There is a word that runs like a watermark through the entire contemporary debate on development: urgency. This is no longer the time for reassuring analyses or postponed solutions. This is the core message of the article “Territories between global competition and Sustainability: Getting out of the Race to the Bottom Trap,” published in issue 1/2025 of the Review of Studies on Sustainability (Franco Angeli), authored by Vera Sibilio, Gian Paolo Cesaretti, Sawfat H. Shakir Hanna, Irene Paola Borrelli, Kateryna Kononova, and Immacolata Viola. The paper focuses on one of the most critical knots of our time: the conflict — only apparently inevitable — between global competition and sustainability.
There is a moment in the life of territories when something stops working without making noise. Houses don’t collapse, factories don’t stop, people don’t disappear. And yet, slowly, the meaning of things thins out. Cities become interchangeable, economies fragile, landscapes exhausted. It is from this silence that the authors’ work begins: not from a sudden crisis, but from a continuous, systemic, almost normalized erosion.
The article speaks of numbers, models, capital stocks. But beneath the methodological surface there is a precise story: that of a world that chose to run without asking where it was going, and of territories that, in trying to remain competitive, began to lose themselves.
The race that lowers everything
They call it the Race to the Bottom. It is a technical expression, but it sounds like the title of a dystopian novel. A race in which you win by lowering prices, compressing rights, simplifying complexity, externalizing everything that weighs on the system. In this race there is no real finish line, only a continuous lowering of the bar: fewer protections, less quality, less future.
Scientists explain it precisely: production standardization, outsourcing of economic, social and environmental costs, competition based almost exclusively on price. But if you read between the lines, what emerges is an impoverished human landscape. A system that produces increasingly similar goods and increasingly fragile territories, as if diversity were a flaw to be corrected rather than a richness to be protected.
In this race, some territories seem to gain ground for a while. But it is a fragile, temporary advantage. Because while they run, they consume the resources that make the race itself possible.
The capitals that make no noise while being consumed
One of the most powerful aspects of the article is the way it speaks about the four capitals: natural, human, social and economic. They are called “stocks,” analyzed and measured. But in reality, what is being described is something much deeper: the invisible wealth that allows societies to exist.
Natural capital is not just the environment: it is the possibility to breathe, cultivate, inhabit. Human capital is not just skills: it is knowledge, education, the ability to imagine. Social capital is not just networks: it is trust, cohesion, a sense of belonging. Economic capital, finally, is not just wealth: it is stability, investment capacity, vision.
The Race to the Bottom consumes them all, but it does so slowly, without noise. And precisely for this reason it is dangerous. Because when we notice it, the damage is already structural. Territories become dependent on models that impoverish them, while well-being stops being shared and becomes unequal, fragmented, unstable.
Well-being that does not hold over time
The authors insist on a key expression: socially shared well-being. This is not a semantic detail. It is an ethical position. Because well-being that grows only for some, or only for a limited period, is not sustainable. It is a broken promise.
The empirical evidence cited in the study is harsh: growing inequalities, loss of biodiversity, insufficient investment in the future, rising public debt, weak territorial resilience. But the point is not the list — it is the trajectory. A world that consumes today what it will not be able to restore tomorrow.
Then there is the dimension of time, seen as a moral dimension. The article clearly speaks about intergenerational equity: what we do today falls on those who come after us. Every short-term choice is a problematic inheritance. Every externalized cost is a deferred bill.
The false alternative between growth and sustainability
One of the most important passages in the work is the rejection of a toxic narrative: the one that sets growth and sustainability against each other as if they were enemies. The authors dismantle this dichotomy rigorously, but also with a clarity that carries political weight.
Sustainability does not block growth. It is short-sighted growth that destroys the conditions for sustainability. The problem is not competing, but competing badly. Not producing, but producing without asking for whom, at what price, and with what consequences.
From here comes the proposal for a new competitive paradigm, based on social utility, efficiency and social ethics. Concepts that may sound abstract, but actually speak to everyday choices: what we incentivize, what we reward, what we consider acceptable.
Territories as protagonists, not extras
In the narrative that emerges from the article, territories are not mere pawns of globalization. They are places of decision. They can choose whether to continue chasing models that consume them or to build different trajectories — perhaps slower, but more solid.
This requires awareness, literacy and shared responsibility. Businesses, families, institutions, the research world, the non-profit sector: no one is neutral. Everyone participates, for better or worse, in the direction taken.
Hence the call to action. No shortcuts are proposed, but rather work, coordination and vision. Innovation — not as a technological fetish, but as social transformation.
There is no more time to pretend
The message is essentially one: the Race to the Bottom is not sustainable. Not economically, not socially, not humanly.
Continuing along this path means accepting a future of weaker territories, more unequal societies, more frequent conflicts. Exiting it means rethinking the rules of the game, putting shared well-being back at the center, recognizing that sustainability is not a luxury but a necessity.
Read this way, the work of Cesaretti and the other authors is not only a scientific contribution. It is a warning — and at the same time, an act of trust: the idea that territories can still choose not to lose their voice.
The article speaks of numbers, models, capital stocks. But beneath the methodological surface there is a precise story: that of a world that chose to run without asking where it was going, and of territories that, in trying to remain competitive, began to lose themselves.
The race that lowers everything
They call it the Race to the Bottom. It is a technical expression, but it sounds like the title of a dystopian novel. A race in which you win by lowering prices, compressing rights, simplifying complexity, externalizing everything that weighs on the system. In this race there is no real finish line, only a continuous lowering of the bar: fewer protections, less quality, less future.
Scientists explain it precisely: production standardization, outsourcing of economic, social and environmental costs, competition based almost exclusively on price. But if you read between the lines, what emerges is an impoverished human landscape. A system that produces increasingly similar goods and increasingly fragile territories, as if diversity were a flaw to be corrected rather than a richness to be protected.
In this race, some territories seem to gain ground for a while. But it is a fragile, temporary advantage. Because while they run, they consume the resources that make the race itself possible.
The capitals that make no noise while being consumed
One of the most powerful aspects of the article is the way it speaks about the four capitals: natural, human, social and economic. They are called “stocks,” analyzed and measured. But in reality, what is being described is something much deeper: the invisible wealth that allows societies to exist.
Natural capital is not just the environment: it is the possibility to breathe, cultivate, inhabit. Human capital is not just skills: it is knowledge, education, the ability to imagine. Social capital is not just networks: it is trust, cohesion, a sense of belonging. Economic capital, finally, is not just wealth: it is stability, investment capacity, vision.
The Race to the Bottom consumes them all, but it does so slowly, without noise. And precisely for this reason it is dangerous. Because when we notice it, the damage is already structural. Territories become dependent on models that impoverish them, while well-being stops being shared and becomes unequal, fragmented, unstable.
Well-being that does not hold over time
The authors insist on a key expression: socially shared well-being. This is not a semantic detail. It is an ethical position. Because well-being that grows only for some, or only for a limited period, is not sustainable. It is a broken promise.
The empirical evidence cited in the study is harsh: growing inequalities, loss of biodiversity, insufficient investment in the future, rising public debt, weak territorial resilience. But the point is not the list — it is the trajectory. A world that consumes today what it will not be able to restore tomorrow.
Then there is the dimension of time, seen as a moral dimension. The article clearly speaks about intergenerational equity: what we do today falls on those who come after us. Every short-term choice is a problematic inheritance. Every externalized cost is a deferred bill.
The false alternative between growth and sustainability
One of the most important passages in the work is the rejection of a toxic narrative: the one that sets growth and sustainability against each other as if they were enemies. The authors dismantle this dichotomy rigorously, but also with a clarity that carries political weight.
Sustainability does not block growth. It is short-sighted growth that destroys the conditions for sustainability. The problem is not competing, but competing badly. Not producing, but producing without asking for whom, at what price, and with what consequences.
From here comes the proposal for a new competitive paradigm, based on social utility, efficiency and social ethics. Concepts that may sound abstract, but actually speak to everyday choices: what we incentivize, what we reward, what we consider acceptable.
Territories as protagonists, not extras
In the narrative that emerges from the article, territories are not mere pawns of globalization. They are places of decision. They can choose whether to continue chasing models that consume them or to build different trajectories — perhaps slower, but more solid.
This requires awareness, literacy and shared responsibility. Businesses, families, institutions, the research world, the non-profit sector: no one is neutral. Everyone participates, for better or worse, in the direction taken.
Hence the call to action. No shortcuts are proposed, but rather work, coordination and vision. Innovation — not as a technological fetish, but as social transformation.
There is no more time to pretend
The message is essentially one: the Race to the Bottom is not sustainable. Not economically, not socially, not humanly.
Continuing along this path means accepting a future of weaker territories, more unequal societies, more frequent conflicts. Exiting it means rethinking the rules of the game, putting shared well-being back at the center, recognizing that sustainability is not a luxury but a necessity.
Read this way, the work of Cesaretti and the other authors is not only a scientific contribution. It is a warning — and at the same time, an act of trust: the idea that territories can still choose not to lose their voice.