Our human flourishing work focuses on restructuring capitalism’s systemic problems so that economies serve societies and the natural world, not the other way around. We believe a new conceptual framework is needed, one that has sustainability, social inclusion, personal empowerment, satisfaction of basic material needs, and resilience and adaptability at its core.
Solidarity, agency, material gain and environmental connectedness (SAGE) are the foundations of our work in this area – they provide the terms on which frameworks can be built, policymaking and governance developed, and progress measured.
Learn more about our Human Flourishing work
The underlying motivation of this program of work is to help orient G20 policymaking toward human flourishing within a thriving natural world, rather than the traditional focus on economic and financial affairs. This orientation is in line with the broadening of the G20 agenda after the financial crisis of 2008-09 to include such topics as climate change, biodiversity loss and pandemic preparedness. The “Human Flourishing” program seeks to provide a framework for reimagining how G20 decision-making can be guided, communicated and evaluated, and how business activity can become better aligned with societal and environmental prosperity.
The program is divided into four multi-year initiatives:
- The “Flourishing-Centered Economic Paradigm” initiative provides the worldview and the conceptual framework within which flourishing-focused public policy and private-sector activity can be understood.
- The “Flourishing-Centered Growth and Development Model” initiative explores a new conception of growth and development, along with policies, business strategies and governance principles, implied by the flourishing-centered economic paradigm.
- The “Measuring Human Flourishing” initiative covers the measures of economic, social and environmental success, whereby country, government and business performance can be evaluated.
- The “Redirecting Business Performance” initiative aims to develop a policy and governance framework that creates a level playing field for business competition to ensure that the pursuit of profit becomes better aligned with societal and environmental flourishing.
To make human flourishing an actionable G20 policy objective, it is necessary to articulate an appropriate conceptual framework (component 1), related to a new model of what growth and development means and how to promote it (component 2); a new way of measuring progress, beyond economic growth and increases in shareholder value (component 3); and a new way of bringing policy and business objectives into alignment with people and planet (component 4).
The four initiatives will involve a variety of activities (such as workshops, policy dialogues and sessions at the Global Solutions Summit) and be disseminated through blogs, podcasts, articles, reports, and workshops.
