To achieve and build a green, sustainable and just future, we must tackle the biodiversity and climate crises with the same determination and urgency used to tackle the global health emergency. We need to protect ourselves, our families, and our communities, to rebuild our society on fairer, safer, greener and more resilient foundations, which also protect our ecosystems and the global climate. It is time to move away from a socio economic model driven exclusively by profit, infinite growth and highly dependent on consumerism and extractive industries like fossil fuel and logging. It is time for a just transition that puts the wellbeing of people before profit and sets in motion a transformational change that puts us on the path to a clean, green future. This means better public transport, renewable energy (RE), energy efficiency/RE upgrades in housing, transport and services, shorter and localized supply chains, cooperative solutions, public housing, education and health and wellbeing services.

Change is inevitable, and as transitions happen we must manage them intentionally so that no one is left behind. Our choice is simple. Either we carry on with business as usual, where corporations plunder our shared environment and greed drives more climate disasters such as floods and fires to ravage the globe. Or we build something more equitable, greener and kinder, a world built on togetherness and justice, powered by clean renewable energy. The rapid response to COVID-19 taken by some countries shows that we can take radical action if we want to. More importantly, in the face of the woefully inadequate global response to COVID 19, resulting in death, suffering and inequity --small and large acts of kindness and compassion continue to spring up; it is these qualities we can build on and expand.

What if Covid made us all see the mistakes of our governments and the corporate sector and we learned from them. What if we left our growth obsession behind and kept emissions down while rebuilding back together? What if, instead of going back to work full-time, we decided to work less, buy less, make less, ensuring we have what we need to live a decent life and not fight to raise GDP at any cost? What if our socio economic system provided a strong safety net, built resilience in society so that we could eliminate poverty and inequality, and cope with the next pandemic or ecological disaster better? What if instead of growth, we measured progress by taking into account the value of natural or social wellbeing? What if we saw ourselves as an equal part of nature instead of a predator, constantly trying to dominate and exploit it?

These are some of the questions that we will try to answer with this work.

This context and these questions led us to agree on the need to advance our organisational thinking on how to spark system change in these times of disruption and to search for existing alternative socio economic models and practices, aligned with Greenpeace's values.

With this in mind, we decided to tap into the collective imagination and knowledge of non-Western societies which offer an alternative perspective to the dominant status quo of globalized Northern/Western power. To this end we specifically began research with a focus on Global South geographies, drawing attention to what is often invisible by exploring what are the historical as well as new concepts which are not entering the mainstream due to the dominance of capitalism and Western culture.

We started by mapping out the most relevant existing alternative macro socio-economic models and practices, identifying the main problem that each alternative model aims to tackle, its core elements and main proposals, its narratives, barriers to mainstream and illustrated case studies/implementation experiments to showcase how it translates into real life. We have not included this research in this document for readability but could share if there is interest in exploring the whole process in detail.

We also identified attempts to bring together movements and organisations representing alternative economy approaches such as the Radical Ecological Democracy network (India, Global South), the Réseau intercontinental de promotion de l'économie sociale solidaire - RIPESS (Global South/Global North) or the WellBeing Economy Alliance, an online connecting platform (Global North), as well as several overviews of alternative `movements´ - such as the essays on Degrowth in Movements (2017) and Systemic Alternatives (2017). Other movements and sectorial alternatives that we explored include Buen Vivir, The Commons, Deglobalisation, Ecofeminism, Ecosocialism, Postgrowth, Rights of Mother Earth, Social and Solidarity Economy, Food Sovereignty, Energy Sovereignty and the Slow Circular Economy.

We factored in some of the most relevant challenges that Global South societies face: colonial legacy; a prominent informal economy; the undermining of Indigenous communities; high indebtedness and high annual payments; extractivism or high dependency on foreign currency, noting that the capitalististic system limits many of the aspirations for access to infrastructure, for meeting human needs and for providing sufficient levels for people and planet to flourish, as they seem to currently only be afforded with access to foreign currency, debt or with an extractivist model. All of these challenges have led to increased inequalities and polarisation within and between countries, and have made the Global South more vulnerable to extractivism and climate change.

As a result of this exploration, we came up with principles that can serve as a starting point and form the foundation for any alternative socio economic system we support. Then we came up with some concrete ideas and proposals for change, on how to translate these principles into something tangible on the ground.

Once we agreed on a theory of change, we started exploring how to translate it into stories that people can relate to by asking ourselves questions such as: if we were to tell stories about our vision for the future - in our myriad languages - what kinds of words would we use?; if the future is not all about “development” “progress” and “growth” what kinds of adjectives describe it? In these stories, who are the characters? We believe that words do not only describe, they create and so they contain immense power and potency. This piece is still in the works and we hope to have a more complete assessment of the outcomes any time soon with the idea to share it with our allies as a starting point for potential collaborations.

Now we are at the stage of seeking - to identify allies to work with and spark a societal conversation to build a better future by creating a new radical mindset and power shift that puts people and nature at the centre of development.

1. Movements and macroeconomic models supporting Greenpeace’s mission and values and overarching campaign goals, in particular:

• Wellbeing (as opposed to profit) becomes the primary lens

• Global reforms that abandon the growth paradigm, market fundamentalism, patriarchy, colonial legacy and build a new contract between people and nature

• Empowerment of people and communities

• Green Recovery policies that put us on track to stop climate chaos
  

2. Proposals offering some reflection or discussion around:

• • Moving away from extractivism, led by people and for people

  • Support and greater recognition of the informal sector

  • Alternative measures to economic prosperity

There are a huge number of alternative economy approaches, theories, proposals and experiments already being actively developed, discussed and implemented. Many of them are small scale or not interconnected and thus, not very visible.

The latest and most comprehensive exercise in mapping meta-movements and visions is The Pluriverse - A Post Development Dictionary; authors Arturo Escobar, Ashish Kothari and others explain that “The dominant Western development model is a homogenizing construct, one that has usually been adopted by people across the world under material duress. The counter-term ‘post-development’ implies a myriad of systemic critiques and ways of living.” ... “What has been missing is a broad transcultural compilation of concrete concepts, worldviews, and practices from around the world, challenging the modernist ontology of universalism in favour of a multiplicity of possible worlds. This is what it means to call for a pluriverse.”.

Arturo Escobar goes on to explain that “ such a Pluriverse is built on the concept of diversity within a whole Earth system, a multiplicity of worlds and peoples coexisting within the Planet. This is the first meaning of the Pluriverse. The Pluriverse also connotes life’s ceaselessness, always flowing, constantly changing owing to interdependence of all aspects of living systems. In theory, even capitalism would have the right to exist within the Pluriverse, but only constrained to become one among many coexisting systems, at which point “it will cease to be capitalism as we know it”.

We want to challenge the idea that there is only one form of development and that all countries must follow the same Western capitalist model that has led to the progressive destruction of the ecosystem, poverty, inequality and violence in our societies. We urgently need development that considers equity, sustainability, equality, wellbeing, and rural communities. We want to create the space for new thinking around alternative ideas to promote development that is based on the collective wellbeing of both humans and nature - with the sense that community needs to be at core (as in the Nguni Bantu term and concept "ubuntu" loosely translated to mean “I am because we are”) and should not be mixed/co-opted by 'Individualism". There are different countries, with different cultures, so there are different approaches of development that can be adapted to any circumstances.

If you have questions about this document or our Alternative Futures work, want to provide feedback or become a collaborator, you can send an email to Paula Tejon Carbajal or Catherine Rodgers.

Centuries of colonisation and exploitation, including slavery, human trafficking and trade, genocide and the undermining of sovereignty have established the current state of vulnerability in Latin American, African and Asian regions. The colonisation mindset continues today through the pursuit of the neo-liberal socio economic model. This is driven exclusively for the benefit of individual and corporate profit, accumulation and infinite growth, and is highly dependent on extractive industries like fossil fuels, logging, industrial agriculture and fisheries, the majority of which take place in the South to feed the North. Natural resources are turned into the private profits of distant corporations and the super rich, with little benefit in return for local people. Indebtedness and dependency - a hangover from colonial days and a way to enforce control - means that national or local governments are obliged to support and promote this model.

The capitalist system and extractivism began more than 500 years ago with the conquest and colonisation of America, Africa and Asia. The design of the colonial model (which includes extractivism, the plundering of resources, and human exploitation, mostly driven by private corporations) is such that even after the abolition of slavery and the achievement of independence by previous colonies, the system of plunder remains, thinly veiled as “development” and “progress”.

These extreme inequalities reinforce a divisive social hierarchy, on a national level led by their elites as well as in global North-South relations. The majority of ‘developed’ countries are net importers of nature while the ‘developing’ are net exporters of nature. As a result, this model is at the centre of serious tensions and social protests as it is the foundation for a system leading to an increasing concentration of power amongst the wealthy, corruption of that power, and the devastation of ecosystems and societies.

As contemporary thinker Yuval Harari puts it, capitalism is ”a system of human norms and values that is founded on belief in a superhuman order”. It is the most successful religion ever invented and has used the greatest conqueror of all time: money, a psychological construct that works by converting matter into mind. The power of money is its ability to create universal trust and its convertibility: “money is the only trust system created by humans that can bridge almost any cultural gap, and that does not discriminate on the basis of religion, gender, race, age or sexual orientation. Thanks to money, even people who don’t know each other and don’t trust each other can nevertheless cooperate effectively. ” (*1)

Yet capitalism needs other conditions to thrive: growth, credit and reinvestment. Growth is an invention of modern economics. For most of history the economy stayed much the same size. The growth we have witnessed in the last couple of centuries could only have occurred thanks to a new system based on trust in the future: credit. Money has its limitations and can only be exchanged for things that are tangible and exist in the present. Modern economics and capitalism changed this by creating another physiological construction that assumes the future will be more abundant than the present, opening up the opportunity to build and consume based on future income.

There have been credit booms over the course of several millennia, but it was only during the age of European colonisation that the need for capital and credit increased. This era was defined by the Scientific Revolution(*2) which led to a new - utilitarian - view of nature, and the idea of progress, that if we invest resources in research, things can improve. This notion was the driver of European imperialism. Last but not least, the key to the success of capitalism was a revolutionary idea identified by the 18th century economist Adam Smith in his book Wealth of the Nations: profits must be reinvested in order to produce more profits, which need to be reinvested to produce even more profit. This gave birth to the infinite growth paradigm and the famous invisible hand, the idea that by increasing private profit, entrepreneurs were also increasing collective wealth and contributing to the overall prosperity of society. This somehow validated the notion that greed and becoming rich was good for the collective.

(*1) Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Harari
(*2) Scientific Revolution

After WWII, two centuries after the Wealth of Nations was published, most of Europe was in recovery mode. The old colonial order could not be maintained. Between 1945 and 1960, three dozen new states in Asia and Africa achieved autonomy or outright independence from their European colonial rulers. This was mostly a protracted process, peaceful and orderly in some cases, and in many others, independence was achieved only after a lengthy revolution (*1).

The New Deal had just been signed in the US and Keynesian ideas such as employment for all and curbing the market were leading the reconstruction. The war state became the welfare state. Yet it was during this time that the idea of neoliberalism (capitalism) was conceived. In April 1947, forty western academics and business leaders met in a village in Switzerland, founding the Mont Pelerin Society which would become the leading think tank of the 20th century. This was the beginning of the neoliberal resistance to the socialist supremacy of the time. The seeds of the free market as a solution to everything were planted there and then. Hayek, an Austrian philosopher convened that first meeting of minds and held the presidency of the think tank until 1970, when the economist Milton Friedman took over. It was then that the Society started to spread its capitalist ideas and thrive, using the mainstream media to get to politicians. Yet at the time, the idea of the free market was still that: an idea.

And then an opportunity arrived. In October 1973, the oil crisis exploded, inflation went through the roof and western economies entered a deep recession. Friedman and his followers had a solution ready to kick in and politicians were ready for it. The rise of neoliberal capitalism to the top began with Reagan and Thatcher as its most prominent proponents. Their rise to power in the 1980’s saw the start of a new era, one that prevails today, where economists are the leading thinkers of the West and influence the rest of the world. In less than 50 years, an idea once dismissed as radical and marginal had come to rule the world (*2).

It was also in the second half of the twentieth century that the notion of development evolved to stand like a powerful ruler over nations. The post-colonial era prepared the path for Western imperial power over the world. The era of development started with Truman back in 1949 when he referred to more than half of the world’s population as coming from ‘underdeveloped areas’ in his inaugural speech. It was the first time that the term ‘underdevelopment’, which would later become a justification for power, both international and national, was proclaimed from a prominent political stage. This speech launched the era of “development” to follow on from the colonial era, to be joined by globalization some forty years later.

The idea of “development” is defined as follows:

• All nations seem to advance in the same direction, in the name of progress. Imagined time is linear, moving only forwards or looking backwards.

• The leaders of this idea, the developed nations, show the “undeveloped” countries the way. The world is now ranked simplistically into rich and poor nations.

• The development of a nation is measured through its economic performance, according to GDP (gross domestic product).

• Actors who push for development are mainly experts in governments, multinational banks, and corporations.

(*1) Decolonization of Asia and Africa, 1945–1960
(*2) Utopia for realists, Rutger Bregman

In November 1989, the Berlin Wall came down. The Cold War was over and globalization - understood as development beyond nation states - began. Economies, culture and lifestyles started to be increasingly determined by global forces. The global middle classes began to grow in number, shopping in similar malls, buying high-tech electronic goods, watching the same movies and TV series and following the same fashion and cultural trends. For years development was perceived as the promise that eventually all societies would close the gap between rich and poor and benefit from industrial civilization. Billions of people have made use of the ‘right to development’. This mantra has been reinforced by an international network of institutions including INGOs. Institutions such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Trade Organization (WTO) continue to bow to the idea of development-as-growth, while the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and most NGOs attempt to counter this by emphasizing the idea of development-as-social policy.

Capitalism then began to spread across the world during the 1980s at the hands of Reagan and Thatcher, who famously declared that “there's no such thing as society”. The scene was also set by the 1976 publication of “The Selfish Gene” by Richard Dawkins which serves as a moral and ideological justification for selfishness and individualistic mindsets as simply following "nature", now widely discredited although it continues to be promoted today, with serious consequences for the world. Driving instability and inequality was a deliberate policy in the US and the UK, when work life in the 1970s was made more unstable in order to drive the new profit culture of the ‘80s. Later on, in the 1990s, an acceptance of huge executive bonuses was manufactured, while more recently inequality was pinpointed as a business opportunity before the crash in 2008 of the biggest bank in America, as a way of making money from a more divided society. This inequality isn’t only within these Global North countries, globalization has imposed this on the rest of the world to maximise profits.

Growth-based economics is really a recent phenomenon, its dominance is pervasive and has taken on a ‘structural’ quality in current societies, so called `growth lock-in´. Growth is perceived as imperative to stabilising modern societies as it provides employment, public sector provision through tax revenues, rising wages, the incentive of a ‘better life’ and hence social stability. In a co-evolutionary process, a range of institutions developed and are now coupled to a growth-based capitalist economy, including the nation state, representative democracy, the rule of law and current legal, financial, labour market, education, research, and welfare systems. The embeddedness of the growth-based capitalistic economic system in these co-evolved institutions and ways of thinking makes it difficult to transition to a degrowth system because changing the economic system also involves a parallel transformation of these coupled systems. Two examples which directly link to people’s wellbeing illustrate this point: the relationship between the welfare state and growth, and between growth and people’s mindsets and identities.

While economic growth supports the welfare state, in many ways this also works the other way round: the welfare state supports growth by enhancing the population’s health and education levels, providing a ‘safety net’ for the unemployed and disadvantaged. This helps to maintain social order, and increase consumer demand and productivity. In turn, the reduction in job security and shift to meritocracy leads to more individualistic and materialistic mindsets amongst the new middle classes, with competition, expansionism and overconsumption all contributing to continued economic growth and the subsequent systemic and climate crisis we are living today.

Today the era of globalization and development is crumbling. For the many, everyday life is more often about survival, not progress. The ‘age of austerity’ has eroded the ‘safety net’ of the welfare state in many countries. Yet progress is still defined through the monocultural Western growth and development lenses - the permanent accumulation of material goods, based on the assumption of infinite growth, driven by profit, and dominated by an individualistic mindset and extractivism model.

While fighting poverty has been successful in some places, it has been bought at the price of even larger inequalities elsewhere and environmental destruction. Progress is turning out to be regress, as the capitalist logic of the Western societies cannot but exploit nature. Extractivism and wasteful consumption are eroding wellbeing in society. This is particularly the case where there are severe impacts on nature and where people are directly reliant on local ecosystems, where communities and their livelihoods have been destroyed and their culture usurped. There are huge economic costs that result from natural destruction, but these are mostly not accounted for.

Today, in the name of globalization and development, we are witnessing:

• the emergence of free trade market agreements that prioritise corporate power and override government legislation that protects social and environmental welfare (manifested in Free Trade Agreements agreements such as CETA).

• deregulation in order to foster radical privatization and neo-colonial 'globalization' aimed at maximizing profitability and the accumulation of private wealth.

• the abolition of social security systems or welfare states and changes to domestic laws that diminish civil liberties and the protection of human rights, leading to an increase in social oppression, such as racism and classism.

• the dismantling of collectivism and the promotion of aggressive individualism, increasing individual and collective consumption and competition, which pushes heavily on efficiency in production chains as well as on an individual level, all leading to increased inequalities.

• high and increasing levels of poverty and social exclusion and violations of human rights, combined with aggressive advertising to influence consumer choices - while the dominant narrative puts responsibility on consumers and consumer demand as the driving force behind the operation of markets and the growth in overconsumption.

The lower and middle classes across the world are starting to realise that the expectations fed by this Western idea of progress are not going to be fulfilled. Many have been alienated from their traditions, aware of Western lifestyles through their smartphones, yet excluded from this modern world. While the promise of globalization and progress evaporates, it has ushered in an age of populist nationalism. Meanwhile, with humanity facing its own extinction due to the threat of climate change and biodiversity loss, fear for the future has become part of our collective mindset, a fear that life prospects are diminishing and that our children and grandchildren will be less well off. We are experiencing injustice, cultural turmoil, and ecological decline across the board. From the ‘Limits to Growth’ in 1972 to ‘Planetary Boundaries’ in 2009, the analysis is clear: development-as-growth leads to conditions on planet Earth becoming increasingly inhospitable for humans and the ecosystems we depend on.

Today the level of exploitation and destruction of nature is at a crisis point, clearly connected to the fact that divisions between the poorest and the super wealthy have never been greater. This situation is driving disastrous ecological impacts, because the richer you are, the more damage you do, yet the beneficiaries are insulated from the worst effects.

As analysed by Peter Philips in his book Giants, unprecedented amounts of finance and power are held by very few people. The 26 richest people in the world hold the same wealth as 3.8 billion of the poorest, while control of this wealth - amounting to $50 trillion - is determined by just 17 large investment management firms, in turn controlled by just 199 board directors. This is the global power elite - an extension of American imperialism - which makes policy decisions and has direct control of where to invest, which is mainly in the large corporations most responsible for CO₂ emissions, extraction of resources and destruction of habitats, for their mutual benefit. These investors need to keep growing their capital, but their wealth is so great that they are running out of places to invest, and are rapidly buying up the public domain, privatising everything from infrastructure, to water resources, to health care and education. They are behind the growing collusion between politics and the corporate world, as well as the rise in defence spending and privatised security corporations which protect the transnational corporate class and defend their capital. Big money also controls the message and the media, with 80% of TV news stories prepared or packaged by PR firms working for corporations or governments, to ensure no criticism of capitalism, and to build false narratives where it is threatened.

This corporate takeover of the public sphere is against the interests of the people and democratically elected governments – whether through interfering with regime change, or threatening debt collection. With little government oversight or public scrutiny, unelected billionaires are shaping public policy through “helping the needy” or alternatively, “Philanthro-capitalism”, effectively making sure that the money they put into their foundations, ultimately makes more money for themselves, while depriving citizens in their own country of their tax dollars. For the Gates Foundation, this philanthropy is a Trojan horse for enabling a centrally controlled digital network that amounts to the corporate capture of the food system, through imposing GMOs and digital dictatorship, and has led to strong resistance from Indian farmers.

As ever, neoliberal capitalism continues to reinvent itself, to continue the momentum of the Great Acceleration with its futuristic vision. But the plans of the corporate, capitalist mindset involve yet more massive growth and greater corporate control of our lives through "Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies”, fuelled by private investment in AI and a new space race to set up space hotels that would enable the extractive industries to expand beyond the Earth itself. While corporations are working non-stop to make this fantasy reality, they seem not to care about the unprecedented crises caused by this growth mindset, which could lead to the collapse of ecosystems and society here on Earth. No doubt their huge wealth will insulate them from the worst effects.

The psychological and spiritual impacts of this lack of balance in the world can’t be overstated. Excessive wealth also leads to unequal societies, where people suffer from an erosion of trust, increased anxiety - including status anxiety - and illness, which all impact on peoples’ wellbeing. The wealth of the Global North has been built over many centuries through this extraction and exploitation of nature and people in the South, as well as by creating division within countries in the North. Thus, together with an immediate halt to new plans for extractivist projects, there is a need for swift reparation, mainly from European countries and the USA, starting with their large corporations and wealthy elite, towards Latin American, African and Asian countries for the damages wrought by colonialism and its continued system of exploitation. And we need to call out the “big money mindset” that has evolved from these injustices and is posing such a threat to humanity today.

The resulting confusion and systemic crises have given rise to three different narratives - ‘the fortress’, ‘globalism’, and ‘solidarity’ (*1). The poster child of ‘Fortress thinking’ is Trump and his nationalistic slogans ‘Make America Great Again’and ‘America First’. Authoritarian leaders whip up pride in national and racial identities which leads to hatred of outsiders. In contrast, ‘globalism’ promotes an ideally deregulated, free-trade world, which brings wealth and wellbeing to corporations and consumers everywhere. ‘Green and inclusive growth’ paired with smart technologies is the path forward - yet this is a false promise because it is tied to destructive infinite growth.

Last but not least, we have the narrative of ‘solidarity’ which fights the idea of individualism and the culture of profit, puts human rights and ecological principles at the core of its value system and promotes market forces as means to an end. ‘Think globally, act locally’ redefines prosperity and acknowledges the importance of local politics and action; this implies that there is no magic bullet and there are many paths to a social transformation where all living things are prioritised.

(*1) The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power, Wolfgang Sachs

The world is changing and transformation is already happening. There has been a huge expansion of renewable energy and jobs in the sector could rise from 9.8 million in 2016 to more than 24 million in 2030 (*1). On the other hand, the phase-out of coal, the combustion engine and the decline of oil is bringing uncertainty for the workers in those industries, who face having to adapt to radical change.

Coal miners, workers from other extractive industries, and power generation workers do not face the same challenges or have the same opportunities ahead. But they share the same anxiety and uncertainty. If they do not see a tangible future for themselves and do not feel they have a say in the process, they will resist and provide support to the `dance macabre` of the fossil fuel industry.

The renewable industry will not absorb all the workforce left behind by the phase out of fossil fuels. Even though positive examples of this exist, the skills required by the two industries are not fully transferable, and geographic locations often don’t overlap. Successful just transition strategies are very localized and usually consist of a fully-fledged, gender-sensitive development and regeneration plan for each region, including incentives to revive small- to medium-size businesses, diversification and tailor-made social plans for the retired workers and their families.

(*1) http://bit.ly/2rKtwfm.

The chaos and confusion of the COVID-19 outbreak has exposed some inescapable truths about how we live. It’s shown us how vulnerable, interdependent and interconnected we are. One by one, all the flaws of our current socio-economic systems are being revealed, in particular habitat destruction and trade in wildlife, combined with global travel, which has enabled the virus to emerge and spread. This crisis is also exposing inequalities across the world, as the disenfranchised are suffering disproportionately, making poverty and displacement worse. As a result, support systems, especially healthcare, are struggling. Our broken systems are proving incapable of coping with the COVID emergency, let alone the looming threat of social and environmental collapse.

Just as the oil crisis in the 1970s opened the door to neoliberal capitalism, the Covid crisis today has laid bare the critical weaknesses in the status-quo. This might be the opportunity we need to allow the alternative narrative of solidarity that has reemerged in the past decade to finally take off and over.

Deep dive into opportunities for change >>

At a time of impending ecological disaster, growing divisions in society and a crisis in public health, many reasons have been invoked in favour of fair income and allowances, to build back resilience in society so that we can cope with these problems better.

Fair income and allowances could help to overcome inequalities across our economies and societies. In a system of inequality where companies or individuals are pushing for profit, there is more incentive to ignore environmental boundaries, to extract more in order to get richer. When working together and focusing on the needs of the community, there is more incentive to create and respect environmental boundaries around shared resources.

The impact of Covid has exposed the damaging effects of inequality, shown most dramatically by the gap between the lowest and highest earners, and has brought the ongoing debate about Universal Basic Services (healthcare, education, public transportation, housing, electricity, etc.) and Universal Basic Income (UBI) back on the table.

Some of these proposals offer opportunities to reduce the growing polarisation we are witnessing across societies nowadays e.g UBI can unite politicians from the right (ie. more freedom for individuals to choose how to earn their income, including starting a business and becoming an entrepreneur) and the left (redistribution of wealth, end of poverty and inequality). Setting an income ceiling built on a maximum-minimum ratio is a major shift from the current culture of high executive pay. With proposals for one off taxes on the wealthy becoming more common, there is opportunity to unite people around the idea that a longer term income ceiling can benefit society as a whole, making us more resilient in times of crisis.

In particular, unpaid workers in the ‘informal economy’, usually women, who make a huge contribution to the value of economies (estimated at 9% of global GDP) and fill many gaps in existing services, should be considered and recognised. To begin accounting for this, unpaid work needs to be included in any measure of a country’s success (see “beyond GDP).

See some more detailed arguments below.

Universal Basic Income

• • Helps us rethink how and why we work and contribute to shorter working hours and a better distribution of jobs. For the past three decades the demand for labour, and wages as a share of GDP, has both been declining. Meanwhile, people are living longer and retiring later, and part-time work, insecure casual contracts, and self-employment are increasingly the norm for the precariously underemployed. Benefits also include: increased job opportunities for those currently excluded, the option to reduce working hours or retrain, and the opportunity to find more meaningful work whether paid or voluntary.

  • Contributes to better working conditions, as workers will find it easier to challenge their employers on unfair or degrading work conditions.

  • Fair redistribution of work lost to automation and through any transition/ change. Much investment in technology is socially funded through taxes. With automation estimated to displace about one third of the current jobs worldwide in the next ten years alone, a basic income could provide a cushion and allow retraining. The change from an infrastructure based on fossil fuels to one based on renewable energy also involves major changes for workers.

  • Downsizes bureaucracy, because it is one of the simplest tax / benefits models, make it less complex and costly, while being fairer and more accessible.

  • Helps reduce inequalities and increase equity. It rewards unpaid contributions, creates gender equality, sharing out the wealth produced by a society to all people and reduces the growing inequalities across the world (note: assuming a fair, redistributive tax system - see points below on tackling power). People currently excluded from benefit allowances will have their rights guaranteed and the huge number of unpaid activities, many of them by women, would be recognized as economic contributions that society relies on.

  • Strengthens our capacity for active participation in democracy (and community) With a minimum level of security guaranteed to all citizens and less time in work or worrying about work, innovation in political, social, economic and technological terms would be encouraged.

  • Contributes to wellbeing and end extreme financial poverty. Basic income programs can ensure that no one lives in a state of absolute poverty. Studies have shown that direct cash payments improve the financial and mental well-being of their recipients, though economists still dispute exactly which types are most effective and efficient.

  • helps implement a post-growth monetary system. Currently, access to digital money and payments is entirely dependent on the solvency of the commercial banking system. To build a post-growth monetary system we need new ways of guaranteeing access to a means of payment that does not depend on the solvency of commercial banks and their issuance of interest-bearing debt.

Proponents also emphasise fundamental values and cultural reasons such as:

Dignity and the human right to material existence - the basic human right without which all other rights are impossible.

The concept of work and progress. We need to question employment as the central organising institution of society and human progress.

Putting value on unpaid work

Lack of infrastructure creates more unpaid work. Women in rural and developing countries spend a considerable amount of time collecting water. A study which looked at countries in the Middle East, North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia found that when access to water increased as a result of infrastructure investment women didn't enter into more paid employment, but their overall time spent on unpaid labor did diminish and enrolment in school improved in countries with big gender gaps. Collection of firewood for fuel is another labour intensive task.

Effect on women: a disproportionate amount of unpaid and informal work is done by women, the time spent on this prevents them from taking opportunities for training and education and participating in formal, paid labour which is protected by labour, wage, health, and safety regulations. It thus can affect their health and well–being.

Effect on children: statistics show that many children, particularly in poorer countries and households, are forced to contribute to the unpaid domestic work of a household. The burden of unpaid domestic work falls particularly on young girls who are forced to drop out of school.

Effects of unpaid domestic work on the economy: The economic value of women's unpaid labour, such as caring, cooking and cleaning, which was estimated in 2010 as 26 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) is not included in GDP or national income accounting indicators.

Effects of unpaid domestic work on the state: Unpaid domestic work has a positive effect on a state's budget by decreasing the amount of money a state must spend to otherwise provide these services. Cuts to healthcare, education and income disadvantage women in the long-term and push them further into poverty and therefore more reliant on the state.

Universal Basic Services

There have been calls to recognise public services as ‘social infrastructure’, no less essential than highways, the national grid and other aspects of the ‘material infrastructure’, which should be treated likewise as an investment that will yield social and economic dividends. The value that public services create goes beyond economic benefits alone and is routinely underestimated. The ways in which universal services are designed and delivered – and how they interact with each other - are likely to influence the extent to which they benefit the poorest, as well as other income groups and society as a whole.

Equity: services such as education, healthcare, access to transport, have a strong redistributive effect, they bring intrinsic value to everyone but are worth much more to people on low incomes than the better off and can reduce income inequality by an average of 20%. The effects are not just individual as reducing inequality benefits society as a whole.

Efficiency: despite being accused of inefficiencies, public sector organisations can keep costs down in ways that cannot be achieved by competing commercial organisations. Crucially, a non-profit system does not need to extract funds to pay dividends to shareholders. Public services can interact in mutually beneficial ways, from healthy eating at schools benefiting health outcomes and saving costs, to indirect effects such as reducing social isolation, or creating social value that takes years to accumulate with no obvious economic benefit for a private provider.

Solidarity: Services are a manifestation of shared interest and purpose; they can help to bring people together, build social cohesion and reduce inequalities.

Sustainability: Services can produce benefits that are continuous and cumulative; they can prevent illness, provide opportunities and can be organised in ways that can facilitate carbon reduction, anticipate climate hazards and achieve longer-term environmental sustainability.

Income ceiling built on a maximum-minimum ratio

A ceiling on wages based on a ratio between the highest paid people and workers at the bottom doesn’t set a hard cap on earnings but controls the difference between the two. High wages were effectively controlled by taxes on higher earners after the 2^nd world war, with wealth redistributed. However, over the years top wages have increased dramatically while tax rates have dropped (in the US this has happened since Reagan’s tax reforms in the 1980s, while rates for lower wages have stayed the same).

Exposes the trickle down myth: An income ceiling tests one of the central claims of the growth economy: that the profits and wealth of the elites trickle down to benefit everyone. In fact, the Reagan tax reforms in the US reduced overall economic output while only the rich became better off. For companies, there is a negligible connection between executive top pay and return on investment capital; less than 1%.

Reduces inequality: wage inequality is the basis for real inequality and justifies the idea that for some, our basic needs are a luxury, where money equals human value.

Values essential workers: minimum wage workers do the hardest and most derided jobs, yet without them companies, countries and the whole society wouldn’t function.

Discourages greed and excessive focus on money: with no ceiling or low taxes on high earners, executives compete to take home the biggest paycheck, but where the top wages are capped (either by high taxes or an income ceiling) executives compete to run the most effective and best company, with non-monetary factors becoming more important.

Work with allies to promote Fair Income and Allowances

As the promotion of Fair Income and Allowances is not a typical Greenpeace campaign and we have little expertise or campaign history, it will be key to collaborate with allies. Support from Greenpeace could add value to their work and bring their voices to the mainstream. Mapping these allies will form part of the third phase of this project.

Put a spotlight on excessive executive pay

Expose extractive industries where company executives are awarded high salaries and /or shareholder benefits. Highlight the environmental cost that is the basis of this financial reward and the amount of government subsidy received by the company for their activities, compared to the amounts earned by their lowest paid workers - creating a narrative that people and the planet are paying for fat cats. Use this narrative to call for:

• • An income ceiling and /or an additional tax for businesses in which the highest-paid managerial employee earns more than 100 or xx times the median compensation of employees.

  • Look for opportunities where Greenpeace could collaborate with allies by drawing attention to opportunities to expose inequalities in wages, such as Fat Cat Wednesday, the first day of the year when top bosses’ earnings have already surpassed the annual salary of the average.

Fairer income and allowances have made a significant improvement in the lives of some of the poorest people in the Global South, which has led to less depletion of local ecosystems and dependence on extractive industries for survival. Free services such as education and healthcare, public investment in infrastructure, and democratic participation in local community decisions have created sustainable food systems, renewable energy infrastructure, access to clean drinking water and enabled new local businesses that increase the value of sustainably sourced materials. Reducing the difference between the wealthy and the poorest has resulted in less focus on money as a marker of success, with non-economic benefits taking priority, and less tangible benefits such as restoring dignity, self determination and self respect. Work itself becomes more meaningful, no longer based on irrelevant, vanity projects, but linked to the wellbeing of society and the planet.

Case studies:

Universal Basic Income

Everywhere basic income has been tried, in one map (US, Canada, Finland, Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Kenya, Brazil, Iran, Namibia, India, China, Japan)

• • UBI in Brazil: In Brazil, a coalition of over 160 organisations campaigned for the introduction of an emergency basic income during the Covid pandemic. Winning the support of over half a million people and recruiting key social media influencers, the campaign was a remarkable and rapid success. Within 10 days of the campaign’s launch, a law approving the scheme was approved; a further 10 days later, people were receiving their first payments. Tens of millions of Brazilians received vital support as a result, and over half of Brazil’s population was estimated to have directly or indirectly benefited from the scheme.

  • Kenya and Uganda: This project is perhaps the first true universal basic income in recorded history, where about 6,000 desperately poor people in Kenya and Uganda are provided with a guaranteed flow of cash for the next 10 years or more, distributed through cellphone-based payment systems popular in East Africa. Although it's at an early stage, its already reporting results: “recipients ate more and experienced less hunger, invested in expensive but worthwhile assets like iron roofs and farm animals, and reported higher psychological well-being. They were less hungry, richer, and all-around happier.”

Putting value on unpaid work

• • Argentina saw the launch of a new partnership spearheaded by civil society, working with women leaders in business and other spheres, committed to challenging the gender gap in employment. The Agenda for Equality is supported by 1,500 leaders, of various genders, from all over the country and from a variety of sectors including academia, civil society, unions and companies of all kinds, from multinationals to SMEs and cooperatives. The objectives of the Agenda are to first promote the hiring of women in formal jobs in the private sector and to encourage better participation of women in traditionally masculine sectors; second, to redistribute unpaid care work; and third, to challenge stereotypes and promote and make visible the participation of women in public discussion and decision-making.

  • We care (Oxfam project) Here are a few case studies from around the world but they require a login. More interesting case studies (starting at page 22)

Universal Basic Services

Healthcare and education are basic services that are free in many Western countries, for example in the EU and the UK, where the case is being made to extend this to housing, transport, care and access to digital information. An example of free for all, fare-free public transport is in Luxembourg.

In comparison, access to free health care and education in Global South countries is much more variable, with some good examples (eg. Colombia for health care) as well as many significant gaps.

Putting cap on earnings

• • San Francisco: San Francisco voters overwhelmingly backed a new law that will levy an extra 0.1% tax on companies that pay their chief executive more than 100-times the median of their workforce.

  • Germany: Companies in Germany with over 2000 employees are required to have a supervisory board, half of which are required to be workers of said company, under the Mitbestimmungsgesetz, enforcing codetermination. The supervisory board sets the executive wages of the company.

  • Spain: In 2013, the Spanish Socialist Workers Party, the official Spanish opposition party, adopted a ratio as part of their official policy.The Mondragon Corporation, a worker-owned cooperative headquartered in the Basque Country, has an internal wage ratio at an average of 5:1, periodically decided with a democratic vote.

  • Switzerland: Popular Initiative "1:12 Initiative - For fair wages" was a Swiss referendum held on November 24, 2013 in an attempt to create legislation limiting the amount of executive pay to a maximum of 12 times that of the lowest paid workers. The referendum was rejected by 65.3%, with a turnout of 53%, and no canton took on the initiative. The largest rejection came from the canton of Zug, accepted by only 23% of the votes, and the least rejection came from Ticino, where it was supported by 49%.

  • United States: In 2010 President Barack Obama signed into effect the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. In short, Section 953(b) of the Dodd-Frank Act changed the regulation regarding CEO compensation disclosure to shareholders. In December 2016, the city of Portland, Oregon voted to implement a surcharge for chief executives who earn more than 100 times the median pay of their workers in 2017.

Use this moment of disruption to:

SHIFT MINDSET
FROM: A scarcity mindset
TO: An abundance mindset

FROM: We all exist on a ladder and compete with each other to survive.
TO: Everybody is equal and wealth should be shared. We depend on each other and the community to survive.

FROM: The lazy abuse social safety nets.
TO: Directly or by extension, we all benefit from a strong social safety net.

FROM: Guaranteed income system removes the incentive to work.
TO: The security of a universal basic income allows for training and development, creativity, and contribution to community projects (civic participation).

FROM: A strong social safety net is expensive.
TO: A strong social safety net provides benefits that are continuous and cumulative and cheaper in the long term. For example it reduces crime and its costs to society.

SHIFT POWER

1. The individual jobs that people do and the amount that they are paid can be closely linked to their sense of identity. In some cases jobs are superficial and lack meaning or connection to the community or society, for example, telesales, marketing and advertising to promote overconsumption, or are directly harmful, such as working for companies involved in extractivism. Giving greater value to work by ensuring that it is beneficial to the community and that respects the natural environment, will shift power away from individual wealth and the need for social status, by building agency and allowing people to identify more strongly with the benefits of their work, rather than the material wealth and status associated with their jobs.

2. The Western system encourages individuals and families to be self-reliant; a shift to a more cooperative and sharing system where services and products can be shared could result in less waste and better use of resources. Instead of individual ownership of products, a change of focus from the individual to the community through sharing resources promotes cooperation, reduces competition and counters the differences in social status that people connect with their personal material goods.

3. Highly paid jobs reinforce selfishness and individualism and contribute to the concentration of wealth in a small group of people, creating an unbridgeable gap between the highest and lowest earners and divisions in society. Pushing for such differences to become morally unacceptable can encourage organisations and individuals to create more balance in the way that people are paid.

4. There is a trend to promote private companies to manage public services, to supposedly make them more efficient and keep costs down; unfortunately, the extraction of profits for executives and shareholders usually means very poor public services and greater expense for the taxpayer. A change towards greater involvement of public stakeholders - the people using the services, the taxpayer, together with workers - and away from private gain, is key to redistributing power and ensuring that public services are not managed by profit making companies.

SPARK STRUCTURAL CHANGE/ CREATE ENVIRONMENTAL BOUNDARIES
Some of the proposals aligned with our values and mission are:

Universal Basic Income

• • Reform of social security policies and benefits systems to adopt basic income programmes that ensure that no one lives in a state of absolute poverty.

  • Provide training and retraining opportunities for meaningful work, particularly for economic activities that improve wellbeing and the balance with nature, such as in sustainable agriculture, renewable energies, setting up cooperative organisations and community organising based on local civic participation.

Putting value on unpaid work

• • Reform of the tax system and social security policies to eliminate the concept of the sole breadwinner in a two-adult family. Provide maternity, paternity, and childcare leave for both women and men and subsidised, quality, affordable child and elder care services. Improve public services that have direct and indirect consequences on unpaid work and strengthen information campaigns on unpaid work.

  • Family-friendly workplace policies: shortened work weeks, flexible paid leave and the ability to work from home are possible solutions that would facilitate the redistribution of unpaid labour within households. Financial support for companies, such as tax rebates, to encourage them to provide this.

  • Reform the workplace to achieve better work-life balance through flexible working.

  • Investment into public infrastructure. Public funds should be channeled to investment projects that create better access to essential resources that lessen the burden of unpaid labour, particularly in developing countries, such as the delivery of clean water and energy from renewable sources.

Universal Basic Services

• • Certain essential services, depending on the country, should be free or very cheap and be accessible and affordable for all, according to need and not ability to pay, with clear rules and procedures for eligibility and entitlement.

  • Collective responsibility for meeting shared needs, exercised through democratically elected governments and public investment, with devolution of power to the lowest appropriate level (see civic participation). A key role for the state in distributing funds, setting standards and ensuring equal access.

  • Public services to be run by public sector organisations and not private companies, based on diverse models of ownership and control, with collaboration and partnerships within and between service areas. Meaningful participation by people who use services, alongside service workers, in decisions about design and delivery.

This harmful way of measuring a country’s success pits countries against each other to gain a bigger slice of the economic pie, which has to grow continually, so that ever larger slices are shared out amongst the richest countries as a symbol of their success. What goes into this growth is irrelevant - it could be ecological destruction, poverty and exploitation, even natural disasters and war, which both grow the economy.

The dominant neoliberal-capitalist economy (the extractive economy) is based on a religious-like belief in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) measurements.

Economy measured by GDP growth:

• measures products and services regardless of whether they are beneficial or harmful to society and nature (e.g. disasters, accidents etc. raise the GDP)

• does not measure or value natural or social wellbeing

• does not take into account inequality and injustice of any kind

• does not count unpaid labour (including hidden labour- e.g. domestic labour/ childcare) or consider the informal economy.

Therefore, we need a different measure of success, one that abolishes GDP and replaces it with better indicators for guiding an economy's production, consumption and contribution to wellbeing – we call this approach “post-GDP”. Any new GDP metric could also reward regeneration efforts by linking them dynamically to the remaining carbon reserve. Replacing GDP with a better alternative, however, is not straightforward. There have been several proposals to overcome the limitations of GDP, including those mentioned above, and others such as Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Genuine Progress Indicator, Ecological Footprint, Happy Planet Index, Adjusted Net Savings, Comprehensive Wealth, and the Inclusive Wealth Index. The most dominant ones are created from the perspective of the Global North, which is also acknowledged by those involved in their development.

The most promising are as follows:

• The Social Wealth Index, currently being developed by the Center for Partnership Studies, which measures “the economic value of caring for people and planet” and aims to change “economic thinking in ways appropriate for our post-industrial, climate change impacted and post-COVID 19 eras”.

• The wellbeing government economy project – where Iceland is participating with New Zealand and Scotland among others – is another attempt to develop a new economic model which is centred on wellbeing rather than on production and consumption, and is reinforced by the OECD (a sign that this has the potential to become mainstream).

• Finally, the Wellbeing Economy Alliance has recently launched a new briefing paper and webinar on how to go beyond GDP, which sets out a three pronged strategy, firstly to harmonise the “beyond-GDP alternatives” indicators based on their commonalities, to develop policy tools, and finally to change the social narrative and the growth mindset. Including the Global South perspective has been identified as crucial to the next phase.

It is vital to implement any alternative systems that do not rely on GDP in as many countries or places as possible, which will also reflect the need for a pluralistic approach. For society to function within ecological limits, with the wellbeing of people in mind, we need to make growth irrelevant, by adopting an a-growth, (growth agnostic) approach. Neither the pursuit of growth, nor the reduction of material and energy uses for human use in order to achieve degrowth, would be effective in all cases because of the different needs and contexts. The real target of public policies should be the satisfaction of basic needs for all and some sectors will need to grow in order to achieve this.

Advocating to limit the scale and power of companies

Some criteria for an alternative measure of success which limits the scale and power of private companies, described as The Common Good Product, are summarised here:

• Measure all relevant aspects of life quality. Developed as a national policy tool it should sit above GDP as the first economy steering tool.

• Transitioning of multinationals over a certain size to smaller companies and cooperatives and requiring Common Good Balance sheets/B corp such as certificates, specifically in priority areas such as energy, food, housing and commons such as personal data, knowledge, biodiversity reserve lands and waters. The transition should start with moving away from energy monopolies to community energy schemes. Support should be given to small and medium enterprises and other cooperative businesses and their activities should be shielded from large companies.

• Companies must transform their business models to legally comply with the 1.5C temperature goal agreed by the Paris Agreement and introduce a ban on toxic dividends.

• No public money to companies which are:

  • • • registered in tax havens and

      • whose activity endangers biodiversity and keeps us above 1.5ºC.

• Better rules and regulations to limit negative effects of the shareholder economy and of advertising in public spaces.

• Limit the power of companies, ensuring democratic control (power of law above corporate power), independent public regulators, mandatory unbundling in regulated sectors, ban oligopolies, i.e. limit the share of any company or corporation (including subsidiaries and sisters) within any given sector to a maximum of 15%.

Work with allies to promote wellbeing as a consistent indicator for Beyond-GDP

As mentioned above, the Wellbeing Economy Alliance has recently launched a new briefing paper and webinar on how to go beyond GDP, which sets out a three pronged strategy, as follows:

1. Harmonise - because there are too many Beyond-GDP alternatives, international institutions need to step up and help harmonise Beyond-GDP indicators to ensure there are consistent measures of success for the performance of a Wellbeing Economy.

2. Develop Policy Tools which show governments how to enhance wellbeing, sustainability and equity in their societies.

3. Change the Social Narrative - the development of globally harmonised statistics and policy tools will help journalists and the general public to shift their belief on economic success to a narrative which values wellbeing, sustainability, and equity.

The work on harmonisation will be taken up by the author of the briefing, Rutger Hoekstra at the United Nations University with one of the goals being to include all countries but especially the Global South.

Work with allies to promote alternatives that use wellbeing as a measure of success

For the Global South, where basic wellbeing needs are lacking, there should be support for prioritising the expansion of activities such as healthcare, education, access to clean water and healthy food (including economic activity) - as long as any economic activity also preserves planetary boundaries and a just and fair society worldwide. Collaboration with allies, in particular Indigenous communities, already working in these areas might be a good approach, especially on issues that Greenpeace isn’t known for. Greenpeace also wants to test if such collaboration could add value to allies’ work and bring important voices to the mainstream where voices from the Global South can influence the global debate on alternatives to GDP.

Work with allies to promote tools for organizations and wider society to measure wellbeing

The organisation Economy for the Common Good has a “Common Good Matrix'' to provide guidance for evaluating an organization’s contribution to people and the planet. The “Common Good Balance Sheet” is based on this matrix and can be used by companies, municipalities and other organizations to draw up a Balance Sheet to describe their own contribution, alongside a conventional balance sheet listing its assets and liabilities. This reporting innovation is perhaps better described as a scorecard. It awards participating organizations points based on the extent to which they have acted in a humane, co-operative, sustainable, just and democratic manner. There are minus points for violating labour standards, pollution, unequal pay for women and using tax havens. According to Christian Felber, the founder of the Economy for the Common Good “Money is only the means, it is not the goal. The present system’s slogan is: the business of business is business. My alternative vision says the purpose of business is the common good.” (as reported in the Financial Times).

We are at a crossroads, where society has to decide what should grow and what should degrow. What is lacking at the moment is voices from Global South and especially Indigenous communities which have a lot to offer to this debate. These perspectives need to be integrated into the beyond GDP alternatives and discussions on redefining wellbeing. In this sense, Greenpeace is, for example, promoting the growth of decentralized renewable energy and the managed decline or abolishment (i.e. degrowth) of fossil energy systems. As such it is not about universal ‘growth’ or ‘no growth’ or ‘degrowth’, it is about reducing our material and eco-social footprint by radically reducing non-renewable resource use and its consequences (emissions, degradations, impact on local economies, etc.). Therefore, it makes sense to support partially maintaining economic growth for economic activities such as renewable energies or labour intensive small eco-farming.

Narratives in the media about wellbeing, equality, justice and restoring the rights of nature and Indigenous peoples become mainstream, taking over from the narrative about the economy and growth. Many local projects and initiatives have demonstrated how beyond-GDP indexes can be used in practical ways to protect and regenerate nature and society, promoting their use. As a result, a new accounting framework is set up globally to measure the Wellbeing Economy, with GDP and the concept of growth no longer the dominant measure. The focus is on improving wellbeing as the core lens to view what is meaningful to society, with the different perceptions of wellbeing of the Global South and North reflected and accounted for. The new measures reward regeneration and care as the basis of the social fabric of successful and sustainable societies.

Case studies:

Gross National Happiness

• • Bhutan: "Being a latecomer to macro-level processes of development, Bhutan is well-known for trying to avoid – despite a tight dependency on the Indian economy – the negative consequences of globalisation. Among many other initiatives, the government of Bhutan has invited prominent ecological economists favorable to post-growth ideas to provide advice on how to strengthen its “new development paradigm". Although Bhutan's GDP has been growing fast over the past three decades, largely through a series of peaks following important hydroelectric projects (almost one half of GDP is produced by the private sector, including farmers, while the rest comes from state-run corporations), the country has also put in place a number of original policies limiting GDP growth and seeking to enhance wellbeing and sustainability, for example: free education and healthcare for all; severe restrictions on foreign investments; no WTO membership; no outdoor advertising; heavy taxes on car imports; severe limits on mass tourism (and ban on alpinism); limits on mining; half of the country under protected areas; constitutional 60% of forest cover; and a declared willingness to shift to 100% organic agriculture.

  • Bhutan has also launched a new concept which looks beyond GDP: Gross National Happiness (GNH). Although the researchers point out that the example of Bhutan is unique to circumstances in that country and may not be easily applicable to other circumstances, the example of Bhutan – with all its limitations – shows that elements of a post-growth, or a-growth programme are not as utopian and far away as they might sound.

  • The Wellbeing Economy Governments partnership (WEGo) is a collaboration of national and regional governments promoting sharing of expertise and transferrable policy practices. It’s current members are Scotland, New Zealand (which has a pioneering Wellbeing Budget that is designed expressly to prioritise the wellbeing of citizens), Wales, Iceland and the OECD, with Ireland likely to become the latest member and a hub being established in Costa Rica. It is another attempt to develop a new economic model which is centred on wellbeing rather than on production and consumption, and is reinforced by the OECD. It is connected to the Wellbeing Economy Alliance, a collaboration of organisations, alliances, movements and individuals globally, with articles on many subjects including Indigenous Peoples, Nigeria, and Bhutan.

Wellbeing and ecological footprints

• • An index (2020) by the New Economics Foundation is based on a ratio of a country’s well-being measurements (such as life expectancy, equality and satisfaction) divided by its Ecological Footprint. It measures who gets the best lives per unit of renewable natural resource. The top country is Costa Rica, home to amazing biodiversity and residents who have higher well-being than the residents of many higher-income countries, including the US and the UK. Residents in Costa Rica also live longer than Americans. All this is achieved with an Ecological Footprint per person that is one third of the American Ecological Footprint and a GDP per capita that is less than a quarter of that of many Western European and North American countries.

Care is the social fabric
When care is factored into any measure of progress, it takes a surprisingly important role. For example:

• • The Social Wealth Index (SWI) is designed to provide business and government policymakers data highlighting the economic return from investing in caring for people and nature. It considers findings from neuroscience demonstrating that the "high-quality human capital" required for our new knowledge-service economy largely hinges on ensuring good care and education for children in their early years. In short, the SWI points to new ways of thinking about economic health, which recognizes value, and rewards the typically non-market areas such as women's work, care work, and environmental regeneration, and includes social and economic justice work as "productive work."

When accurately accounted for, counter-intuitively, care emerges as both a prime mover of economic growth and a reliable indicator of a nation's current and future societal wellbeing, including economic vitality and disinclination towards criminal activity. Care offers a social fabric, an ecosystem of connections, based on trust, reciprocity, and sharing It increases the resilience of society in the face of crisis.

Reinventing the idea of credit
Tying credit to real improvements in natural ecosystems could be a practical way to encourage people to regenerate nature.

• • A tree mortgage scheme in the Indian State of Kerala enables farmers and residents to mortgage their trees in return for an interest-free loan. For example, residents can plant a tree, and after three years they can mortgage each sapling for an interest-free loan that can be renewed annually for 10 years. The money need only be repaid if the tree is chopped down. The tree banking scheme has an ambition to reverse the damage and turn Meenangadi, a town of about 35,000 people into a carbon neutral region. So far 300,000 saplings have been planted and it is guaranteeing a sustainable income for farmers (the aim is to double the income of the farmers without overly industrialising the region) and bring supplementary income to residents through the sale of fruit and other products.

Use this moment of disruption to

SHIFT MINDSETS

FROM: Growth is crucial to our economy and a good thing in any case. Even if it has some negative manifestations, it balances out and things become better over time,

TO: Belief in infinite and mindless growth is causing irreparable damage to the planet and destroying communities and individuals’ lives. We must refocus where we need investment and growth to rebalance the system and increase wellbeing and happiness.

FROM: Corporate profits are a reflection of how healthy our economy is, and it is effective and efficient to privatize as many sectors and services as possible

TO: Companies need to benefit the community, nature and the social fabric. We should invest in and grow our cooperatives and our connection with nature - not polluting and extractivist industries.

FROM: It's unethical to deny developing countries the development opportunities that come with economic growth and the creation of capital wealth that trickles down to improve living conditions for everyone.

TO: The development model of endless and radical growth realized by industrialized countries has created the very problems we are facing today – natural degradation, social inequalities and alienation, detrimental global footprints etc. Global South countries do not have to simply repeat these mistakes. Indigenous wisdom and ancestral practices are central to sustainable living. We promote pluralism and economies that don't leave anyone behind and respect the needs and limits of nature.

SHIFT POWER

1. People’s identities and life goals are closely aligned with the idea of growth – shaped by ideas of social progress, personal status and success through careers, rising income and consumption. Even seemingly alternative goals such as ‘personal fulfilment’ and women’s ‘empowerment’ can be infused with ideas that remain tied to the growth paradigm, for instance if fulfilment is sought through high consumption and high emissions practices such as extensive long haul travel or expensive hobbies and gadgets are automatically considered a natural right. This collective fixation is the power basis of the growth economy; shifting this power requires changing the mindsets and the culture in our societies. We need realisation and recognition that greater fulfilment in living lies in wellbeing and community, which cannot be found in increased consumption.
   

2. Replacing GDP with alternative measurement(s) globally will require a big political power shift. This will be helped by many different examples of how countries and regions are using alternative indicators to improve wellbeing and environmental sustainability. The experience of using alternative indicators, or of taking alternative strategies such as a-growth will provide the impetus, and evidence of success, beyond the crude measure of GDP, will be the most persuasive.

SPARK STRUCTURAL CHANGE/ CREATE ENVIRONMENTAL BOUNDARIES

1. Any alternative indicators that replace GDP need to incorporate boundaries, indicators and incentives around the following:

• Use economic (post-GDP) indicators that measure economic success not merely by the quantity of produced goods and services (GDP) but by the contribution to the preservation of public resources and welfare, sustainability and common good goals.

• Such indicators are predominantly qualitative, focusing on basic needs and wellbeing. An alternative indicator is for example, Gross National Happiness (GNH), in Bhutan.

• Incentives and value on the health and wellbeing of communities, including the value of unpaid care work.

• Respect for Indigenous peoples, land rights for ancestral lands, and value given to their cultural perspective.

• Establish economic strategies and plans that identify which activities will have to grow (e.g. cooperatives, gardens, community-based organizations) while others will have to decline (e.g. polluting firms, extractivism, the advertising industry), the ultimate goal being to find a global and sustainable steady state.

• Boundaries around what needs to stay in the ground (fossil fuels, minerals), and what needs to be protected (forests, marine ecosystems and important habitats), with incentives and value on the regeneration of nature (forests, marine ecosystems and important habitat).

• Limits to corporate power (see above)

The Wellbeing Economy Alliance, includes webinars, links to organisations, alliances, movements and individuals and publications such as the recent “Measuring the Wellbeing Economy” on how to go beyond GDP.

“The Spirit Level” Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better, 2009, Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson

Gerber, Julien-François & Raina, Rajeswari. (2018). Post-Growth in the Global South? Some Reflections from India and Bhutan. Ecological Economics. 150. 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2018.02.020.

The organisation Economy for the Common Good has resources and tools to build a comprehensive economic model, emerging from a holistic world view and based on grassroots democracies.

The wellbeing of people and natural living systems go hand in hand. Wellbeing can mean different things in different contexts but its central characteristic of interdependence is universal, connecting us all with each other in the human world and with the living ecosystems of the Earth. Social justice and addressing inequality increase wellbeing and are crucial to protect nature; in turn, ecosystem rights are also needed to protect and restore nature so that nature can protect and sustain us all. Benefits for people, climate and biodiversity cannot be played off against each other. Valuing oceans, forests and the land for the collective benefit provides us with healthy, living ecosystems in terms of clean air and protection against climate disruption, rather than corporate profit for the commodities extracted through natural destruction.

We need to replace damaging economic activities that over-exploit natural resources, workers, local communities and entire countries, with economic activities that restore nature and work in harmony with natural ecosystems by respecting boundaries, with the priority on tackling the climate crisis and biodiversity loss. The rights of workers, their conditions and the type of work done are also key to wellbeing: decent and meaningful work that benefits the community and nature needs to be prioritised (Work less and better). This applies to all human activities, from street cleaners to advertising executives.

For economic activities to restore balance, there needs to be a shift in their primary purpose, away from corporate or individual profit, towards the collective benefit of the people, societies and natural ecosystems within the countries where they take place.

We also need to truly understand that nature is the source of all wealth, wellbeing and prosperity in the world, as African local traditional knowledge and wisdom points out “we protect the Earth to live better, and that we do not need to take everything out of the Earth in order to grow our wealth”. In the context of today, large areas need to be left alone to allow ecosystems to recover and provide a buffer against the worst impacts of climate change. Left alone, nature is the primary source of our wellbeing and the ultimate source of any economic prosperity.

Campaigns in these regions could contribute to the social and ecological justice narrative, lifting the most vulnerable from poverty, improving wellbeing and advocating for Pluralism by challenging the monolithic development model imposed by the West. We need to propose the expansion of activities (including economic activity) that directly contribute to meeting basic wellbeing needs in the Global South in line with the proposed principles and proposals above).

To make the biggest impact on wellbeing, the focus needs to be on reforms in sectors that are critical for economies, which large numbers of people rely on for their livelihoods and which are highly exploitative both socially and ecologically at the moment, such as farming, forestry and fisheries, energy, and in mobility/transportation.

Building movements to restore nature for the collective benefit
Implement rights-based ecosystem protection and restoration: recognising the need to restore and maintain ecosystem health by placing areas of land and ocean off-limits to industrial activity (with at least 30% by 2030 as a milestone towards protecting half of the Earth from industrial activity by 2050) to enable the protection and regeneration of ecosystems with maximum benefit for people, biodiversity and climate.

Aside from leaving some natural ecosystems alone, economic activities in the sectors above need to transition away from extractivist and environmentally damaging business models and towards systems which prioritise the balance of nature and the wellbeing of people and communities, whatever wellbeing means for the relevant people and communities.

Include policies and practices that include all stakeholders in just transition planning

• Holistic understanding of the social impacts in regions going through transition

• Participation, dialogue and consultation, whatever the democratic system in place

• From the outset, decent, secure livelihoods for all - not only contingent on relocation

• Respect for collective bargaining and unionisation

• Polluter pays principle, for the cost of the process to make the transition just

Promoting positive examples of alternatives to challenge large scale destructive methods

• Mainstreaming of ecological farming practices by prioritising foodshed production and consumption within ecological boundaries, and food production for human consumption as opposed to animal feed.

• Transition to low-impact fisheries (by promoting a transition from fisheries production dominated by large-scale, capital-intensive, destructive methods to smaller scale, community-based, labour-intensive fisheries using ecologically responsible, selective fishing technology and environmentally sound practices).

• Prevent any further destruction of forests, especially ancient forests, and implement comprehensive programmes for urban and rural reforestation

• Transition to an efficient and 100% renewable energy model and transition away from the destructive fossil fuel based system.

• Provide direct access between producers and consumers

• Support for local and regional trade.