Meanwhile, the global system that enriches the few by exploit- ing the many is also heavily reliant on environmental extraction and destruction. This has led to the climate crisis that we are currently struggling to confront. Millions of people around the world are already climate refugees, while 99% of us breathe polluted air and 7 million people die every year because of it. Areas of the globe – mostly those whose populations have contributed the least to climate change – are fast becoming uninhabitable. There is no clearer indication of how inhumane, lopsided and unethical the system is than the fact that short-term profit is prized more highly than the continued feasibility of human life on our planet.

Many people are starting to question our current economic system. But if we are to change it, we need to understand the forces that shape it — and they are complex, multidimensional and dynamic. These forces are so deeply embedded in the way things work that they are often difficult to see and make sense of. In other words, they are “coded” into the system. Like a cryptic message, they remain incomprehensible to most people. To some of us, they may even seem like natural laws, or “just the way things are”.

If we are going to decode the injustices in our economies, we first need to map out the various elements in the system and connect the dots between them. This helps us to unpack how, together, they create the particular dynamics that sustain injustice. In this note, we introduce some key elements of our eco- nomic system and take stock of the trends of the past 40 years that have shaped the way they interact. We also discuss how the trends can be analyzed through a human rights lens and outline some of the tools needed to do so.