Economic Success and Competitiveness Requires new Standards

Competitiveness is often regarded as a key objective in economic and industrial policy. However, researchers at the Wuppertal Institute demonstrate in their Wuppertal Paper that the term is frequently interpreted too narrowly. This is because insufficient consideration is often given to the societal goals that greater competitiveness is intended to achieve and to the potential conflicts of interest or positive synergies that may arise – for example, between economic success and ambitious climate protection.

In their Deep Dive, based on the book 'Earth for All Deutschland' published at the end of 2024, Prof. Dr. Peter Hennicke, Dr Monika Dittrich and Janine Dierk therefore propose a more comprehensive concept of 'green and systemic competitiveness'. After all, competitiveness is not an end in itself. Rather, it should contribute to achieving long-term goals such as a climate-neutral, resource-efficient circular economy and a society with a high level of well-being.
The authors also emphasise that a new perspective on the relationship between competitiveness and economic growth is needed. Measures to promote climate protection, the circular economy and reduced resource consumption boost the contribution of environmental technologies to overall economic growth. At the same time, fossil fuel-based and particularly resource-intensive sectors of the economy are becoming less significant.

Whether this politically driven structural change will lead to sustainable economic growth overall, and whether – as some scenarios suggest – economic growth can be permanently decoupled from resource consumption, remains an open question. However, the researchers’ findings suggest that climate neutrality and risk reduction are more easily achievable if technical solutions such as efficiency improvements, renewable energy sources and circular economy approaches are combined with so-called sufficiency policy measures. These aim to reduce the overall excessive consumption of energy and resources.

The Wuppertal Paper No. 206, "Revisiting Competitiveness: Acknowledging the Economic Benefits of Climate Mitigation and Circularity", was produced as part of the Earth4All Germany initiative and is available free of charge via the link below.