A progress trap is the condition human societies experience when, in pursuing progress through human ingenuity, they inadvertently introduce problems that they do not have the resources or the political will to solve for fear of short-term losses in status, stability or quality of life.[1] This prevents further progress and sometimes leads to societal collapse.
The term "progress trap" has been utilized since at least 1975, when the TimesDaily newspaper from Florence, Alabama, featured an article on the Brazilian government finding itself caught between economic development and ecological health on May 8.[2] A decade later, on August 16, 1985, an article by James David Barber for The Bryan Times featured the term.[3]
Walter Von Krämer discussed the issue in a medical context through a series of articles published in 1989 in Der Spiegel.[4] In 1990, Daniel Brian O'Leary conducted an independent study on the behavioral aspects of the condition, which he detailed in his paper.[5]
The term later gained attention after the historian and novelist Ronald Wright's 2004 book and Massey Lecture series A Short History of Progress in which he sketches world history so far as a succession of progress traps. With the documentary film version of Wright's book Surviving Progress, backed by Martin Scorsese, the concept achieved wider recognition.