International approaches to a Wellbeing Economy Webinar
By Sigrid Berge
On Tuesday evening, I had the pleasure of attending WEAll Aotearoa’s International Approaches to a Wellbeing Economy webinar. Attendees got to hear from four speakers who took part in overseas gatherings on issues relating to the Wellbeing Economy. Jennifer Wilkins, Makerita Makapelu, Adrienne Gallie and Gareth Hughes shared their reflections and takeaways from these events.
Jennifer Wilkins: The Relational and Intergenerational aspects of a Wellbeing Economy.
Jennifer Wilkins is a researcher and advocate on sustainability in business with a focus on post growth and economics. Jennifer shared themes from both conferences she attended, the 10th International Degrowth Conference in Spain and the Wellbeing Economy Alliance gathering in Costa Rica.
Jennifer pulled five key topics from the International Degrowth Conference: the rethinking of science and technology in the era of expansion; ‘Post Normal Science’; the role of creativity in degrowth; Political Economy and Ecology; and how we transform our institutional spaces.
From the Wellbeing Economy Alliance Conference a further five interconnected themes were explored around how how a Global Wellbeing Economy should function:
The first theme, ‘Embracing Home’, discussed how we re-establish our relationality with one another and reclaim our connections through ancestral recovery, land and each other. ‘In service of life’, means reconsidering our relationships with nature. ‘Expanding time horizons’, honouring future generations to bring equity into past present and future. The concept, ‘Sharing the Sacred’, involves a “transition from efficiency and scarcity to sufficiency and abundance”. ‘Learning and Governing Together’, this relates to cultural autonomy, and the recognition of indigenous self-determination and sovereignty, requiring us to ask questions of ourselves, our decision-making processes and the role of the state.
Jennifer wrote an article for WEAll Aotearoa on this event which can be found here
The Wellbeing Economy gathering in Costa Rica
Makerita Makapelu: ‘Teu le va’, nurturing the Va and ‘meeting in the middle’.
Makerita Makapelu, was born in Samoa and raised in Te Whanganui-a-Tara in Porirua, she has been working at Wesley Community Action for over 18 years. Makerita shared two key reflections from her attendance at the Rethinking Growth Conference in Ireland.
Makerita reflected on the ‘policy pipeline’, how priority issues are chosen, solutions proposed and then realised. Having spent most of her career providing on the ground action and witnessing outcomes in the communities these policies impact, Makerita noticed there was often a mismatch or disconnect from those making the policies and those on the recieving end of them. This prompted an important question“How can we meet in the middle?”
How do those doing the conceptual mahi, the academic theoretical work, or the governmental policy work, meet those doing the tactical mahi, the on the ground work, actions and deliverables.
Makerita also reflected on the role of ‘Care in the economy’, noting that her tīpuna left her a lot of lessons in this area. Samoan culture is thousands of years old and the traditional community structures were small and highly connected. Samoan communities are highly successful at prioritising care in their economies, two notable reasons for this difference. The first is that relationship building is intrinsic to ones’ mana, this can be seen in the concept of ‘le va’. In Pasifika culture a sacred relationship exists between people, the environment, ancestors and the heavens. To nuture the va or ‘teu le va’ is to respect and maintain these relationships, similar to the tikanga Māori concept of kaitiakitanga. Because of this cultural understanding, individualism which has been prioritised in western community structures does not work. There is a lot to be learned from the relational way of approaching our interactions from our Pasifika neighbors and from indigenous cultures globally.
Adrienne Gallie: 8 Lessons for a ‘Real Economy’.
Adrienne Gallie is a Sister of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart and our resident head of the WEAll Aotearoa Book Club. She is a financial mentor with a particular focus on helping people out of debt. Adrienne attended the Economy of Common Good Conference in the Netherlands early June this year and gave an overview of 8 keynote speakers.
The economic and social historian Bas Van Bavel, who discussed a historical wellbeing approach, highlighting the way associations have been used in the past as a real alternative to states and markets to build wealth. Van Bavel was optimistic that collaboration is more intuitive than competition within humanity.
Christian Felber, founder of the Economy of for the Common Good talked future-fit models – what have they in common and how can they join forces? In one of the parallel sessions Christian joined with Jason Nardi from Social and Solidarity Economy outlining the non-financial reporting tools from both models - Social Balance Audit and Common Good Balance sheet.
Wetus co-founder, Cees Buisman offered Ken Wilbur’s model of evolving consciousness to assist people move from a fixed position around the economy to something more expansive for the common good.
Political theory expert, Liza Herzog cited the work of RH Tawney as inspiration for a functional not acquisitive society. Moving from Hierarchy to Holacracy with decision making.
Post Growth economist, Matthias Olthaar, advocated a sufficiency-based life from hedonism to eudaimonia (happiness), seeing a necessary ecological correction to capitalism in 21st century through progressive consumption and wealth taxes.
Circular economy expert, Niels Faber, helps Dutch companies with circular economies, working towards value preservation, retention and creation. If you produce something you are responsible for the waste produced, and indeed everything in your supply chain.
LeBohang Liepollo Pheko, a senior research fellow outlined a brave new world where global south and global north become recognised as the majority and the minority world. Describing the need to reimagine ‘development’ practice away from ‘need’ to ‘help’. As the former leaves little room for a mutually respectful response that builds solidarity.
The final keynote speaker Rutger Hoekstra, author of Replacing GDP by 2030 – shared an interesting statistic on the saturation of the term ‘Gross Domestic Product and GDP’ which were mentioned 786 times in the NY Times since 2010, compared to the Human Development Index and SD Goals which were mentioned 6 and 8 times respectively. Highlighting the need for a new strategy and a linguistic and narrative revolution to counteract the subsidized megaphone for economic growth.
Adrienne shared two papers you can read here and here and wrapped up by sharing two commitments that were decided on completion of the conference:
To stop using the word alternative to describe this economy and economic models instead postulate the movements as a real economy and
To continue to strive for a sustainable, inclusive, coherent, just, humane, participatory and inclusive economy.
Gareth Hughes: Political and Commercial interests in the Wellbeing Economy.
Gareth Hughes is the Country Lead for WEAll Aotearoa. Gareth attended the three-day conference, Building Wellbeing into Policy and Action in Australia. Gareth shared an inspiring conference keynote address by Dr Ken Henry and discussed the launch of WEAll Australia and the Victorian State’s Eraly Intervention Approach.
Dr. Ken Henry is an Australian Economist and public servant who served as Secretary of the Department of the Treasury. Gareth quoted his message, “neoclassical economics used to be called a constraint optimisation program but it’s not grappling with constraints from the natural world.”
Highlighting the issue that mainstream economics is missing the big picture of the natural world and planet that we live on. In response Ken Henry was advocating for the Nature Positive Initiative which focuses on reducing carbon emissions and broader environmental impacts of commercial operations. Dr Henry suggests that as similarly traditional financial capital builds up, we in turn need natural capital to accumulate. Where we used to consider Nature as an inexhaustible resource, we now know that ecosystems are declining, and we are seeing the externalities of commercial operations which are depleting our natural capital. Ken also touched on the Victorian Government’s Early Investment Framework, which aims to improve public services and generate economic and financial benefits.
Dr Katherine Trebeck speaking at the launch of WEAll Australia
Thank you to all four speakers, Jennifer Wilkins, Makerita Makapelu, Adrienne Gallie and Gareth Hughes, for sharing your insights and experiences. It was so exciting to hear about the broad range of initiatives and solutions that are being developed and applied globally in the Global endeavour to create a Wellbeing Economy.