There is only one economy, not two.

The challenge all societies face today is leaving behind the legacy of an old system. How do we embark on a systems change – a shift from System A to System B? Fundamentally, it is a shift in production and consumption systems. How do we interlink the two to bring about major transformation of society and the economy? It is something that is probably not going to happen overnight and is going to happen in different ways in different countries, depending on countries’ abilities and capabilities.

I would argue that the current models for the green economy or green growth are mere adjuncts to an existing system but may offer a vista of what a transformed system could look like. Of course, different meanings can be attached to these concepts but, in my view, they are still adjuncts to an existing economic paradigm and system.

This is why the United Nations Environmental Programme speaks of a New Green Deal, a sort of harking back to US President Franklin D Roosevelt’s New Deal. The New Green Deal places emphasis on the valuation of natural capital, the pricing mechanism and markets as tools for transforming the existing economy. These have their place, but I think a sustainable transition starts from the premise that we should not accept the current system; rather, we should embark on what Karl Polanyi refers to as the Great Transformation. This requires a collective will to fundamentally change how we create a form of existence that is neither the past nor the present but the future.

Let me propose that we can only make sense of money, markets and price if we align these with three ingredients that are critical in achieving transitions, namely values, institutions and technology. With values, we must envisage a new society and a new system of economics, and take a long-term view. We must bear in mind that we have to do this with great urgency, given the peril of climate change. Values ultimately shape the character of institutions. Institutions are the various hard and soft ways society is wired together in terms of cooperation, coordination and incentives that encourage individual and collective agency. It is the ‘superstructure’, to use that Marxian word, that defines a systems worldview and the kind of life it enables within it. In the end, it also shapes the political economy. A political economy can be predatory or inclusive – it does not matter whether it is brown or green.

This is why we must start at the superstructure, not the mechanics of instruments that enable exchange in an economy. You can have the possibilities of efficient exchange, but in whose interests, for whose welfare and towards what end? Again, going for something green without a new vision for how the system works, or should work, is akin to ‘doing green’ in a void. Green can be the end-goal for an existing system, not a new modernity.

Finally, in the case of technology, we must not see technology as governing us but as enabling a certain kind of material world to prevail. I am personally not a Luddite and am not sure of the arrival of the great singularity.

If we accept the age of the Anthropocene, then a technology-embedded and technology-rich society is the inheritance of human evolution – it could be a bane or a boon. Again, if we envisage a new system, the place of technology in that system becomes very clear. By technology, I do not mean the hardware only, but the software as well. Software is at the heart of the circular economy, or sharing economy, as this type of economy focuses on optimisation and getting more out of less through cooperation and consciousness.

The emphasis on values, institutions and technology is, in my view, the starting point, not prices and markets.

For me, the green economy debate is not about a separate economy, as there is only one economy, but is about doing something intrinsic and systemic to such a system. It is a new form of modernity in itself. It has to happen at the interface of the production and consumption system.

The challenge society faces is to decouple production/consumption as a nexus from growth. Contradictions will emerge. On the one hand, the production sector wants to dematerialise, to do more with less, but our economies want to grow, so they rely on boosting consumption. Consumption, if left unchecked, can lead to the rebound effect.

What is the outlook for the future? Leading, enlightened, developed economies will lead the way. What they do will determine how the rest of the world, including South Africa, follows. The new is being created within the old. Innovation and investments will lead to the scaling of new, cleaner technologies and bring about global price reductions.

Incremental shifts in sectors such as electricity, transport, energy efficiency and fuels may not be systemic enough, but will catalyse more change in other areas of the production/consumption nexus. The more we can do things like the circular economy, revising the way we think of gross domestic product metrics, the more we begin the process of systemic transformation along the lines of values, institutions and technologies.

We have to keep a keen eye on countries like China, which is becoming a laboratory for scaling and transformative new technologies.

Take, for example, what the Chinese are doing as large-scale experiments in provinces like Shenzen with electric cars, mobi-bikes and in the fields of digitalisation and automation. Air pollution concerns are not only driving new, cleaner technologies but also the very organisation of cities. You cannot get a new number plate quickly unless you buy an electric car in the province of Shenzen.

Change is on the horizon. We may not be in the throes of a singularity but, certainly, we are on our way to a new social and economic modernity if we ensure that the right values, institutions and end-goals of technology are interlinked in the proper manner.