Welcome to the Wellbeing Economy
Katherine Trebeck is—borrowing her own words—a pluviophile championing an economy that works for people and planet. Her being a pluviophile is proven by the fact that she moved from Australia to Scotland more than ten years ago, and still today you’ll find her living in Glasgow. Regarding what kind of economy she is championing, we’ll get to know more as the conversation unfolds. As a brief introduction, Katherine is currently Advocacy and Influencing Lead for the Wellbeing Economy Alliance. She has over eight years experience in various roles with Oxfam GB, where she also developed the Oxfam’s Humankind Index and led Oxfam’s work on a ‘human economy’. Katherine is Honorary Professor at the University of the West Scotland and Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Strathclyde. Her book ‘The Economics of Arrival: Ideas for a Grown Up Economy’—co-authored with Jeremy Williams—was published by Policy Press in early 2019.
Hi Katherine, I am delighted to have you here for a conversation. Let me start by focusing on your role as one of the initiators of the Wellbeing Economy Alliance (WEAll). An alliance for wellbeing sounds wonderful. What is it and what purpose does it have?
It’s a new collaboration, a collective, a group. It’s a growing network of extraordinary people, organisations, politicians and policy-makers, academics, and community groups. A very diverse group of people, but all united by the sense that we have to change the economy. There are so many challenges in the world, and if you stop for a moment and ask ‘but, why?’ If you don’t just look at face value at what is going on in the world, but really go upstream and start asking ‘and what is causing that? Oh, and what is causing that? And what is causing that?’
Then you often find yourself looking at how the economy is structured, how it operates, who wins and who loses out of the current economic model, and how it incentivizes different behaviour. So, what unites all the organisations and people that are part of WEAll is the sense that we need to transform the economy to make it more humane and sustainable.
“We need to transform the economy to make it more humane and sustainable”
A shareable sense, certainly. As things stand today, however, it looks like it’ll be quite a journey to get there.
The good news is that there is much work already being done to deliver that, to show us what a different economy looks like. As I often say, this is not a step into the unknown. We know what it looks like because we see it in microcosms: in extraordinary businesses using commercial activities to deliver social and environmental benefits, in community groups who embrace the commons, in policy-makers who say that in the 21st century the success of the country is not just how big your GDP is, but it’s about whether you can deliver human and ecological well-being.
The challenge is that with all that good work going on, it is still relatively disconnected, operating in isolation and hence not packing the punch in the current system.
Is this the challenge at the roots of WEAll’s mission?
WEAll’s mission is to connect and amplify the work that is already being done, so that other people can hear about it, get inspired and replicate it. So that they can see in a different way, that an alternative is not only desirable, but—perhaps more importantly—also feasible. We also want to translate those messages up to politicians and legislators and say ‘you need such engine of policy regime so that it is more conducive to this sort of work’.
“An alternative is not only desirable, but also feasible”
We call ourselves ‘the amplifiers’, because our job is not to be the rockstars, but to amplify the results of those people who are doing the work. We understand the role of bringing about system change as standing on two key components. One is the knowledge base - bringing together all the evidence that is out there, whether in academic papers or coming from practitioners. This also includes the piece around narratives, because if we don’t change the economic story and open up everyday people’s imagination that a different economy is possible, we won’t move towards system change. These are the roots of the change.
If these are the roots, what is the trunk of the change?
The trunk that will lead to a new system is doing what we call a non-elite power base, which comes in the form of local hubs in places like Scotland, Costa Rica and Iceland. There is one popping up in Canada, and we are having conversations in New Zealand and Australia. These are local geographical hubs that share a common global mission and are working across the system and across sectors to galvanize this type of work. Our job is to help cultivate, incubate, support and connect these local hubs. There are also thematic clusters—working groups, if you want—on topics such as business, finance or leadership. We hope in the future, when we’ll have more resources, to have additional clusters, like faith and values, arts, and indigenous knowledge and wisdom.
So, at its heart, our mission is about connecting all that amazing work to try to inform and galvanize that power base to push for more system change. We have been going on for more than a year now, and it has been crazy to try to fundraise at the same time as doing the work, so there is some tension in there. We are spending a lot of time just promoting this agenda.
This comes to my second, more fundamental question. What is a wellbeing economy?
I am quite relaxed about what terminology people use, whether it’s the regenerative economy, solidarity economy, donough economy. I am not dogmatic that it has to be the wellbeing economy. I think what unites a lot of these conversations is a sense that i) the current system is not working and ii) the economy needs to be repurposed to serve people and planet. There is so much waste in the current system, in terms of failure demand, social policy, environmental sense, defence expenditures. So much effort goes in trying to fix and heal the damage that this current economic system does.
So, in a way, it’s about preventing the economic system to do damage in the first place?
A wellbeing economy is one that will deliver human and ecological wellbeing. It won’t just be focused on growth and then be looking over its shoulder and saying ‘let’s fix that a little bit’ - and often pretty inadequately. It will be an economy that is squarely focused on delivering for people and planet. At its core, it’s a repurposing of the economy, it’s redesigning businesses in a way that they are collaborative and collective. Different business models have a focus on purpose; not just short-term profit, but also use profit generated to deliver social goals.
“A wellbeing economy is one that will deliver human and ecological wellbeing”
What more than the role of businesses needs to change?
It’s about infrastructure that is designed differently, different energy systems, different ways of doing transport. It’s about how we appreciate and manage the commons. A key component is to understand that the economy is not an end on its own. The economy is a mean to an end, and should be helping us to live good lives, which means we need to redesign the economy. Currently, we are extracting from the human society and the environment just to feed the economy, while it is the economy that must be in service of us. That is quite a profound shift in orientation. There are lots of different dimensions and details about how that economy will operate; we are working together to figure them out. For me one of those key components is changing the economy at a purpose level.
“We are extracting from the human society and the environment just to feed the economy, while it is the economy that must be in service of us”
I’d like to connect the wellbeing economy to the story of the circular economy. While some still see it as an advanced recycling model, others have been putting efforts in trying to make the circular economy a driver for system change, including the social dimension (see, for instance, the work on the Circular Humansphere by Alex Lemille). How do you see the relationship between wellbeing economy and circular economy?
I see the circular economy as a key component - a necessary but not sufficient component of a wellbeing economy. If we don’t change the way we manufacture goods from that wasteful, linear, destructive system to one that is circular, then we’ll have no chance of creating a wellbeing economy. On a very practical level, it’s a key part of the multi-faceted changes that need to be made to create a wellbeing economy. If we don’t change it, we haven’t got there. But there are many more things that if we don’t shift, we haven’t got there. Gender equality, for example.
However, I think that is also significant on another level. It’s a significant example of the sort of profound mindset shift that we need, and that’s about how we treat nature. So often in the past and still today, nature has been seen as something that’s on demand when the economy needs it. It’s seen as an input for production, as a sink that we can just throw into, without understanding that society and economy are actually a subset of the ecosystem.
I believe there is something more at this ephemeral level, about the shift in mindset that the circular economy represents. It’s not us plundering nature and ecosystems anymore, but rather recognizing our role at the service of the wider ecosystem.
Going into the policy realm, you already mentioned that a country’s success should not be measured by how big its GDP is. In one of your writings, you say that GDP is ‘inadequate as an indicator of economic activity, and incomplete as an indicator of progress’. What’s happening around the attempts to replace it?
It’s very interesting how the conversation has moved quickly over the past few years. If I look to when I started working on beyond-GDP conversations back in 2010, I would meet with politicians and I would probably have to spend half of the conversation explaining the flaws of GDP, and that’s not necessary now. There is a fairly widespread agreement that GDP is not a suitable metric for the 21st century. So, the question has become what rather than if we replace it on. This is quite a serious sign of progress on how the debate, activism and mobilization around that space has moved on.
Indeed. So, what to replace it with?
I am still in two minds around what we replace it with. In an ideal world, we would be replacing it with a set of different measures. That requires a very different way of speaking about progress in the media or the public imagination. The challenge here is that in people’s busy lives, simplicity is a bit of a driver. To me there is a tension between a richness of indicators—which are probably much more accurate—with how we communicate them to the general public. There is a bit of a tradeoff there.
What is the issue more precisely? How complex it becomes to communicate these indicators to the general public?
There are already so many different measures that are collected. It’s not about a lack of data; it’s about how that data is used that really matters. That’s the conversation we are up to. I do think that the issue of how we communicate these questions is really key. As soon as we start creating an indicator, it becomes quite technical and complex; in a way, inaccessible to everyday folks. But, the ultimate beneficiaries of any beyond-GDP measure are communities now and in the future. So, I think there is a challenge to bridge that gap between what ultimately becomes very technical manifestations and these well-intended, community-oriented efforts.
What would be your solution to bridge the gap?
In an ideal world—if I had to have a magic wand—I would love to see a multiplicity of indicators that politicians would promote and have as their job to move in that direction. Indicators that we know correlate with the drivers of multi-dimensional wellbeing, but at the same time they are intuitively sensible to the person that made my flat white this morning or the one that cut my hair on the weekend. They have that sort of resonance. A set of key components of collective wellbeing would be in place. That’s my dream project.
What can be an example of that indicator?
Imagine if tomorrow we had leaders of political parties saying ‘under my administration, the number of girls that ride their bikes to school would go up’. That is something that has surely resonance with people who are not part of this conversation on their daily job. But we can also think about what it means when that number goes up. Then, so many other components of collective wellbeing are in place: parents can afford breakfast and bikes, the streets are safe, schools are nearby. In a global sense, girls going to school is a really important measure of progress for a country.
“Imagine if tomorrow we had leaders of political parties saying ‘under my administration, the number of girls that ride their bikes to school would go up’”
And in lack of you having your magic wand?
I think there are a lot of good indicators that we can look at as an improvement on GDP. Two that seem to be getting quite a lot of traction—partly because they are global so that people can see how they manifest in their own respective countries compared to others—are the Social Progress Index and the Genuine Progress Indicator.
What I would love to go further with them, though, is to ensure that they are democratically constructed. Part of creating a wellbeing economy is a shift in power, and part of that shift in power is whose voices are heard, and who is it to determine what progress and prosperity are about. If we don’t put communities around the world at the forefront of that conversation, then we are missing a trick. We are not prefiguring the sort of change that we need to see. While there are amazing beyond-GDP indicators that I refer to a lot, if they are not constructed through dialogue and deliberation, they are not sufficiently embodying the sort of shift in power we need.
“Part of creating a wellbeing economy is a shift in power […] whose voices are heard and who is to determine what progress and prosperity are about”
So, what ultimately matters is whose voices are heard to decide what progress and prosperity actually mean?
They are often constructed by people who are knowledgeable, so come up with pretty decent components that—in case you had some public dialogues and conversations—the results might be not exactly the same, but they would be pretty close. But there is something very important about putting people’s voices at the forefront of how we design an indicator that is ultimately saying what the purpose of the economy and the government are about. There is something of symbolic significance. My friend Jon Hall, who now works for the UN, uses a lovely phrase and talks about the “serendipitous benefits” that come from having dialogue and consultation with communities.
I am a student of deliberative democracies, so I might have some bias, but I do think there is something very significant about the shift in power as well. The conversation is very rich, the discussion is emerging and I don’t think we are at a point yet to put on a pedestal one single outright winner yet.
This idea of community dialogue as a building block of how we construct an indicator was also at the core of the process for the Humankind Index, that you developed together with Oxfam in 2012 for Scotland. Let me be for a moment on a skeptical note regarding the process of community decision-making. Let’s imagine a referendum on human rights, vaccinations, immigration, ro climate change. What if the people got it completely wrong?
There is something very important about the type of democracy. I think just voting, whether pressing a button on your app, or someone rings you up when you are trying to make dinner for your kids and putting the washing up and ask ‘what do you think of this?’. That’s a very fleeting type of voting, whether is a referendum or voting at the ballot box every few years. I think this is not the ideal way of decision-making because what it really misses is that vital aspect of deliberation and conversation with people.
I have been fortunate enough over the last few decades of my work to see how—when you have a conversation and dialogue with people—they are able to reflect and learn from each other. When experts work as advisors—not to dominate the conversation, but as a resource for the conversation—then you do get quite extraordinary outcomes. Yes, it might be more time-consuming, it might be messier, but I think that it really matters. It becomes a much richer conversation and it is, ultimately, a form of people learning from each other. As Jon said, in this process you get serendipitous benefits as well.
Now I see the difference…
Yes, there is quite a gap between that fleeting voting without thinking about it, reflecting and learning from each other, and a true dialogue between people. We have seen examples of the second in Ireland, where they established a big citizens assembly around abortion and other topics. Citizens were involved a day or 2 a month, over a long period of several months, really learning about the issues and coming to a common decision. In Scotland there is a discussion about the Scottish independence and there is now an ongoing Citizens’ Assembly around that. Also Extinction Rebellion has as one of their key proposals to have citizens’ assemblies to enable people to discuss.
“There is quite a gap between that fleeting voting without thinking about it, reflecting and learning from each other, and a true dialogue between people”
Also in your own work, you have been exposed to this kind of processes.
I have been lucky enough to be part of those discussions whether in Scotland with the Humankind Index or with Oxfam India, where we run similar sort of conversations with very marginalized voices. We spoke with tribal communities, Muslim communities, communities with different dialects. These are people whose voices are far from the mainstream of the political debate, but creating spaces for them to reflect and learn from each other is quite beautiful and is a million miles away from just checking a box on an app for a referendum.
Today, especially on social media, we often see very sterile and harmful debates. To move from this hostile, ideology-driven conversations to mutual respect and learning will take quite a while. It’s going to be a long journey...
Yes, and it’s something I am trying to learn better and better myself. We got a world at the moment where people dive into their camps, and throw rocks at each other. We see it in places like Canada, where the environmental agenda has been set up in opposition to the social agenda in cases like the shutdown of fossil fuel extraction. People who work there and whose livelihoods depend on that, go into their camp that their livelihoods will be impacted if that happens.
We need more consideration for all parties involved. In a way, a more systemic view.
We have seen these things around the world that have been set up as binary. I think the root, key challenge here is going beyond that by going back to the basics of what makes us inherently human. What is it that people around the world share in common? In the book, I quote a Police song during the Cold War, where there is the line ‘I hope the Russians love their children too”. I think there is something about that.
That the Russians love their children too?
People around the world love their children. If we can start the conversation from that place, from what makes us inherently human and we share and that’s the priority, then underneath it becomes a more practical conversation about how do we get there. That’s more of a discussion about practicality, not about first level principles. We must come together in a way that is not hostile, not binary, and not in boxes. I say this thinking it is very important, but also knowing it is very, very difficult. But I think it is actually vital. Someone’s vote might be due to the fact that they are scared for their livelihoods. Therefore, we need to have a conversation about supporting their livelihoods, it’s not that we can have one or the other, either the environment or someone’s livelihood. We need to recognize that everybody loves their children and start from there.
“We need to recognise that everybody loves their children and start from there”
Whenever there is a proposal for a radical shift in the economic system, there is always a reaction on the line ‘we can’t really do that, there is a reason if the economy is structured in this way’. One way to counteract these comments is to point to those successful examples that are already taking place. At the policy level, there is a wellbeing economy governments (WEGo) policy lab, with Scotland, New Zealand and Iceland. Could you give us a few examples of what countries are doing in this policy lab and what actions are they taking towards the direction of building a wellbeing economy?
New Zealand is the one everybody is talking about at the moment, with their wellbeing budget. They have brought in a new way to construct the national budget. A friend of mine told me she heard this beautiful phrase ‘budgets are moral documents with numbers attached to it’. In a way, they are the essential way in which we create a better society. What New Zealand is saying is that they are going to spend their money in a way that is oriented to collective wellbeing.
How does that look like at a more practical level?
They are experimenting, they haven’t got it perfect yet, but they have got 6 key drivers that all heads of departments need to speak to, like digital economy, low-carbon economy, cultural wellbeing, mental health and child poverty. This sort of targets are what the budget is going to be orientated to. Other governments are looking into that to learn and are asking themselves ‘how can we apply it into our own governments?
Other examples, outside New Zealand?
Iceland is, for example, really committed on gender equality, bringing policies that ensure that women are on a par with men, across political participation, on board and representation in the economy. There is a lot that other countries can learn from Iceland. They got other really interesting initiatives around renewable energy as well, so it’s really exciting to learn from them.
One of the most exciting things I have seen emerging in Scotland, which I know best as I live here, is an organization called Scottish Enterprise. It provides governmental support to businesses in Scotland, and it has recently announced that—instead of targeting businesses purely on their potential—they are going to give their support and advice to businesses that have the potential to generate decent work, address economic inequality, improve human rights and foster those dimensions of collective wellbeing that we have been talking about. Yet to see how that plays out, but to me this is such a good example of the sort of shift that we need to make to repurpose the economy.
And other virtuous examples from countries outside the WEGo Policy Lab?
Slovenia is really good on inclusive development, gender equality, and also on environment. Their capital, Ljubljana, was European Green City few years ago. We are also engaging with Costa Rica, which is really famous for being able to deliver high-levels of biodiversity, environmental sustainability and wellbeing, alongside not a huge GDP level.
There are good examples around the world. The challenge in the next era is to package them all together up to systemic change. Not just these isolated—and, hence, vulnerable—examples of good practice.
In your recent book, co-authored with Jeremy Williams, The Economics of Arrival: Ideas for a Grown-up Economy, you say that ‘arrival is that point where a country has theoretically enough wealth and resources to provide good standards of living for all citizens’. Once an economy has arrived, you say we must ‘make ourselves at home’.
That’s a key phrase, we should have had it on the title in a way. We talk about economies that have arrived—such that it has enough wealth and resources—and the key then is to focus to make itself at home. Ideally, it would have done that beforehand, but once the point of arrival has been recognized, let’s make ourselves at home.
Taking the case of economies that have arrived, which plethora of policy measures would you implement to make ourselves at home? Is it about redistribution?
It’s such a mix of different changes. It’s how we design businesses. I often use this phrase ‘we need to ask the economy to do more of the ‘heavy-lifting’. As you said, redistribution is very important, but often redistribution relies on a growing economy. And, in a way, it’s also a sign of failure. It’s almost like saying ‘we let the gap grow wide, and then we’ll try to fix it’. At 5 o’clock in the afternoon, we’ll try to redistribute, rebalance things after things have got unbalanced. There is this fairly ugly term, but the concept is beautiful, pre-distribution: how can we design the economy in a way that the gaps don’t open up so wide in the first place?
“Pre-distribution: how can we design the economy in a way that the gaps don’t open so wide in the first place?”
Any idea?
How we design businesses, how people are rewarded for their work, who owns wealth; all these sorts of questions come into that. I am really excited by business models such as cooperatives, community interest companies, benefit corporations, economy for the common good agenda. That’s saying let’s embrace the role of businesses and let’s have it designed for human and ecological wellbeing.
What more than different business models?
There is a whole range of other measures too. It’s how we do decision-making—we were earlier talking about different ways of doing democracy—it’s about how we design infrastructure, it’s about embracing and protecting the commons, investing in the long term. Collective investments harnessing the benefits of technology for protecting the environment. We also talk about things like volunteering, people having decent work and enough work, but not too much work, keeping a balance in their life.
Which countries can we look at for examples in this area?
Places like The Netherlands, which is not perfect, but a good example of where things have been put in place to rebalance work. There are examples everywhere; we cite examples from over 30 different countries. In the question around the very purpose of the economy, we point to places like Bolivia or Ecuador, which have put in their constitution and national development plans a different idea of what success is, the Buen Vivir. It is about living well, not living fast or better, but living well and in harmony with nature. So even for repurposing the economy, there are examples we can look at.
Do we need a change in values in order to achieve the repurposing of the economy at a fundamental level?
I’d frame the question in another way. I think people’s values are pretty sound and universal. There has been a lot of research saying that there are values like justice, compassion, and fairness that are holding common across people. What’s happened is that we have an economic system and—related to that—a political system that are misaligned to those values. We need to bring them back to the fore, enabling those innate values that people do share.
I have seen this in deliberative conversations in parts of Glasgow, in Delhi, Amazon in Brazil. A friend of mine did a similar project to the Humankind Index in Namibia. Wherever you are in the world, you speak to people about what matters to them, and they all come up with similar things. The challenge is actually that everybody’s economic and political systems are misaligned with those values.
So, it’s not about changing values, it’s about building systems that are a true reflection of people’s values?
It’s about enabling those values to come back to the fore, and I don’t know whether it’s an easier or more difficult conversation. I think the challenge is opening up people’s imagination to that possibility that it can be done differently. We have been told in textbooks, advertisements, and popular culture for so long that the economy has to be based on growth and that it is structurally dependent on growth.
“The challenge is opening up people’s imagination to that possibility that it can be done differently”
There is a challenge around helping people having different conversations and asking these theoretical questions: could we repurpose the economy? Could we have an economy that is not structurally dependent on growth? What changes do we need to make to entail that?
I have faith that human values are actually quite beautiful and quite aligned to a wellbeing economy, it’s just a matter of bringing them back to the fore and designing our economy in service of them.
One last question. When someone calls for such a radical and structural shift in the economic system, there are always opponents labeling you as naive. I read you had a similar experience as well...
Oh yeah, the ‘fluffy bunny’! ‘How dare do you think that the economy can be made more humane?’ and I was called a ‘fluffy bunny’. Instead, the ultimate naivety is to think that the current system can carry on. That’s extraordinary naive, isn’t it?
I believe so. But I see it as a widespread attitude, people closing up and arguing that we have got the best we can. For people who want a change, how can we avoid this feeling of being stuck? That the situation as it is right now is supposed to be forever the same?
In terms of how people find hope, we have recently launched a platform called WeAll Citizens, which is a platform that anyone in the world is welcome to access. What is key is to share hope, find hope and share ideas; really feel that they are part of a wider movement around this and connect with other people. It is just starting, but its very purpose is to enable people who are curious and active to come into one space, learn from each other and support each other. Just build that collective sense of hope that they are not alone, because without that, people either give up or go back into their sealed boxes.
By having conversations, that’s brilliant!
Learning to have those conversations is still something I am learning myself. It’s not about throwing evidence in front of people’s faces or saying that they are wrong, but making people go back to the fact that ‘the Russians love their children too’. Starting from there, we can walk with people on a different journey and be in a different conversation about the economy. There is a common humanity, as the very name says, we are all citizens on this precious planet. If we share that basis, we might be able to find out that things can be done differently.
Conversation between Emanuele Di Francesco & Katherine Trebeck
Transcribed February 2020
Notes
[1] The Citizens’ Assembly of Scotland is a group of 100 citizens from across Scotland that are broadly representative of the country and are coming together to address the following three questions: (1) What kind of country are we seeking to build? (2) How best can we overcome the challenges Scotland and the world face in the 21st century, including those arising from Brexit? (3) What further work should be carried out to give us the information we need to make informed choices about the future of the country? Katherine was a featured guest speaker at the latest session of the Citizens’ Assembly of Scotland, on Saturday 18th of January. You can listen to her speech here (from 30:53).
To further explore Katherine’s past and present work:
https://www.katherinetrebeck.com/
https://wellbeingeconomy.org
