Speaker: Dr. Anders Hayden
Topic: A Wellbeing Economy: Kinder, Gentler Growth or a Breakthrough Beyond Growth?
Time: Apr 20, 2022 13:30 Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Summary:
The concept of a wellbeing economy shifts the central goal from economic growth to the generation of human wellbeing in ecologically sustainable ways. Countries that have embraced the idea of a wellbeing economy have taken steps to move beyond GDP as the overarching measurement of prosperity and explored innovative policies such as wellbeing budgeting. This talk will examine the importance of a wellbeing economy as a step toward a sustainable post-growth economy, potential pitfalls as governments embrace the concept, and possible ways to ensure that it has transformative effects.
Bio:
Dr. Anders Hayden is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, with an emphasis on environmental politics. He is particularly interested in the concept of sufficiency and related efforts to move beyond an economy centred on the growth of production and consumption. This interest has led him to examine issues such as sustainable consumption, work-time reduction, and the political and policy impacts of alternative measures of wellbeing and prosperity (“beyond GDP” measurement) in Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Bhutan. He is the author of When Green Growth Is Not Enough: Climate Change, Ecological Modernization, and Sufficiency (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014) and Sharing the Work, Sparing the Planet: Work Time, Consumption & Ecology (Zed Books / Between the Lines, 1999). He is the co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of Global Sustainability Governance (Routledge, 2020) and the forthcoming book Towards Sustainable Well-Being: Moving beyond GDP in Canada and the World (University of Toronto Press, 2022).
Clay Dasilva is a PhD Candidate in Global Governance at The Balsillie School of International Affairs through the University of Waterloo. His dissertation examines the political-economy of Sustainable Wellbeing Economy ideas, particularly in relation to the debate between Green Growth and Degrowth perspectives within Global Environmental Governance. Clay holds an MA in Global Governance from The Balsillie School and a BA in Sociology & Anthropology from the University of Western Ontario.
