Who Gets to Turn Growth Into an Absolute Value? Like This: |Growth| = Growth
Let us begin with a question that is rarely given much space in economics classrooms or development meeting rooms: who exactly gave the modern economic system the authority to treat growth figures as if they carried absolute moral value?
In many development narratives, |Growth| = Growth is treated almost like a modern idol: a sacred entity that must be accepted without much resistance. When growth is announced to have risen by a few percent, we are expected to celebrate, without always being given the chance to ask: growth of what, for whom, at what cost, and with what loss?
This is where the bias of power works quietly. Numbers are not only tools of measurement, but also tools of legitimacy. They determine what is called progress, what is called an obstacle, what is considered productive, and what may be sacrificed for the sake of a graph that appears to be rising.
This essay does not begin from the assumption that all economic growth is inherently bad. What I want to examine is the way growth is treated almost as an absolute sign of progress, while the ecological damage that accompanies it is often pushed aside as an external cost, a side effect, or merely an externality. Under this kind of accounting system, destruction can appear as growth not because reality has changed, but because the metric is too narrow to see what is being lost.
As I discussed in the previous essay, the economy is not a system that stands outside the ecosystem. It is a derivative system that depends on the stability of the biosphere.
What Gets Counted Becomes Real
In modern accounting systems, reality often undergoes a severe distortion.
Only something that can be translated into monetary terms earns the right to be considered “real.”
The complexity of ecosystem services, how microorganisms maintain soil health, how mycelial networks distribute nutrients, or how biodiversity stabilizes a region, is often treated like a ghost wandering outside the economic spreadsheet.
These things are unilaterally categorized as “externalities,” a term that sounds technical, but often functions as a polite way of saying that something exists outside the center of attention.
By contrast, when the land is excavated, the ecosystem is destroyed, and the area is replaced by concrete that generates financial circulation, it suddenly becomes “real” in the eyes of the market.
We have exchanged the biological reality that sustains us for a value system that can only see something after it enters a transaction.
Relative Growth Forced Into an Absolute
This is one of the great absurdities we collectively maintain: GDP growth is fundamentally a relative indicator.
It measures the change in the value of economic activity from one period to another. GDP growth is a comparison, a statistical movement, not an absolute measure of welfare, ecological health, or quality of life.
Yet in mainstream development narratives, this relative growth is often forced to transform into an absolute measure of human progress.
We are trapped in the delusion that a linear graph must continue climbing without limit, as if Earth had endless space and resources to accommodate it.
Treating relative growth as an absolute value on a finite planet is a serious error. And we are paying the price of that error today.
So, Does the Forest Have No Value at All?
The irony of this system becomes clear when we look at a piece of forest.
As long as the forest stands, purifying the air, sheltering countless species, regulating the water cycle, holding the soil together, and supporting the local microclimate, conventional accounting often looks at it with one eye half-closed and mutters: “This place does not contribute enough to economic growth.”
A living forest is treated as idle and unproductive.
But bring in the bulldozers, cut down the trees, sell the timber to the market, and turn the land into a monoculture plantation, an industrial estate, or a mining pit. Suddenly, there is economic activity that can be recorded: heavy machinery is rented, workers are paid, timber is sold, land is processed, investment enters, and the numbers begin to move.
The economic graph may record this as an achievement. The forest is considered useful precisely after it dies and ceases to be a forest.
Put simply, this system often finds it easier to value the corpse of nature than the fullness of living nature.
This simple diagram does not show that a living forest has no value. Quite the opposite: it shows that our measurement systems often recognize transactions faster than they recognize life.
Not Everything That Grows Is Alive
In the end, we need to clean the lenses of our glasses and look at reality more honestly.
In biology, not everything that grows carries life. Growth is a phase, not an endless goal. An organism grows until it reaches a certain stage of maturity, then part of its energy is redirected toward maintenance, reproduction, and homeostasis.
When a cell continues dividing without limit and ignores signals from its surrounding environment, we do not call it progress. We call it a disorder.
In this sense, economic growth that recognizes no limit begins to resemble a pathological logic: it takes resources from the living systems around it, enlarges itself, and weakens the very foundation that makes its existence possible.
We need to remember: a tree does not keep growing taller forever. At some point, it strengthens its trunk, expands its canopy, bears fruit, becomes a habitat for other organisms, and shelters what lives around it.
If our economic system does not know when to stop chasing quantitative growth, then it is not moving toward progress. It is walking toward collapse, written in the language of statistics.
Brief References
World Bank – Natural Capital
This reference is relevant for understanding the concept of natural capital: forests, water, soil, biodiversity, and ecosystem services can be understood as material foundations that support the economy. This concept relates to the argument of this essay, especially how economic systems often fail to recognize ecological value until it becomes a market transaction.
https://www.worldbank.org/ext/en/topic/environment/natural-capitalThe Dasgupta Review – The Economics of Biodiversity (2021)
This reference supports the idea that the human economy does not exist outside nature, but is embedded within natural systems. This aligns with the main critique of this essay: economic growth cannot be fully understood if biodiversity loss and ecosystem damage are left outside the balance sheet.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/final-report-the-economics-of-biodiversity-the-dasgupta-reviewWorld Bank – The Changing Wealth of Nations
This reference is relevant because it discusses how a nation’s wealth is not made only of produced capital and human capital, but also natural capital. It strengthens the critique of economic indicators that are too narrow when evaluating progress.
https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/environment/publication/changing-wealth-of-nations