Lessons from Ancient Rome on Sustainable Development
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- Authors: ANTHONY ANNETT
- Published: March 1, 2019
Overview
- Ancient Rome offers a historical case study on sustainable development, showing interactions among material progress, social inclusion, and environmental conditions.
- Publication: F&D Magazine, Past as Prologue, ANTHONY ANNETT, March 2019.
- Core thesis: Delinking economic growth from social inclusion and environmental stewardship leads to systemic fragility and potential collapse.
Political-institutional dynamics
- Roman institutions were "supple enough to adapt" to major challenges for 500 years, balancing internal conflict and external integration—until institutional consensus unraveled.
- Recurrent pattern in the Republic’s last century:
- Populist anger versus patrician intransigence.
- Political overreach and routine political violence.
- Weaponization of state institutions and erosion of norms once thought inviolable.
- Key episodes and figures illustrating institutional breakdown:
- Territorial expansion by the beginning of the second century BCE.
- The Gracchus brothers’ reforms and assassinations (Tiberius and Gaius).
- Gaius Marius’s ascendancy and subsequent alliance with violent actors.
- Sulla’s dictatorship, mass proscriptions, and property confiscation.
- Julius Caesar’s civil war victory, assumption of the title of dictator, and assassination leading to further civil bloodletting.
- Outcome: The Republic effectively ended after successive norm-smashing leaders and breakdown of consensus.
Economic inequality, labor market shifts, and social norms
- Territorial expansion generated an influx of wealth from tribute payments, taxes from new provinces, and metal-mine development.
- Emergence of a new super-wealthy class that:
- Created financial instruments to package debt, resell it, and invest profits in infrastructure.
- Accumulated vast fortunes (example: Marcus Licinius Crassus’s fortune matched the entire Roman treasury).
- Engaged in large-scale bribery and corruption to secure political offices and judicial impunity.
- Labor market disruption: Mass influx of slaves displaced soldiers and citizens from work, increasing social anger.
- Social values shifted from public service and honor toward wealth accumulation as the main measure of success.
- Cycle of instability tied to failed elite responses to popular discontent and unwillingness to rebalance political equilibrium.
Environmental change, pandemics, and external shocks
- Period of fortune: Rome Climate Optimum between roughly 200 BCE and 150 CE—warm, wet, and predictable climate favorable to key agricultural crops.
- Subsequent climatic deterioration:
- By the third century, climate became cooler, dryer, and more unpredictable with more frequent droughts and crop failures.
- By the middle of the fifth century, the Late Antique Little Ice Age had arrived.
- Disease and pandemics exacerbated vulnerability:
- Smallpox in the second century.
- A virulent outbreak that may have been Ebola in the third century.
- Plague of Justinian in the mid-sixth century—first known incidence of bubonic plague—probably killed half of the empire’s population.
- Climatic drivers of disease:
- The decade before the outbreak of plague saw some of Europe’s coldest temperatures in two millennia, linked to massive volcanic eruptions.
- Ecological disruption likely forced gerbils and marmots into contact with black rats along trade routes, facilitating plague spread.
- Chain-reaction of shocks and migrations:
- Severe drought in Eurasia contributed to migrations of the Huns, termed “climate refugees on horseback,” triggering domino migrations across Roman frontiers and contributing to the collapse of the western empire in the fifth century.
- The sixth century combined climate-change-induced crop failures, catastrophic plague, and ruinous war; Rome’s population fell to a mere 20,000 and the Roman forum became the campo vaccino.
Lessons and policy implications for sustainable development
- Core lesson: Failure to integrate material progress with social inclusion and environmental stewardship undermines long-term resilience.
- Identified failure modes from Rome applicable today:
- Breakdown in time-honored social norms.
- Entrenched political polarization driven by economic inequality.
- Repudiation of the common good by elites.
- Environmental havoc leading to disease and disaster.
- Contemporary differences and advantages:
- Modern economies are described as "vastly wealthier, healthier, more inclusive, and more resilient" compared with ancient Rome.
- Modern societies have the capacity to eliminate material deprivation and address inequalities arising from globalization.
- Unlike the Romans, human activity is driving current climate change, making mitigation feasible.
- Policy recommendation:
- Delivering a zero-carbon energy system over the next three decades is presented as the means to solve the problem of climate change—the greatest challenge of our generation.
- Strategic imperative:
- Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals is characterized as an urgent global call to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure peace and shared prosperity to avoid repeating Rome’s trajectory.
Source: Lessons from Ancient Rome on Sustainable Development – IMF Finance & Development Magazine | March 2019
Content in this bundle
- Ancient Rome and Sustainable Development
- الماضي توطئةً لما بعد
- El pasado como prólogo ● Finanzas y Desarrollo ● Marzo de 2019
- Le passé en prologue
- Прошлое как предвестие – Финансы и развитие – март 2019 года
- 一切往事，皆为序章 - 金融与发展