URL = https://weall.org [1]

Description

"The Wellbeing Economy Alliance (WEAll) is a global collaboration of organisations, researchers, and activists working to create a wellbeing economy. Founded in 2018 and based in the United Kingdom, WEAll advocates for a shift away from traditional economic models focused on GDP growth towards ones that prioritize social and ecological wellbeing. The alliance promotes policy changes, research, and narratives that support this transition, aiming to create a more equitable and sustainable future for all."

(https://policycommons.net/orgs/wellbeing-economy-alliance/)

Interview

From Amanda Janoo on the Wellbeing Economy Alliance:

"HSF: So, would you say that these words would also describe the core values of the Wellbeing Alliance? Or what is it? How would you say it in a couple of sentences?

AJ: So, one of the core values for WEAll was actually developed by one of our founding members and trustees, Pedro Tarak, who is from Argentina. And it’s the principle of togetherness over agreement. And so, a lot of it was, I don’t know if you’ve all spent much time in the economic system change space, but we have a lot of very brilliant but quite big personalities. And so there can be a lot of fragmentation and ideological competition between different schools of thought, frameworks, theories of change. And after the financial crisis, there was this incredible opening of opportunity where a lot of the conventional wisdom in economics was being challenged and there was a desire and yearning for different understandings and not only how the economy functions, but how we can meaningfully transform it. And so we all emerged as a coming together of quite a number of prominent thinkers in the field who recognized what was needed was not a think tank, but really a movement building organization, something that could connect not only a broad base of different actors within the new economy, quote unquote, field, but also a much broader range of allies and organizations and networks that recognized the need to move upstream to stop putting just band-aids on the symptoms of this economic system, whether that’s in climate or inequality or mental health, et cetera, and to really think about how we can get the economic system to do more of the heavy lifting in terms of delivering on a more just and regenerative world."

* JQ: Could you give us some examples of the specific economic policies that you are pursuing?

AJ: Yes. So, there’s a variety that I look at as some international sort of like best practice. I think one I often talk about from really a holistic governance reform perspective is Wales Future Generations Act. So, Wales went through a process of asking their citizens, what kind of Wales do you want to leave for your children and grandchildren? And on that basis, develop these seven high-level wellbeing goals, which were things like equity, health, global responsibility, community cohesion. But even their definition of resilience was centered in biodiversity, and their definition of prosperity was an innovative society that respected planetary boundaries. And so based on these seven goals, they passed a legislation that required every government agency to collectively work towards the achievement of those goals and to set clear 25-year targets to hold them accountable and created a Future Generations Commissioner whose tenure is always longer than any political administration or cycle to help hold the accountability of government to the achievement of those long-term goals. And so, what that looked like in practice was when they wanted to develop, like build a new highway through the country, the Future Generations Commissioner had them explain how this was going to contribute to their seven goals. And when they couldn’t make the case for contributing to any of the goals, except for maybe one, they ended up putting a freeze on all new highway developments so that money would go into active travel and public transportation instead, which they saw as contributing to a healthier, more equitable, more globally responsible, et cetera, Wales. And so having that as a framework of decision-making, I think can be quite powerful and to break down a lot of the traditional silos that exists within different agencies and different understandings of the dimensions of our society. There’s others, which I’d be happy to share as well. But that’s one that, for example, here in Vermont, we brought Sophie Howe, the first Future Generations Commissioner to meet with our legislature, because we’re really hoping to pass a similar kind of initiative in the years to come."

* JQ: how does Wellbeing Economy Alliance internalize the Earth’s limits or the planetary boundaries through your values of pluralism and solidarity and care and resilience? How are you turning those values into evidence-based indicators?

AJ: Yes. I mean, I think that in terms of indicators, the framework that does the absolute best job of this has to be like Doughnut Economics, right? So, the fact that that’s also based on the sustainable development goals, so a global commitment to those indicators to then understand and quantify the planetary boundaries and the social foundations, I think are quite important. I will say that often, so again, because this isn’t about us projecting our desired set of indicators, but really looking at the range of different ones that are being utilized across countries, I will say that there is a tendency in many of the countries that develop wellbeing indicators to view the environment as purely a contribution to humans’ wellbeing, right? So, they’ll look at maybe include indicators on air quality, water quality, things that matter for humans’ wellbeing, but really don’t consider the broader range of ecological limits and the diversity of considerations within our ecosystems. And so that’s one of the things that I get particularly concerned about because it helps to perpetuate some of this myth of decoupling. Yeah, it’s like our technology will save us all because we’ll be able to just sequester the carbon or clean the water and then when we can continue to just consume in perpetuity all of our resources. But if you don’t consider biodiversity and chemical pollutions and nitrates and so many of the other types of boundaries and indicators that we need to be looking at from a holistic perspective and to really prioritize those first and foremost, right? Of recognizing that we are a part of this environmental system. I think we will, yeah, we’re going to be in for a world of pain, but a lot of our members and a big part of this movement comes from an environmental starting point, I think much more in Europe than some other places, but there they’re really centering first and foremost, I think, environmental sustainability as the need for post-growth or degrowth or however you want to sort of frame regenerative economic transformations. And so, I think some of the most important innovations are going to be happening there. So, I don’t know if it’s ultimately passed yet or not, but for example, they had a policy that they were trying to get through at the EU level that would require certain all products that enter into the EU to have certain reuse, durability, repair, recyclability, and something else like requirements. And that would just be a game changer, right? Like a planned obsolescence that is embedded within our existing system. So many of the people I know who work in R&D for large corporations are like, “We know how to make this product last, but there’s absolutely no incentive to do so.” In fact, they’re the opposite incentive to have a make-waste linear production cycle. And so I think that we will see, like I am definitely very wary of AI and its potential societal impacts, but I do think some of this technology could be incredibly beneficial for things like circular economy or regenerative planning to understand a lot of different data points and opportunities for connecting across different types of industries and sectors to reduce the level of waste and resource consumption moving forward. Because I think that will ultimately determine “competitiveness” in the future of countries and societies.

* JQ: What are some of the basic changes that societies could undertake in policy or finance or governance that would advance wellbeing?

AJ: Well, that’s a really big question, James. You know? So, I think that honestly, the longer that I spend thinking about our global economic system, the more I am convinced that is actually the financial system, which is really at the heart of so much of the growth imperative and yeah, the issues. And so, I was speaking with one of our members, Tarak, who was, he works with, he goes a lot of faith leaders at the World Economic Forum to really try to advance like values-based economic transformations and a post-growth agenda. And I was talking with him about how I’d really love to bring together a group of diverse faith leaders to discuss the concept of usury. So, the idea of interest-based lending, because in many of the religious traditions, they have very clear moral statements and positions on why we should not allow for debt-based lending or like, yeah, financial systems. Because fundamentally, we have somehow condoned a system where it’s easier to make money off of money than it is off of real work. And we don’t recognize somehow that that will invariably lead to huge levels of inequality, because that’ll always benefit the people who have more money to start with, right? And so, at its heart, I think so much of the reforms that are needed are within our financial system. And I think that’s one of the areas that for myself, I came from a background much more into the sort of ‘real economy’ of like production and trade, labor. And so, I’ve been spending the last maybe like four years really trying to understand like banking, finance, and monetary policy, because it is a couple steps removed from reality. It’s very psychological. And so, understanding it well enough to be able to explain it simply is one of the great challenges, because even within our movement, often people will just like be like, well, I don’t want to touch finance, right? Because even people working in finance have no idea what’s going on. So, it’s a big issue. And I think a really important one, if I was to choose one thing for that society could do to really transform our system."

(https://online.ucpress.edu/gp/article/6/1/144309/213521/The-Wellbeing-Economy-Alliance-A-Conversation-with?)

Wellbeing Economy Alliance

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