Planetary Choices

The Wellbeing Economy Alliance—A Conversation with Amanda Janoo

• Center for New Critical Politics and Governance • Season 1 • Episode 7

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In episode 7 of Mapping the Planetary, we speak with Amanda Janoo, Economics and Policy Lead at the Wellbeing Economy Alliance (WEAll)—a global network of changemakers working to transform our economic systems. 

Janoo introduces WEAll’s core mission: to prioritize the wellbeing of people and the planet over traditional, GDP-centered models of growth. She outlines how rethinking economic frameworks and embracing participatory, goal-driven policy design can pave the way for more just, sustainable, and resilient economies. 

The conversation explores the meaning and importance of a “wellbeing economy,” the shortcomings of conventional growth metrics, and the potential of collaborative policymaking to shape a more equitable future.

Academic Reference:

Amanda Janoo, Hagen Schulz-Forberg, James Quilligan; The Wellbeing Economy Alliance—A Conversation with Amanda Janoo. Global Perspectives 10 March 2025; 6 (1): 144309. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/gp.2025.144309

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This podcast was created and produced by the Research Center for New Critical Politics and Governance (CPG).

To watch the video version of this episode, please visit the link below:
https://cas.au.dk/en/cpg/podcast/mapping-the-planetary

Hagen Schulz-Forberg (HSF):

Today, James and I are pleased to have Amanda Janoo with us, who is the Economics and Policy Lead for the Wellbeing Economy Alliance, a global collaboration of organizations, movements, and individuals committed to transforming the economic system to prioritize human and ecological wellbeing over mere financial growth. She's also a fellow at New America. And with a master's degree from Cambridge University, Amanda Janoo has over a decade of experience working with governments and international development institutions around the world, including the United Nations and the African Development Bank. Her work is to create just and sustainable economies through global-oriented and participatory policy design processes. Amanda, it's great to have you at Planetary Choices.

Amanda Janoo (AJ):

Oh, thank you so much for having me. It's a privilege, it's great.

HSF:

I'm looking forward to this and so is James. Will you tell us about your background a little bit? I was hesitant to call, say you have a BA in economics because I'm sure the background is much wider or an MA in economics, is much wider and how you came to the Wellbeing Alliance.

AJ:

Oh, yeah, sure. Well, first of all, I should say, when I was going through university, it was leading up and during the global financial crisis. So, studying economics and politics at that time, I think there was just an inherent understanding of the limitations of a lot of the conventional thinking within mainstream economics or neoclassical economics. And so, I got really interested in more heterodox, it's pretty much anything that's not the mainstream, ways of understanding our economic systems. And the one thing coming out of university I was clear on was that neoliberalism was the worst. I didn't really know what to do about it, but this whole idea that governments should just take a hands-off approach to the economy and trust in sort of the disciplinary powers of the global free market to lead them to infinite growth seemed highly problematic and very anti-democratic. And so, I ended up going to Cambridge because Ha-Joon Chang was there, and he was one of my favorite economists at the time and still is. And he's very passionate about industrial policy because he came, grew up in South Korea and so really saw the power of more intentional government intervention of protecting and promoting certain industries to transform that system. And that's industrial policy sort of felt like the last bastion against neoliberalism at the time. And so ended up working for the UN, as you mentioned for a long time, supporting governments to co-create their own industrial strategies. And a big part of that process was starting by asking them what they were really wanting to achieve with that economic strategy. And that question was so important because it gave you a sense of their development goals, which were different in different places for some countries. It was inequality reduction for some, it was peace for others. It was resiliency and the goals we set really matter as they determine what types of economic activities we want to protect and promote and which ones we want to sunset or decline. And so that really led me to the wellbeing economy movement and alliances here was a whole global collaboration of actors who were working collectively to fundamentally redefine progress, to really center social and ecological wellbeing as the ultimate aim of any economic system and to really build the power base needed to transform our dominant economic paradigms and the realities of our economic systems.

HSF:

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

AJ:

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

James Quilligan (JQ):

It sounds like there's a lot of pluralism in your membership just as you're supporting an economy that should be much more plural in its structure. I was going to ask you, what are who are some of your key partners in this membership?

AJ:

Mm, yes, absolutely. You're definitely right, James. Pluralism is definitely one of the founding principles of this. And I would say at this point, our membership is pretty huge. There are like thousands of different organizations. We have an alliance of seven different governments. We have a variety of different businesses and lots of individual activists, and as well as a lot of really leading academics. So, we can think of we have ambassadors who are like Kate Raworth and Jason Hickel and Bob Costanza and people are coming from a variety of different schools of thought who believe, I guess, in this overall mission of system change.

HSF:

It's impressive. It's an impressive organization when you can spend hours just browsing the website and reading and trying to understand the complexity of it. It's really impressive. And I would like to ask you whether something that connects you is that you look at Earth as a regenerative system. And so whichever schools of thought you may have, that this is kind of a common meeting point. Am I right? Earth as a regenerative system? Earth, yeah, or planet. Planet Earth.

AJ:

Mm-hmm. Yes, absolutely. Yes, I think one of the core principles is the importance of connection and of right relationships between people and nature. And I think a lot of the harms that are created within our current economic system is one, to present it as some sort of natural system that is totally devoid from any actual natural logic, right? So, the idea that we can continue growing and continuously producing and consuming forever. I remember at, I think it was maybe at the EU Beyond Growth Conference, Kate Raworth was mentioning how a lot of our fixation on growth comes from our fear of death. And so, a failure to accept and honor the natural rhythms of any natural cycle in many ways is what leads us to have a really destructive economic system that is oriented towards perpetual growth.

HSF:

And yeah, that makes a lot of sense that this is something that unites all of you. And I was wondering how you then on an organizational level, you have local hubs, national chapters, these great individuals, these, let's call them big thinkers or like big public intellectuals, even policymakers, they're so influential. And organizations, how does that hold together? How can you find the co-evolving system? Or how do you do this?

AJ:

I'll be honest with you, it is a real challenge, right? I wouldn't say we have figured out all of the answers for this. Because one of the important things to emphasize is that when we talk about a wellbeing economy, we're really talking about wellbeing economies. So, the way that I at least define an economy is as the way we produce and provide for one another. And that system is always going to be influenced by our history, our geographies, our cultures, our policies, and many other different variables. So, the idea that there's any one size fits all process of transformation, let alone goals for that transformation, I think is only help serves to like to re-perpetuate a lot of the sort of colonial notions that are embedded in a lot of our contemporary economic thinking as this sort of one size fits all system and framework. And so that does add a lot of complexity, right? So, you want to ensure that it's specific enough to not be meaningless as a concept and also open enough to allow for contextual adaptation and to be open and welcoming to a broad range of different stakeholders who are starting from different starting points. And I think that is one of the real challenges we face is that tension, right? Between how much do we define this so that it's very clear what it is, versus how much do we keep it open so that it can be inclusive, pluralist, and contextual?

HSF:

Okay, but I also think that if you actually manage to keep contradictions and contestations, disagreements within your, on a maybe not always friendly note, but at least among friendly, let's say general outlook with each other, I mean, that's great. It's like a little, it's like a democracy, every own criticism and your own reflection build in. I find it maybe more sustainable than a nicely, worked out, neatly described ideology to which everybody bows.

AJ:

I appreciate that. I'm going to bring that back to the team.

QJ:

I know that you have an avid interest in economic policy, which is one of the facets, of course, of WEAll so I wanted to ask you about the policy design course and the organizations that have joined it. And what do you see as some of the accomplishments that the policy design course has achieved at this point?

AJ:

Yes, so I was hired in 2020, actually, I started in March 2020 with WEAll the best and worst of times, perhaps, to join any organization right at the beginning of the pandemic. And I was hired to help them develop a Just Transition Guide. And I was looking around and I felt like there were a lot of actually guides around the Just Transition, but what seemed from my experience to be missing was really, there's no lack of people telling policymakers what to do, but there's very few people helping them to figure out how to do it. And so a lot of this was how do we bring together our, again, diverse membership to go through a participatory process of really gaining insights on what tools, examples, and resources and tips are out there for a process of really redefining progress away from economic growth, social and ecological wellbeing, to then use participatory processes to identify which economic activities you really want to support or decline, to support that transformation, to consider different forms of policy, implementation, of budgeting, of evaluation that can help you to continuously learn and adapt on that journey towards those longer goals. And this was definitely inspired by the Wellbeing Economy Governments Partnership, which currently is comprised of New Zealand, Finland, Scotland, Wales, Canada, and I feel like I'm missing one, Iceland. Yes, Iceland. They just helped the WEGO Summit, actually. And so all of those governments are in an informal learning group to support one another as they've all developed alternative indicators of progress, but most governments then get stuck there as there tends to be, sort of you throw all of these social, environmental, and economic indicators into a soup somewhere, and then it's really hard to make sense of them because we're treating them as commensurate when the reality is that the economy is just a part of our society within a larger ecosystem. And so much of this is around how do you actually downgrade the economy and disaggregate it so that we can get a better understanding of which, what type of economic design is really going to be aligned with our longer-term goals, and then what kind of governance system can allow us to maintain consistency towards those longer-term goals in a way whilst abiding to democratic principles, right? And so that's a lot of the sort of tricky thing that I've always been interested in exploring as well within this work. And so, coming out of that, Margreet Frieling, who's now our Knowledge Lead, was working for the New Zealand government a lot on their development of their national performance framework and had been consulting with the OECD. And so came on board because she was really passionate about trying to transform this into an online training sort of force to allow for it to be used by a much wider range of policymakers. And so, I had connected with Jakob from ZOE. Do you know them? The Future Fit Economies? It's like a think tank in Germany but works a lot at the EU level. So, we had created a policy makers network, and Margreet began to engage folks within that network. And then we also collaborated with the Doughnut Economics Action Lab to really co-create this online training course. And I must be honest that, unfortunately, I cannot give you the latest stats. Margreet would know this, of how many people have actually visited the site. But I remember seeing it's definitely thousands, yeah? So, it's really gotten a lot of engagement and incredible feedback. And so, something like everything else, we're constantly trying to iterate and evolve. But it seems to be really meeting a need for policymakers and communities to feel like this type of economic system change is not only possible, but already on its way.

HSF:

Who are these people that take your courses?

AJ:

So, I mean, I think that there are quite a number of civil servants, people who work within government agencies, but also a lot of community members, organizations who are really interested in understanding what are sort of the practical processes that they can take within their own communities to advance a lot of these transformations. So, for example, after we developed the policy design guide, we did a pilot in four different communities, local communities in some of our different hubs or like WEGO countries. And so, one of them was in Scotland. I'm going to name this because it's a really incredible example of where they had just passed a law that was related to the rights of children. And so, there was a community that was historically disadvantaged, like more poor. And they went through a process of engaging young people and children to do this process of visioning through communication, but also drawing and other play-based kind of visioning activities. And then to really think about, okay, what are the major priorities for this community? And they identified the need for closer access to goods and services. So, the fact that people had to go really far away to get the things that they needed, a need for greater social trust and connection, as they saw a lot of like crime and drug use and other types of things, and the need for more play for adults and children, so more time. And so, one of their first suggestions was to have a Christmas festival because they felt like that would help to support local businesses, create spaces for more social connection, and create opportunities more fun and engagement between people and children. And it's just amazing to recognize that like children are natural system thinkers. And when taking through this process, can identify really upstream types of ways of thinking about what's needed for the holistic wellbeing of community. And so, for me, that's an incredible example of challenging a lot of the paternalistic nature of policy, where often we are hesitant to engage people because we feel like we know better or fearful that if we engage them, they'll want things that we can't afford or whatever. And so, by definition, engaging children illustrates that a paternalistic approach is really not necessary in this day and age.

JQ:

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

AJ:

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

HSF:

That's terrific. I'm sort of still in my head. I'm playing with the formulation that you had, that you're not a think tank, but more movement. Which is interesting, fascinating, and probably exciting for your members, and probably also attracting a lot more members of different kind of members and support than a think tank. But that means when you're in movement that you want to actively engage also with public discourse, not just talk to policymakers or politicians, but kind of backdoor policy. I read my paper; I have the newest study. But you want to tackle public discourse and change the narratives, turning the big wheel of public narratives. So how do you do that?

AJ:

Yeah. Well, and I should say, my role as the Economics and Policy Lead has always been in the more nerdy aspects of this, similarly Margreet And so I should explain our theory of change in WEAll. It's presented as a tree. And the top of it is really around building the power base, the movement, mass movement that is needed for economic systems change. And to do that by amplifying, connecting, and convening a wide range of actors in the space. And to feed that movement through new narratives, which move us beyond critique of the current system to really centering hopeful alternatives, and to feed it with knowledge. So that's sort of the root. But we focus a lot on the democratization of that knowledge. So how do we demystify the economy? How do we synthesize the wide range of initiatives, examples, or approaches that are being used to advance this? So practically, for example, when I started at WEAll, I focused a lot, or with WEAll, I focused a lot on bringing our membership together. So, academics or other practitioners to co-create briefing papers, which started with the vision, right? Let's say if it's around food, or zero waste, or depending on the topic that they were really interested in health, what is the vision in a wellbeing economy of what we really want? A food system that ensures everybody has access to nutritious food that had grown in a regenerative way, et cetera. And before moving to what our current system looks like, and how it's not aligned, and then really showcasing the exciting examples and solutions that are out there to illustrate that movement towards that vision is possible. And one of the things I really struggled with, I realized, was one, often getting academics to just do high-level synthesis is challenging, because they're specialized in a very specific area of knowledge, and with specific focus areas. So, I actually ended up getting a lot of students to support with this process of that broader-based synthesis. And one of the things that they commented on was that it required a totally different methodological approach than they had been taught in school. So, academia had really equipped them very well at deconstructing ideas but had not equipped them very well at finding solutions. And so, a lot of the solutions are embedded in white papers, project documents, organizational case studies, et cetera. And so, it requires you to look at a very different range of places to really find those examples and solutions. And so that was quite a bit of learning for me. And also, to your point, yes, we're not a think tank, but definitely play, I think, an important role in helping to synthesize the ideas that are out there.

JQ:

So, I imagine this raises the questions of whose knowledge counts, who benefits, and who decides in the management of the direction of wellbeing. And how do you manage that?

AJ:

So again, a really great and tricky question, James, because the reality is that we are a global organization, and the majority of our members really have started and have been predominantly in Europe. There was some in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, et cetera. And so, while our team has become more global now, and we're really creating a strong effort to engage more in Africa, in Latin America, in the MENA region, in Asia, for example, the reality is that economics itself is a Western philosophical construct. And so similarly, even the new economy space, that the critiques of that are often very Global North dominated and very white in their sort of presentation, because there's a lot, fundamentally, the cultural philosophy animating at least mainstream neoclassical economics is very based on this sort of like Anglo-Saxon, maybe somewhat Germanic, you know, like philosophical notions of like human nature and structures and systems. And so oftentimes, the kind of knowledge that we may be most interested in understanding will not be framed as a new economy or a wellbeing economy, or even as an economy initiative. It might be things that are just viewed as relevant climate action or indigenous ways of life or, you know, and so that's one of the things that I think we, you know, people who use the new economy term often get pushed back with, especially from indigenous populations, because they're like, this is not new, right? Like the idea of Ubuntu or Swaraj or Buen Vivir of really living in a society that is in balance and harmony with itself, with others in the natural world are principles that are incredibly ancient. It's just that we're, yeah, we're now trying to reconcile those with an economy that has created so much dislocation and damage and perpetuation of global inequalities and injustice. So that is not an answer, right? Like that is to just, you know, emphasize the legitimacy of that question because I think it is something that we wrestle with a lot and, yeah, are constantly trying to navigate.

HSF:

Yeah, if I may get in this, maybe I have an adjacent question to that or follow-up question. The list of countries that you mentioned where, you know, you have kind of a breakthrough, a policy breakthrough. These are all Western countries, small Western countries. Why? Why is that the case? Scotland, Wales, Iceland, New Zealand, these are all relatively small, progressive liberal economies. And then again, I was brought back to the concept of wellbeing, which has so much potential, at least, in being globally, being like a plug and play global concept. Is there any other country or political economy that is close and plugging into that? Pachamama, could be, can that be, can that become wellbeing? Could you delve a little deeper there in how this is going on?

AJ:

Well, I should say that the original group of countries that were, I think, originally planning on creating the partnership were Costa Rica, Slovenia, and Scotland, right? And so, Costa Rica is particularly important to emphasize because the thing is that even though we call them wellbeing economy governments, none of them are actually a wellbeing economy, right? They have aspirations. It is an aspirational vision. And that's what also makes this movement challenging is that it's not like we can be like, "Look, that's a wellbeing economy." And that's how they got there. It is something that we are aspiring towards and need to hold a certain level of humility also in terms of the contradictions and challenges that are going to be involved in part of that transformation. But I would say, you know, Costa Rica is maybe one of the closest, yeah, in terms of achieving really high levels of human flourishing and wellbeing with very little, minimal, less environmental impact and extraction. And so, you know, another policy example that is one of my favorites is from the city of Curridabat. Their mayor Edgar Mora went through a process of making all of their pollinators citizens. So, the birds and the butterflies and the bees as a way to fundamentally redefine infrastructure and urban planning because he articulated that from, like, butterflies’ perspective or the city looked like an archipelago. And so, this reframing of them is also citizens that allowed for the prioritization of green spaces as public infrastructure and as part of the living ecosystem of that city. And I think it's reflective of a broader, you know, national policy that also exists when Costa Rica around ecosystem services where they have a 10% tax on oil and gas and that money immediately goes in to subsidizing land restoration, regenerative farming, land conservation, you know, and so they take from the bad and they give to the good in terms of environmental conservation point of view. And so those kinds of policies in Costa Rica, I think, are really inspiring, you know, and important for a different paradigm of development.

HSF:

Yeah, that does sound inspiring. That's great. Thank you. I hope there's more to come. And I really do. I have another question which is related to resources and the commons and how you feature those into the way you think about policies and the way you think about governance. Do you think that this kind of more regenerative or redistributive approach to resources needs to involve new forms of governance as well?

AJ:

Yeah, I mean, that's really at the heart of a lot of the work right now, right? So even the standard approach, right, and so much of the appeal of GDP is because it is not only a good proxy for economic output, but also for national income. So the thing is that because it's a proxy for national income, governments have largely gone on a board with just prioritizing that indicator above all others because the idea is let's just grow as quickly as possible and then we can take some of that wealth through taxes to fix any of the damages that were done to people and planet in the process. But the issue is that even the richest countries in the world now, because of the increasing severity and frequency of the environmental, social, political, cultural, like name it, crises are facing, are realizing that this, they just can't afford this approach anymore. And so, we're really going to need to move upstream, think about how to get the economic system to deliver more on those goals themselves and to really reimagine fundamentally the social welfare state. So how do we ensure that everybody's fundamental needs are met and produced sufficiently, but in ways that are in harmony and in line with the needs of all life on this planet, not just human's existence. And so, when I think about policy, I often, there's like, I will outline a certain taxonomy for you folks, right? It is to recognize that there is no silver bullet. And so, if you want to change behavior, and that's really the fundamental purpose of policy, is to shift collective behavior in line with some sort of national or community goal, you can do it in a variety of ways. You can do it through a regulation, right? Like just straight up requiring or banning people from doing certain things. You can incentivize certain behavior by giving them like subsidies, or you can make that behavior, you can discourage it, for example, through taxes or other types of disincentives. You can use information like a by local campaign or trainings or these sort of things. But the major, or you can also do public ownership, right? Where the government itself is the producer or provider of those goods. But the other option that is almost never considered is the commons of the government just actually getting out of the way, allowing community itself to govern or manage certain resources. And so, I'm particularly passionate about the commons, although often we don't use, I think the commons as a framing is more UK like sort of centered and its language sometimes. But I grew up in a small rural town. And so, so much of our governance was done through a participatory process, like at our town meeting, we didn't have a municipal government. We just had people come together and discuss and debate how much is going to go to the roads or the schools. And my mom grew up in a small fishing town in Maine with all of my cousins and uncles and grandfather and stuff being fishermen. And lobster fishing is organized as a common still to this day, right? So, it is a collective agreement on between the fishermen on how many traps are going to be put in to ensure the population and also the price for the fishermen. And, you know, and so there, I feel very strongly about the importance of that self-determination. I think the issue is just we're at a moment where more and more aspects of our lives are being commodified and subjected to the market. And so, what we need are more examples of where once something has been commodified, where do we bring it back, but not make it beholden to the state, but actually give it back to community, right? Like for its own governance or management. And I think that will be where a lot of the research and needs of examples for the future are because that we need that sort of rolling back and embracing of the commons because we're often stuck in the state/market dichotomy, but the reality is community is that other aspect and we need an appropriate balance between those three dimensions to ensure broad-based prosperity.

JQ:

Yeah, my own background is in the commons. However, I got to a point where I realized that without data, you really can't improve things. So, I wanted to ask you that as the resources of the world become less available, how does Wellbeing Economy Alliance internalize the Earth's limits or the planetary boundaries through your values of pluralism and solidarity and care and resilience? How are you turning those values into evidence-based indicators?

AJ:

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

HSF:

Do you also consult businesses?

AJ:

Hmm. So, I will say I personally do not as much. But my colleague Michael Weatherhead is very much focused on engaging with more of like business and financial actors and actually developed similar to our Wellbeing Economy Policy Design Guide, a business for the Wellbeing Economy Guide. And so, showcases a lot of examples within business of the ways in which they are transforming their production or ownership or governance structures in line with different values and principles. And so, it's a really important group of stakeholders. But my background is a little more in the nerdy theory and the policy sort of space.

JQ:

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

AJ:

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

JQ:

Good point.

HSF:

It's a very good point. Indeed. Does the wellbeing alliance kind of combine social and natural imbalances and kind of mitigate those or identify successful outcomes between those two?

AJ:

Yeah, I mean, it's a really tricky one. I can just say from my own personal, I also speak for myself for a moment. I understand theoretically that I am one, a part of nature. And I do not live my life in alignment with that recognition at all. Right. So, the way I live my life in the systems that I'm a part of are incredibly disconnected and detrimental, like to our natural world, right. And so, I experienced a level of cognitive distance there, which is really challenging to kind of overcome. And so I think there is, there is that broader cognitive distance, I think, in a lot of our movement, where even when we created, let's say, the WEAll needs, which were a participatory process by which our membership identified, like five things we really need our economy to be delivering, which are around like dignity, fairness, connection, nature and participation, nature as just one and sort of separate, right, like was a re-perpetuation, I think of anthropocentric worldviews. And so, as I was mentioning, I do think that a lot more indigenous communities, like this comes back to like, whose knowledge really counts in my experience working in international development for a long time. It really made me realize that a lot of the blueprints for the alternative economic system we are looking for are not going to come from the Global North. Like we think, for example, around circular economy, it's like, oh, look at the Danish high-tech model of circular economy. And it's like, living in India, I saw the most circularity I'd ever seen, but it's just because people are like rag pickers. And you know what I mean? They reuse everything. And there's a certain imperative within that way of living, right, that leads to much more informal, but much more effective, I think, forms of alignment with the needs of nature and society. And so, I don't know, there is, I don't know, I think what I'm trying to learn from myself is how to embody that question more myself, right? Like, what is the journey that I need to be on so that I can genuinely live in a way that feels like I'm balancing both the human and the ecological needs and the life, a valuing and true, truly valuing all of life in the same way. And so, like, I think about a lot, I'm probably the area I feel in most hypocrisy is that I eat meat, you know, because I like really love animals, I really do. And yet, I like eating meat, right? And I think that's like a small choice that I could make, but I don't, right? Because it's just more convenient and tastier or whatever, right? And so, yeah, those sorts of critical ethical reflections. I don't know if that's what you were looking for, but that's what I think of first when you asked that question.

JQ:

Amanda, I'd like to close with this question. Does the Wellbeing Economic Alliance indicate how regional populations can live within Earth's ecological limits? And what data do you use to show the differences between the planet's resource capacity and its consumption? Because I think in figuring that out, it gets to the heart of the questions about finance and economics that you were talking about, but it also has a component where it really does solve a lot of the social issues.

AJ:

Yes. So, a lot of the social issues. Yes, so again, I will say that because we are a membership-based organization, right? And so, a movement-based organization, we have a number of different members that focus specifically, I think, on this question. So, there's like an organization called Population Balance or, yeah, and others. I will say personally, I'm very wary of ever getting into the population discussion, yeah, because I feel like it historically has often come with some eugenicsy implications of which populations should exist or not, right? And also, often when it's happening at a global level perspective, it tends to focus on populations with high birthing rates, which are in Africa or Asia, when the reality is that the United States is the one that is consuming like we have eight Earths, right? But that's not the population that's often focused on. And so, there's certain racial dynamics. But maybe even a more core point, I think so much of what has animated our current economic system is this belief that we're all inherently selfish, materialistic individuals. And I think we've designed a system that encourages and rewards that type of behavior, but I don't think that that is inherently true. I think that we are, and neurological research is showing, we're also really hardwired to want to give, to share, to be very collaborative. And so, I think if we build a system that really orients our incredible creativities and energies towards caring and revitalizing our natural environment, we could be an incredible force for repair and good, right? It's just needed to make sure that that is the incentive and the systems that allow and work in that. And so, having more people wouldn't be a bad thing. It could be a good thing, right? Like, even more people to sort of orient towards this. And so, yeah, that is my thoughts in terms of some of the population and caring capacity, which are genuine concerns within our existing system, but I'm hopeful we can build a different one.

HSF:

What better note to end on, Amanda? To use the creativity and the energy of caring as a transformative force in order to care for our planet. And I believe that this conversation has, you know, we've jumped on over so many, across so many subjects, and I'm sure there are more to talk about. And everything you do at the Wellbeing Alliance seems to be really core to what is a field that we make called planetary studies, which is so interdisciplinary and brings together natural sciences and social sciences, and all the various aspects of the social sciences, and the humanities and the whole ethical reflections on that you also embark on all the time. Really fascinating to talk to you. Thank you so much for joining us.

AJ:

Oh, thank you so much for having me. This was really fun, and I really appreciate it.

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Hagen Schulz-Forberg

Host
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James Quilligan

Co-host
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Amanda Janoo

Guest