This book examines how W.W. Rostow’s consumption-led theory of modernization underpins the take-make-waste model and environmental decline so visible today. As institutions like USAID and development cooperation shrink financing, including for environmental causes, economies need to revaluate the path that take-off theory set us on so many decades ago. The book reviews the role of Rostow’s take-off theory and how it shaped institutions like USAID and development cooperation to grow markets abroad based on unsustainable consumption pathways and a take-make-waste model.

Looking at time and spatial growth dynamics for economies, this book proposes a multi-dimensional approach to development today to reconcile the natural resource constraints and limits to growth economies currently face. The book argues this multi-dimensional approach is not a linear take-off path for economies but rather a spiral like process much like the Fibonacci patterns scientists have mapped in nature to describe efficient growth of systems. The contents here draw on and reference systems science, ecological economics, anthropological and even computational science literature upon which the model is built.

To illustrate a new approach to consumption and development, the book provides cases and evidence propose a new model for understanding past and present sustainable development pathways in developed and developing countries. This new model borrows from indigenous practices, technological innovation and sustainable consumption and production to improve the quality and sustainability of economic growth patterns. The cases in the proposed book more comprehensively cover key sources of pollution and emissions, such as transport, health and lifestyles and more to illustrate the interplay between traditions, indigenous practices, innovation and modernization, high-mass consumption and an eventual return to tradition and roots at a higher income scale in society.

Sara Castro Hallgren is a development economist with close to two decades of professional experience within the United Nations system conducting policy research, capacity development, and advising countries on development policy and planning. Her professional work has spanned sustainable consumption and production, development economics, and multilateral policy processes, including engagement with intergovernmental frameworks on sustainable development. She holds degrees from George Washington University, the Institute of Social Studies, and Harvard University. Her research publications and scholarly interests bridge ecological economics, sustainable consumption and development theory.