this implies, above all, the development of a lifestyle that grants material things with their legitimate and own place, that is secondary and not primary."

Real interdependence between diverse sciences makes the unilateral and self-sufficient consideration of one of them a source of systematic errors when solving practical problems. The economy cannot lock itself away in its castle of exclusiveness, but rather it needs to be integrated with other human sciences. In short, the integral solutions that Ecology demands require a global political socio-economy that also takes into consideration contributions from Law, Psychology, History and also Ethics and Philosophy. The necessity for interdependence between the different sciences is on a par with interdependence of the ecosystems. All interventions in one area of the ecosystem should consider its consequences in other areas and, in general, in the well-being of future generations.

Although at the time of analysis they can be presented as different, both phenomena are mutually interdependent creating convergent synergies: The improvement and reordering of the natural environment strengthens the improvement and reordering of the human environment. But also, maybe with more effectiveness, the development of the latter generates the improvement in the shorter term of the former. In the same way that different sciences agree on the vision of an authentic "cosmos", of a true harmonic universe endowed with its own integrity, we can also speak of a human micro-universe and micro-cosmos integrated harmoniously, with each other and with that, looking for their internal dynamic equilibrium. Individual and collective avidity does not only overturn that balance of the human micro-cosmos but also such an imbalance is transmitted to the rest of the ecological universe. Ecological responsibility not only implies responsibility for the natural environment but also responsibility for ourselves and others, solidarity in definitive. Respect for the human person's best life and dignity also includes respect for natural ecological integrity. In fact, respect and consideration towards Nature are a natural and necessary component of all habitual attitudes of respect and consideration towards others. (Bertrand de Jouvenel, 1976). In turn, concern for ecological order leads to a better treatment of human ecology.

All told, together with the study of external compatibility of the human economy with the ecosystems, it is important to open up a road of investigation about the internal compatibility of the seriously deteriorated human ecosystem. In the end, that serious deterioration is very possibly the fundamental cause of the distortion and destruction of the natural environment.

Joseph John Franch Menéu
Report in the IV National Congress of Economy in Seville: Economic and environmental Development.
December 9th-11th, 1992.