How Do We Design Policies for a Wellbeing Economy | Luis Gallardo | World Happiness Fest

Summary

The "How Do We Design Policies for a Wellbeing Economy" panel, featuring Luis Gallardo and hosted by the World Happiness Fest, explored the transformative shift needed in economic policies to prioritize human well-being and ecological health over GDP. Key themes included the concept of a wellbeing economy, challenges in policy-making, and the importance of participation and cultural context. Panelists shared insights from various countries, highlighting different approaches to embedding wellbeing in national and local policies. The session underscored the urgent need for innovative, inclusive policy designs, promoting the idea that the economy should serve people and the planet.

Highlights

• Amanda discusses the flaws of GDP-focused economies and the need for wellbeing-oriented policies 📉➡️🌟
• The World Happiness Fest emphasizes the importance of governance and public policy in achieving social justice through a wellbeing economy 📜⚖️
• Panelists from New Zealand, Scotland, and Costa Rica share successful wellbeing initiatives in their countries 🌎✨
• The panel highlights challenges like traditional economic mindsets and the need for participatory design 🔍🛠️
• Susie and Edgar share insights on balancing economic growth with cultural and ecological wellbeing 🌱⚖️

Key Takeaways

• Wellbeing economies prioritize people and the planet over mere GDP growth 🌍
• Participation in policy-making leads to more inclusive and effective outcomes 🎯
• Cultural context is crucial in designing effective wellbeing policies 🌐
• Innovative and collaborative approaches are needed to transform traditional economic policies 🔄
• Engagement from both policymakers and the public is vital for successful implementation 🤝

Overview

In a world increasingly aware of the limitations of GDP as a measure of success, the World Happiness Fest brings together thought leaders to discuss how we can design economic policies that prioritize wellbeing over traditional growth metrics. This panel explores the transformative potential of shifting focus from GDP to genuine human and ecological wellbeing.

Panelists share insights from diverse contexts, illustrating successful policy initiatives from New Zealand, Scotland, and Costa Rica. These countries are pioneering the integration of wellbeing into their economic planning, demonstrating that such a shift is not only necessary but entirely feasible.

The discussion underscores the need for participatory approaches, emphasizing that cultural context and citizen engagement are essential. The panel concludes with an optimistic view of the future, knowing that while challenges remain, the movement towards wellbeing economies is gaining momentum and presents a viable path forward.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 05:50: Introduction and Overview The chapter introduces the World Happiness Fest, expressing excitement and welcoming attendees. It mentions that the week's interactions have been amazing and highlights that the current day's focus is on governance and public policy. It concludes by noting a positive statement from the morning session about the event's current status.
• 05:50 - 48:20: Amanda Genu's Presentation on Well-being Economy Policy Design Guide The chapter discusses Amanda Genu's presentation focusing on well-being economy policy design. It emphasizes the long journey and the gradual development required to integrate happiness and well-being into public policy effectively. The collaboration between the World Happiness Foundation and FEST is highlighted as an exciting and important partnership in this field. Amanda expresses personal enthusiasm and gratitude for this joint effort.
• 48:20 - 85:00: Doreen Grove's Perspective from Scotland The chapter titled 'Doreen Grove's Perspective from Scotland' discusses the swift assembly of a planetary initiative. Amanda is acknowledged as the leading expert, making her presence invaluable. The speaker expresses deep gratitude towards Amanda, emphasizing that having her involved is a dream realized. The speaker also congratulates Amanda on her achievements and urges the audience to pay close attention to the guide that will be made accessible to everyone. The guide is highlighted as something worth considering and the speaker encourages the audience to take notes.
• 85:00 - 109:00: Edgar Mora's Insights from Costa Rica Edgar Mora shares insights from his experiences in Costa Rica, emphasizing the importance of utilizing 'amazing wisdom' at the policy-making level. He acknowledges the contributions of Isabel, Amanda, and the entire panel, expressing gratitude for their involvement in creating a policy design guide.
• 109:00 - 121:00: Suzy Morrissey's Experience in New Zealand The chapter titled 'Suzy Morrissey's Experience in New Zealand' involves a discussion on designing policies for a well-being economy. Isabelle, a member of the Well-being Economy Alliance (or WEAll), introduces herself and explains the organization's mission. WEAll is a global alliance working towards transforming the economic system to achieve social justice and ecological well-being. They collaborate with governments worldwide to develop context-specific policies. The chapter notes that just the previous week, there was significant progress or development, though details are not specified in the transcript.
• 121:00 - 153:20: Q&A Session and Closing Remarks The chapter focuses on the launch of a policy design guidebook aimed at supporting individuals, community leaders, local politicians, and policymakers in collaboratively designing and implementing community policies. A panel discussion highlights the guide's implementation, uses, and examples of well-being economies in action globally, featuring Amanda Janu and other speakers.
• 153:20 - 155:00: Conclusion and Farewell The conclusion chapter outlines the contributions of the knowledge and policy lead at 'we all,' who played a pivotal role in creating a guide. This guide was a collaborative effort involving over 70 alliance members. The chapter emphasizes the author's background in international development, which provided valuable insights into the shortcomings of current policy-making practices. It critiques the prevalent approach of consultant-driven, business-focused policies that fail to adequately support the communities they are meant to benefit. Overall, it reflects on the need for more community-centered policy initiatives.

How Do We Design Policies for a Wellbeing Economy | Luis Gallardo | World Happiness Fest Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 all right so we're live a amanda where is isabel i want to say hi uh and welcome to the world happiness fest it's been an amazing week with so much interaction er but today it's all focused on governance and public policy and it was fantastic this morning to hear that we are right now
• 00:30 - 01:00 at the sweet spot of actually bringing public policy and policy design to the table it's been many years in the making and all these movements of course happiness where we need time if this is a slow cook in many ways here you are it's about so i think that um we are super excited to have this conversation and this partnership between the world happiness foundation and the fest and we all is something that i'm personally loving thank you so much isabel for
• 01:00 - 01:30 so fast putting this planet together and amanda because you are the guru behind this and having you here is just it's just a dream coming true so thank you i just want to congratulate you again and i want to encourage all the audience to really take note the guide is going to be available for everybody so we make sure to share the link but takes no because if there is something that is ready to be considered
• 01:30 - 02:00 and to start using at the policy making level is this is this amazing wisdom in the form of a policy design guy so thank you again thank you so much isabel and thank you so much amanda and the whole panel for joining us amazing um thank you so much so hi everyone um thank you for joining us today
• 02:00 - 02:30 on our chat of how do we design policies for a well-being economy so my name is isabelle i work with the well-being economy alliance or we all which is a global alliance of organizations alliances movements and individuals working together to transform the economic system into one that delivers social justice on a healthy planet or an economy that prioritizes human and ecological well-being we work with governments all over the globe to develop policies that fit their unique contexts and just this last week we
• 02:30 - 03:00 launched our we all policy design guidebook and this guidebook is intended to support individuals community leaders local politicians policy makers and the like okay everyone to develop policies in their communities that are collaboratively collaboratively designed and implemented so today i have a stunning panel that will discuss this guide its implementation its use and how the how to build develop uh well-being economies um and what's already in action all over the world first i have um amanda janu who will be
• 03:00 - 03:30 speaking and she is the knowledge and policy lead at we all she's the main author of the guide and the woman who pulled this entire initiative together we published this guide also with 70 plus members of our alliance which is an incredible example of collaboration and she comes from an international development background and saw firsthand the issues of um policymaking as it currently stands like particularly this kind of consultant business focused policies that don't actually support the communities that they're intended to
• 03:30 - 04:00 support and that perspective inspired her to develop this guide and we're very excited about its potential impact and so with her today we have three other policy makers so first like and this is how the sort of the session will run today so amanda will give a brief overview of the guide which if you want to look at it it's we all dot org backslash policy guide uh and then we'll break out and have dorian is the first speaker and she's from scotland and so she is the head of the open government in scotland which supports the reform of public services renewal of democracy promotes
• 04:00 - 04:30 openness and transparency in the use of innovative participatory processes that help transform the system um she's also a board member of we all scotland which is a amazing um initiative under the we all hub initiative then we'll hear from edgar mora uh alta mirano who is the former minister of public education in costa rica and the former mayor of kyori dabat and he's worked in various
• 04:30 - 05:00 fields related to democracy human rights promotion cultural and social policy issues as well as urban development and corporate corporate social responsibility and lastly we will hear from sweet dr susie morrissey who is up at 5 a.m to be here from new zealand and she is the director of policy at the retirement commission in new zealand previously she's worked for two economic ministries and departments within the new zealand government and has a phd in policy and gender equality
• 05:00 - 05:30 so all that said we hope that you leave this presentation today with a deeper understanding that a well-being that we as individuals are the economy and therefore we can prioritize what's actually important to each of us not just what our politicians think is important to us and we hope that you all engage with us and ask a couple of questions because the last bit of this chat will be a discussion amongst the different policy policymakers so now to launch the session i'd like to pass over to amanda genu to introduce the well-being economy
• 05:30 - 06:00 policy design guidebook which you can find at well.org backslash policy guide thank you so much wonderful well good morning afternoon and evening to everyone i'm so excited to be able to present the well-being economy policy design guide to you today we won't have time to go into every detail of the guide but what i want to be able to present is you know a general overview of some of the key principles and processes and
• 06:00 - 06:30 ideas that are explored in this guide as well as some of the next steps and ways for you to get involved in building a well-being economy in your community and country and worldwide so before we dive into the guide itself i think it's probably worth spending a minute speaking a little bit about the well-being economy movement itself and why it's so important i'm just going to bring up a presentation here for you so one of
• 06:30 - 07:00 my favorite quotes is that einstein said that he thought that perfection of means and a confusion of ends seems to characterize our age and i think that there's probably no area where this confusion is more clear than when it comes to the economy so too often when we discuss the economy we speak about gdp growth rates or the stock market or income levels
• 07:00 - 07:30 which makes the economy feel like this very abstract wealth generating machine that we don't really have any control over but in reality the economy is just the way that we produce and provide for one another and so it's important to recognize that the way we produce and provide for one another this system may generate wealth but that's just the means to improving our quality of life hey amanda yeah we don't see the slides oh
• 07:30 - 08:00 dear now we see them so if you click pay play from start what does that do you see that black screen no now if you move these panel on the left all the way over so that if we can't speak exactly then at least we can see this and if you can move the notes down and we'll make it as full screen as possible that might be the best we can do right now okay let's do
• 08:00 - 08:30 this sorry no that's great thank you for letting me know in my apologies everybody this is the first time i'm using this platform so looks fantastic experiment for us too right um so i think you can see them now yeah yeah you're good all right great so as i was saying i think that oftentimes we forget that the economy is just a word that we use to describe the way that we produce
• 08:30 - 09:00 and provide for one another and that the wealth or money we generate in this system is just a means to improving our quality of life but somewhere along the way we sort of forgot this and we started to really just focus a lot of our energy on promoting gdp and wealth generation and as a result as einstein said we sort of perfected this in some ways we've gotten very good at it so at this point global wealth stands at
• 09:00 - 09:30 um somewhere around 400 trillion dollars so we are by far the wealthiest generation in history because this would translate to about 70 000 per person for everybody living in the world right now but the challenge is that something about the way that we're generating and distributing this wealth is not leading to improvements in our quality of life and in fact is making many of us worse off
• 09:30 - 10:00 so a very clear example of this is in relation to the grotesque inequality and the rapid explosion of this where we're at a point that eight people just eight people own as much wealth as the rest of as half of humanity at this point and this level of inequality is really eroding social trust and causing severe amounts of social unrest and breakdown furthermore the system of production and consumption
• 10:00 - 10:30 that we're currently utilizing is destroying our planet and our home and we're seeing with threats of climate change and biodiversity loss that we urgently need to shift the ways in which we are producing um things in order to be aligned with our needs of our natural environment and then on top of this you also end up having increasing depression alienation despair
• 10:30 - 11:00 epidemics of loneliness so i think the who has now found depression is actually the leading cause of disability around the world right now and you add on top of this a global pandemic and you start to realize that something really urgently needs to change in terms of the way in which we're structuring this economic system and in the face of all of these very urgent crises it can be quite frustrating to feel like our policy makers are prioritizing the economy
• 11:00 - 11:30 prioritizing maintaining its certain current structure and form above all else forgetting that we are the economy and it means nothing if it destroys people and planet but there's a reason for this and the reason is because for a very long time the number one sort of priority we set for governments was to grow the economy they should grow it as fast as possible because then they can take a bit of that wealth through taxes and fix the damages that are done to
• 11:30 - 12:00 people and plan it in the process sort of repeat this cycle but the issue is that this approach is just not working it's not only inefficient but it's ultimately leading people to lose faith in their governments so the majority of the world now sees our current economic system as doing more harm than good and actively eroding our democracies and on top of this people feel like their government institutions are not working
• 12:00 - 12:30 in the interests of our collective well-being but actively serving this unjust and unsustainable system and so people are ready for a change they're demanding a change and we're seeing a lot of these changes in perspective already occurring around the world which we'll hear about today but the major question of our time is really how do we move from just fixing and healing and redistributing and tinkering with this economic system to actively restructuring it so that it
• 12:30 - 13:00 gets it right in the first place so that we have an economic system where we are producing things in a way that regenerates our natural environment and we're providing things in a way that ensures everybody has the necessary foundations for a happy and flourishing life and so this is the idea and vision that really sits at the heart of the well-being economy movement so the well-being economy movement it's all
• 13:00 - 13:30 about getting the economy to do more of the heavy lifting to ensure that we are all provided with our fundamental needs for connection for dignity for nature participation and fairness so around the world the well-being economy movement comes under a lot of different banners such as inclusive and sustainable development regenerative economies donut economies circular economy and many more but what all of these movements have in
• 13:30 - 14:00 common is a recognition that people on the planet are not here to serve the economy it is here to serve us and we have the capacity to build an economic system that really delivers social justice on a happy on a healthy planet so all of that sounds great right but the question is how do we get there and so this was the question that really led us to design
• 14:00 - 14:30 this policy design guide so throughout this guide you'll find quotes from members who helped to co-create this guide and one of these quotes is by our member till and i think it sums up really nicely what the fundamental motivation for this project was so he said the flaws with mainstream economics and gdp are now well documented what is needed is a practical guide on how to build a well-being economy and
• 14:30 - 15:00 how to organize this transition in a democratic and participatory way such a guy can help us to institutionalize these processes and give tools to policy makers and really importantly present the well-being economy as a feasible alternative so with this ambition in mind we got to work so we started about a year ago and we began with discussing what are really the fundamental principles that need to
• 15:00 - 15:30 underpin policy design for a well-being economy and what i won't i won't get into all of the principles now but i do want to highlight a few of them because i think it'll give you a better sense of why this guide is structured the way that it is and why it includes the content that it does so the first is the importance of a contextual approach so one of the most damaging aspects of our current economic system
• 15:30 - 16:00 is that it has this very one-size-fits-all universal approach and this has facilitated not only cultural homogenation and disempowerment but also really inappropriate policies around the world because once we recognize that the way we produce and provide for one another is influenced by a range of factors like our history and our geography our policies and our cultures then we realize the shape and form of our well-being economies will be different
• 16:00 - 16:30 as well as the journeys by which we get there and so for this reason this guide aims to be practical without being overly prescriptive so that it allows space for you to really embrace the diversity of approaches and align these ideas and processes to your context the second principle i want to talk about is participation because this is really at the heart of this guide because participation is not only the best way to find really innovative
• 16:30 - 17:00 strategies and policies but it's also really important in terms of ensuring more inclusive and sustainable outcomes but on top of this participation is so vital because we know that the act of participating itself is so important for our well-being because we all have a fundamental need to feel like we have a voice over the decisions that impact our lives and so therefore throughout this guide you will find a strong emphasis on
• 17:00 - 17:30 co-creation deliberation and participation in policy design and implementation and finally i just want to draw our attention to the principle of a strength-based approach because this one's actually pretty radical because standard economic policy is very deficit or problem based generally meaning that we tend to start by identifying challenges or problems or things that we're lacking as opposed to starting with a
• 17:30 - 18:00 perspective of abundance and thinking about what do we already have what are the strengths and capacities we can build on in order to achieve our vision for the future and so this strength rates approach is transformative because it really moves policy away from just trying to correct failures to proactively building the better world we envision so what does this all mean in practice
• 18:00 - 18:30 so the reality is that we're talking about really emergent processes and so there isn't a clear one-size-fits-all solution but we decided to structure this guide in five sections vision strategy policies implementation and evaluation and as you read this guide it may be tempting to think of this as sort of a step-by-step manual but the reality is that it's not yeah all of the processes that i'm going to
• 18:30 - 19:00 discuss today and that you'll find in the guide are fundamentally interconnected and feed on themselves and require continuous iterations in order to come to the ideas solutions and systems that are going to feel really empowering liberating and get us to a new structure and system for our economy and so for us ultimately this is all about experimentation and learning from one another as we go on our journey towards a well-being economy
• 19:00 - 19:30 so with this let's dive into the guide itself so the first stage of this guide is all about developing your well-being vision expanding our notion of progress and becoming clearer on what kind of society and world we really want to live in so that we can proactively go about building this society it's about moving beyond measuring success by our level of gdp to measuring our success by our level of well-being your well-being vision really acts as your north star
• 19:30 - 20:00 for the transformative journey ahead and in working to develop this vision we thought that there were some questions that start to emerge in terms of how do we understand what really matters for well-being how do we craft and communicate this well-being vision and how do we measure well-being to keep us on track and so these sort of questions became the structuring device for the chapter so let's start with understanding what matters for well-being
• 20:00 - 20:30 so this is the only time i'll show you an actual page from the guide but i want to give you a sense of what this will look like when you read it so first of all what you'll see in this guide is the section on how right and because we recognize that there are a variety of different ways to undertake any kind of process so you'll find a variety of different approaches along with hyperlinks to tools and resources that can help you to operationalize this
• 20:30 - 21:00 but you'll also importantly find the section around we all tips and this is these are the tips that come from our membership from leading thinkers organizations and change makers in this movement around their suggestions on how to organize this process and so from our perspective and we all the best way to understand what matters for well-being is to ask people so what we see for example is in germany they undertook a massive public public
• 21:00 - 21:30 consultation process organizing 200 in-person events all around the country as well as a massive online forum to ask people what really matters for them and what's interesting is that when you ask people this you'll end up with a huge variety of answers so in germany was other over 400 but these are examples of some of the ones that came up quite often and what you see here is that the things that matter are a mix of values so values like solidarity or equity and
• 21:30 - 22:00 respect alongside key outcomes like unspoiled nature or work-life balance um access to healthcare as well as processes like political participation and civic engagement and there's a tendency for governments to often focus on the outcomes because they're the most tangible but we really need to also embrace the processes and the values because i think utilizing values um and reforming processes
• 22:00 - 22:30 is just as important in order to make sure that we're embracing very new and visionary approaches to policy design so the next thing that we speak about is about crafting and communicating this vision and this is really important because in order to get widespread buy-in for something as transformative as changing your economic system you want to make sure that as many people as possible are on board and engaged and so in crafting or in communicating this
• 22:30 - 23:00 vision different governments take different approaches some use infographics some develop frameworks some create a short narrative around what their vision for their country community is but some also use art and music and so this is an example from what of buenovere from um ecuador and this is uh based on an indigenous perspective of really building a society that is in harmony with itself with one another and also
• 23:00 - 23:30 with our natural environment and so utilizing a variety of different communication forms can be really empowering to make sure that all people recognize they're a part of this transformation and are going to be engaged in building this well-being economy so the third thing is a question around how do we measure well-being and at least right now i think that this is the area where we see the most energy and momentum within the well-being economy movement because there are for very good reasons
• 23:30 - 24:00 a lot of issues with having used gdp as the major metric for success and so if you're interested in sort of diving into this i'll just say that we all have developed a paper specifically on this topic of how do we go beyond gdp what are the wide ranging different metrics that are out there to replace it and what are some of the challenges that have been limiting adoption but what i want to be clear on here is that in this guide we are not going to tell you what to
• 24:00 - 24:30 measure yeah we're not going to say which indicators you should use but rather provide suggestions and support on how to select indicators and how to measure well-being and one of the things i really appreciated and in you know learning more about different processes was in wales one of the key principles for selecting indicators for their well-being framework was effective communication and so they highlighted for example that
• 24:30 - 25:00 any indicator should be really easy for people to understand why it matters and how it relates to their well-being priority and i have to say that i worked for a long time training policy makers on economic analysis and i it the ability for people to intuitively understand the importance of an indicator cannot be understated in terms of its transformative potential so that statistics and the use of them
• 25:00 - 25:30 are really resonating with the core values and objectives that we have as a society and we can make good actions on the basis of those so the next section that we get into is around designing a well-being economy strategy and so this is really at the heart of the well-being economy movement and there are so many different initiatives and processes we could speak about but we decided to start with three and it was how do we identify which economic activities and behaviors are
• 25:30 - 26:00 really important for well-being and how do we align institutions and stakeholders to collectively work together to promote the flourishing of those sectors and finally how do we manage trade-offs and power dynamics when we're trying to transform this system and so when we speak about identifying well-being economic activities and behaviors this is actually a pretty huge shift in thinking because we've held for a very long time a narrative
• 26:00 - 26:30 that the purpose of the economy is to generate wealth not well-being and so when we think about who are the most efficient generators of wealth we end up promoting and fostering big corporations large investors and other sort of entities and activities that really are efficient and generating profits and wealth but when we shift this perspective to thinking about what are the activities and behaviors that are important for our well-being we end up identifying a very different sort of set of
• 26:30 - 27:00 sections of our society and so covid19 has been really interesting in this regard as i took policymakers very little time to identify the economic sectors or workers that are truly essential for our current well-being and so whilst this classification sort of varied it was you know grocery clerks and farmers and teachers and government agencies and a lot of areas that are not traditionally paid the most in our societies but are
• 27:00 - 27:30 clearly vital for maintaining our current well-being and now it's time to expand that thinking and to really think about what's important not only for current well-being but also for future well-being so that we can try to support behaviors that have previously been viewed outside of the economic realm such as generosity and stewardship and environmental generation for the better future that we envision and then another area where we're seeing
• 27:30 - 28:00 a lot of exciting developments and this is from all over the world it's around aligning institutions um because we did for quite a long time take a fairly siloed approach right they're different experts different um policy makers who are in charge of different specific areas but as we expand into a more multi-dimensional understanding of progress we recognize how interconnected all of these different areas are and so um we need to make sure that various stakeholders and institutions are
• 28:00 - 28:30 collectively working together to foster the transformation and build these strategies together for the transformation that is needed and so one of my favorite case studies is this envision utah um initiative and it began in the 1990s because the state's economy was growing really fast and they saw that this was doing a lot of damage to the environment and they were concerned about the quality of life impacts so they decided they wanted to instigate a really participatory strategy design process for their
• 28:30 - 29:00 economy on how to best really manage this growth so that it was inclusive and sustainable and i think that this might resonate with a lot of people but the idea of developing an economic strategy with citizens was first of all not super popular so people felt that first of all this was encroaching on their territories as different towns and agencies and um districts felt that that this was their role to sort of manage the economy
• 29:00 - 29:30 and there were also a lot of people who felt that economic policy or strategy is something too technical um for average citizens to be able to meaningfully engage in and so this paternalistic view sort of reduced the desire for some people to to promote this initiative but in the end they were able to get it through and get large-scale buy-in by presenting this as first of all
• 29:30 - 30:00 a long-term initiative so it was not one that was going to be constrained by any political administration or cycle so this is important and thinking about your own context perhaps they also frame this as visioning as opposed to planning and that was really important because then it didn't need to be constrained to a very narrow technical managerial sort of process and finally they presented it as a continuous process as opposed to a project
• 30:00 - 30:30 so that wasn't going to be constrained by just like a one year or two year um short-term initiative and ultimately it did take quite a while for this strategy to be developed it took years of citizen workshops and data generation and gathering um discussion forums and surveys in order to ultimately develop a different economic strategy but the transformation of this has been incredible and now some 20 years later it's still going strong with uh becoming a core
• 30:30 - 31:00 part of the government process by which to engage all stakeholders in society and thinking about how the economy is going to grow and be managed finally and this is where we get into the really tricky stuff i we cannot talk about building a well-being economy without being honest about trade-offs and importantly power dynamics so power plays a huge role in maintaining our current system and if we're not going to proactively
• 31:00 - 31:30 confront and acknowledge those challenges then we're not going to be able to ultimately develop strategies that can manage these trade-offs in an inclusive and fair way and so the just transition which i'm sure many of you are familiar with is a really great example of how we're seeing different communities and policymakers managing tensions between environmental objectives and social objectives in a way that is democratic and inclusive of the people who are potentially
• 31:30 - 32:00 adversely affected by moving to a low-carbon economic system all right and then we get into policies and so um i don't want to speak as much about you know the next three sort of sections of the guide but i do want to give you some sense of some of the core ideas and areas that are in them and so when we talk about transforming or building a well-being economy individual progressive policies are
• 32:00 - 32:30 great right but a coherent integrated policy mix is better and so policies are the way that we encourage or discourage certain kinds of behaviors in our society and if we look at the existing policies in place and how aligned they are with our strategy and vision first before developing new strategies we can help to reform the existing ones in a way that is quite transformative and helps us to also better align various pieces all of those different
• 32:30 - 33:00 policies that are already in place and this is an area where i think there's a lot of space for more innovation and we're seeing exciting new initiatives coming up every year and so one of these is in particular moving beyond cost benefit analysis as a way of evaluating policies so for a long time anything was sort of translated into a monetary cost or a monetary benefit and so then we would make decisions on
• 33:00 - 33:30 which policies to utilize regarding how much they cost or how much revenue they would generate but ultimately this misses a huge aspect of what the whole point of policy is about and so we're seeing particularly exciting movements in gender budgeting and racial equity budgeting we're seeing the value of equity being utilized as the assessment tool to think about how our existing policies have been maintaining certain kinds of marginalization and
• 33:30 - 34:00 inequalities and how we can actively perform those policies in order to achieve this value of equity in our societies and so iceland for example is building on their experience with gender budgeting to start to develop well-being assessment tools to really think about the variety of different well-being values and priorities and how to utilize those to assess policies and develop new ones we're also seeing a lot of exciting
• 34:00 - 34:30 movements in the areas of co-creation of policies so around the world we obviously are emphasizing a lot co-creation and i think doreen's going to speak to this and so much more as well but they said there's a movement happening people want to be engaged in policy making and we're seeing this in places like barcelona where they're utilizing technology as a way to make sure that all people's voices are being heard and are being integrated into their economic policy and strategy development
• 34:30 - 35:00 processes and so here we get to implementation yeah and i think in my experience working in economic policy for about a decade this is where things tend to go astray right so there are no lack of experts or kids consultants or you know other policy sort of analysts who are happy to come in and develop really fancy beautiful policy documents but in my experience these documents
• 35:00 - 35:30 end up either sitting on a shelf somewhere having cost a couple million dollars or people actually try to implement something that they don't understand was not and often is not in their interest and so we really need to transform our thinking around how we're implementing policies so that it's not only about you know top-down but really meaningfully bottom-up policy implementation where communities
• 35:30 - 36:00 are taking the lead in designing implementing adapting and monitoring these policies and i love the example of the barrios verdad from the paws because after decades of failed sort of poverty alleviation and infrastructure development sort of projects they decided to just give poor neighborhoods and la paz the power to design their own infrastructure and community development programs and then they would give them the money that they needed to execute their plans
• 36:00 - 36:30 along with an additional sort of fund in case there were adaptations or new sort of complimentary programs that emerged along the way and ultimately the incredible sort of impacts of this program on people's quality of life and the sustainability of the initiatives have been so transformative that it's become an example of best practice for a lot of countries around the world and so when we speak about impacts this brings us very nicely into our final point which is evaluation
• 36:30 - 37:00 and so evaluations play a really important role in all of the processes we talked about right so unde qualitative and quantitative evaluations help us to really understand what's going on and to have evidence and insights on what's working and what's not and and to where we should be heading in what direction but what we're seeing now is that instead of just doing really narrow short-term sort of money-based assessments we're starting to see a lot of
• 37:00 - 37:30 well-being assessments in countries like scotland which germany will talk about and also in new zealand for example with their well-being budget and their well-being reports now susie will speak about this more but i think the major thing i want to emphasize here more than anything is the need to embrace experimentation and learning and this can be really hard for policymakers if they feel like they're not allowed to fail but we're trailblazers here we're trying to build a different economic system
• 37:30 - 38:00 and when you're doing something new you can learn just as much from success as you can from failure and so in developing these systems we need to also create mechanisms for continuous learning and reflection and dialogue so that we feel that we ourselves our policy makers and a part of building this well-being economy and a part of really evaluating what's worked and providing insights on how to improve these processes so with that
• 38:00 - 38:30 i hope i've convinced you to read the guide it's not very long and it's got a lot of pictures but if not i hope that this presentation has given you a good flavor of what this guide is about but before i end i just want to tell you that the purpose of this guide is not to create a you know a nice pdf it's really about encouraging action and so to illustrate that a well-being economy is not only possible but it's already underway
• 38:30 - 39:00 and so in the months and years to come we have a lot of exciting initiatives to sort of roll out this guide so first of all we're going to be working with policymakers in communities in scotland new zealand california canada to really operationalize a lot of these ideas and to start making more movement towards a well-being economy in these communities and i hope also we'll be doing this in your community as well we're also developing a policy makers network so this is for civil servants at any level of government and any kind of agency to come together
• 39:00 - 39:30 and to feel supported and like they're not alone in their vision for a different economic system and to learn together share best practice and challenges and importantly this guide is really about galvanizing public action reminding people that we are the economy and we have a right and a responsibility to mold and direct it according to our values and all of this is a way for us to continuously make this guide a living document so that through your experience your inputs and your suggestions we can
• 39:30 - 40:00 keep building and growing this guide as we learn more about what works and what doesn't so with this i hope that you will join the movement if you're not a member we all i hope that you will join i hope that you will also engage in the citizens platform where you can share your ideas of other examples case studies tools that could be added to this guide and more than anything i hope that you will think about utilizing this guide
• 40:00 - 40:30 to help build a well-being economy in your community and so i just want you to know that we all is always here to support you in whatever way we can and that you're not alone in believing that this thing we call an economy can be transformed and that we can build a more just kind and sustainable world for everyone so thank you very much for that and with that i'll hand it back over to isabel lovely thank you amanda um and i am
• 40:30 - 41:00 going to pass over to our friend doreen from scotland who's going to give us a brief introduction into her work and experience in developing a well-being economy and being a part of we all scotland in scotland you are on mute doreen i'm not now ah thank you um and thank you so much amanda i am one of those policy makers um so i want to just spend the next few
• 41:00 - 41:30 minutes talking a little bit about um my journey why i'm here a little bit about scotland's journey uh and a little bit about what we all has done in scotland to help that journey so first of all who am i um so i am dorian grove i am currently head of open government in scotland uh but i only moved into government and uh in just in advance of um
• 41:30 - 42:00 scotland having an independence referendum in 2014 and i did that not as a political move but because as a historian and archaeologist i was really interested in the story we tell ourselves and the story we tell ourselves is so important um uh and as a historian it felt designing a new country which is essentially what we were doing um it felt like a really important thing to do um so the outcome of uh of that uh independence uh is is well known um
• 42:00 - 42:30 and uh though we independence didn't happen um what it did do was wake us up as a population um to really think about what we wanted uh as a nation uh and it also enabled government to spot that actually people really cared at whatever side you were on and i'm not saying they were all nice kind conversations um there was
• 42:30 - 43:00 a real buzz about the kind of future that scotland have could have we were already uh a country that had um really thought about what what we wanted to do so as early as 2007 we had put in place what was called the national performance framework and that was a set of ideas um that would help direct policy um so that we could
• 43:00 - 43:30 properly think about the things that actually mattered it was drafted in a smoke-filled room by half a dozen men uh but nonetheless it was an incredibly good start it was a really thoughtful um set of uh principles and ideas um that was refreshed in uh 2017 and that's where we begin to see um the messages that uh have been growing around the economy really beginning to take uh take flight
• 43:30 - 44:00 um there are one or two hugely um both uh informative but inspirational people based in scotland uh not least catherine trebek who is one of my colleagues in we all scotland um and her work with oxfam looking at the human kind index looking at how we measure success thinking about how we really um assess what what the spend that government makes um actually does who who is benefiting it and how is
• 44:00 - 44:30 it benefiting um so the development of our second national performance framework the refreshed one um uh it has a single purpose for scotland and that purpose is to focus on creating a more successful country with opportunities for all of scotland to flourish through increased well-being and sustainable and inclusive economic growth i think
• 44:30 - 45:00 many of us would recognize that growth fit is probably a still quite an uncomfortable word to use because growth for us probably means not for others but nonetheless that direction of travel has been very real it also has a set of values uh and these also come from that uh well-being uh discussion so they are our values are that uh we are a society which treats our people with kindness
• 45:00 - 45:30 dignity compassion uh respects the rule of law uh and acts in an open and transparent way uh so there are a range as you would imagine a range of um outcomes that are listed around that 11 of them they're all aligned with sustainable development goals um i'll only read out one of them uh and it's the one that i think i'm most proud of um is uh so for
• 45:30 - 46:00 children uh the outcome that we want to see as a society is that we grow up loved safe and respected um so that we can all realize our potential uh and behind that there is a whole raft of ways of having to think about it so scotland's journey has been on this trajectory we have um a government that is interested in thinking about it um in uh listening to people from um
• 46:00 - 46:30 civil society and experts um we've also listened to our people so uh in 2015 um five or six years ago now we did a national conversation uh which was called fairer scotland so looking at um small groups of people all around scotland thinking about what affair of scotland could look like how would that work that fed into uh the policies around our
• 46:30 - 47:00 national performance framework and it felt helped us to understand so that first bit of amanda's um uh policy making understanding what matters to people we haven't just done that once we've really thought about um how we get that understanding so in recent years uh we've been looking at much more deliberative ways of getting people involved uh and uh the the most effective that we
• 47:00 - 47:30 found we've run now two um full national citizen assemblies the first one on the future of scotland uh and coming out of that is a really powerful well-being agenda uh there are something like 50 uh commitments in it um and it is uh looking at democracy it is making um poverty and inequality absolutely at the core of thinking and it also very sensibly said actually do you know guys we know we have to pay for this
• 47:30 - 48:00 um so we need to look at tax we need to look at incentives uh all of the language um of we all uh was there uh in that debate and indeed um we all members um gave evidence to the citizen assembly they were able to deliberate with that level of understanding it is an all perfect um so we all scotland was set up as the first um national hub uh um
• 48:00 - 48:30 now about a year and a half ago we're all volunteers until next week we have our first director starting next week which is a really exciting moment um but we all scotland has really looked at right across the system where are the places that we need um to be able to to uh influence um looking at setting up a whole group of allies that can work together um so we can get our elements of the
• 48:30 - 49:00 system looking at business looking at rural areas national parks um our scottish football association some really interesting partners uh communities we have um volunteers who come from all uh aspects of scottish life and scottish work and that has given us a real insight into the places where we think we need um to get at the system uh we know
• 49:00 - 49:30 there's a lot to do we really know there is a lot of work before we can um uh have a smooth way there's an awful lot of using the words of well-being um and with not a lot in behind them um so calling that out is one of the important things we need to do but it's aligning with the uh other people who are um alive to what matters who are interested in helping um
• 49:30 - 50:00 take forward policies like community wealth building uh looking at uh governance and thinking about how communities can actively direct their own lives design their own lives looking at some of the really um track intractable issues around inequality and poverty because covert 19 has taught us um even more than uh if we didn't realize
• 50:00 - 50:30 it before uh inequality not only matters but it matters to your health it matters in every part of your life so all of those aspects uh are are uh of interest to us and um we all in scotland um is looking at where we can help others and work with others um both within government uh within public services within um uh businesses um within communities to
• 50:30 - 51:00 link up to be that glue that helps people uh really get to grips uh with the things that they can change uh in order to really deliver a well-being economy i'll stop there i can just talk for ages thank you so much doreen um
• 51:00 - 51:30 we love hearing you talk very interesting uh content there that you shared with us so next i'm going to ask that edgar come to the stage so as a reminder he's the former minister of public education in costa rica and a former mayor of kirita bats and he's working various um fields related to democracy and human rights cultural and social policy issues as well as urban development and corporate social responsibility so with that said thank you edgar yeah
• 51:30 - 52:00 my pleasure thank you for having me uh it is it is really a pleasure to be here with all of you well i was thinking about how to develop my my participation and i i wish to say that there is a an existential threat to well-being public policies and well-being governance which is uh that if happiness is not to be considered a matter of public policy
• 52:00 - 52:30 then meaningful participation will only be considered an uh accessory if anything at all and that is because the pursuing of happiness is a legitimate legitimate propel aspiration for people to become citizens in other words citizens with agency capacity
• 52:30 - 53:00 search to understand how to complete their obligations with the place and others as their source of happiness therefore happiness is their truly or is their true project so i'm going to share not only this uh acknowledge of this threat but a little story and some lessons learned across my
• 53:00 - 53:30 participation as mayor as minister but most important as active citizen of my city and my country so i will initiate the story um uh in the same way it began um a few years ago i'm asking you i'm gonna ask you now all of you
• 53:30 - 54:00 uh i i believe everybody here has a sense of obligation with others and the place uh so i'm going to ask you as citizens how many people did you happier today and that was basically the the beginning of this uh very interesting story that i'm going to share with you so i already said that it began like this yeah so when i was mayor
• 54:00 - 54:30 uh beginning my period my first period of major i was mayor for about 12 years that means i went to treat different elections and i got by by majority designated as major from uh from my people so from the people that
• 54:30 - 55:00 live in my city my neighbors so in my first term i was i was asking this question to every single employee or collaborator of the municipality that i had the opportunity to to met i was asking all of them no matter what the rank and what the position or the function they played in the municipality i was always asking them how many people
• 55:00 - 55:30 did we have here today it came out of my desperation to put in action the transformations in my city or the transformation of the city and i have to say for the record that i was representing a social movement rather than a traditional political party so innovation uh was at the core of our intentions uh to
• 55:30 - 56:00 institutionalized uh change so we were not only citizens that were activated as a social movement but we had the the clear sense of our obligation to transform the institutionally institutional landscape of our city so we we were pursuing that and and it came
• 56:00 - 56:30 out of my uh practice uh as a novel measure to ask this question so it was intuitive uh but not mistaken to begin from this urgency of knowing if our work was reflected in happiness of our neighborhoods of our neighbors and neighborhoods so i wasn't getting answers uh
• 56:30 - 57:00 at the beginning not positive answers but uh rather than that i was getting very aggressive answers uh coming from from from these people that i was asking this question i i i learned that this question was a kind of moral bullet how many people did we have here today from the municipality from from our job so uh not only that but i remember that
• 57:00 - 57:30 once the legal advisor which is a kind of uh judiciary uh or judith uh contradict controller visit me with the specific intention of pursuing persuasing me to cease to ask this question and he will tell me that the public law only allowed functionaries to do what the law prescribed
• 57:30 - 58:00 in advance to do and that there was nothing not only a single main mention of happiness in the municipal uh code so i was mistaking the question so of course i didn't really care about what he his opinion was and i keep on going asking asking questions asking this same
• 58:00 - 58:30 question until one day i started to get a positive answer a engineer came to me and said you know uh mayor i think uh mr mayor i think we we we did happy happier a lady in in a in a neighborhood of my city because we did something for her and she was so happy that she invited us to have coffee with her in in her house and he and she
• 58:30 - 59:00 sends you uh her regards so i asked this engineer to pinpoint uh in the map where this lady was where was the house of this lady and i got the first data point of what become a happiness map of koridava uh from that practice we built this map the map of happiness of kuritavat and this map became
• 59:00 - 59:30 an extraordinary tool for governance and pivot to repeat our electoral success as a social move and that took a strategical position in our city so this map the happiness map of kubridavad was a really special and and a very and a very useful tool uh so i i learned during this process i visited i visited the lady i spoke with her and
• 59:30 - 60:00 and the same i did with everybody that was somehow reporting an event of happiness in my city so i i got a sense of other threats that were that are important not where but are important uh as we approach uh this idea of of well-being public policy and well-being governance those other threats are that
• 60:00 - 60:30 the community understand itself as a dispersed and safe and segregated and segmented body of people body of neighborhoods uh that's that's very interesting to think about how how how can we create a common coin uh between different people and the other trade was that the most important function
• 60:30 - 61:00 of uh city's inhabitant is his or her journey between home and a distant job and this speaks out to the fact that we are building cities to be productive in a way that uh do not allow us to think about the place as the epicenter of uh the feelings of the people so from that we got some uh some lessons that we
• 61:00 - 61:30 learned and and probably the most important of them is that feelings are long-lasting feelings rather than emotions feelings are often objective they are linked to the context and to the life in community so we have to think about a leader a kind of leadership that allowed us to manage uh or to
• 61:30 - 62:00 to be inspired uh but these grounded uh feelings so we can really incorporate feelings as a as a as a information uh to to the better governance of our cities and territories uh rather whether that is a city or a country another lesson learned is that presence presence these pieces this this way of asking are you happier
• 62:00 - 62:30 uh this presence uh from from the governmental body is a great catalyst of territorial dynamics so what what what those presence means well i will break it down in concentration calm tenderness and enthusiasm another lesson learned is that the city becomes possible
• 62:30 - 63:00 only after the narration of its coexistence the way that people want to coexist this narration is basical it's basic sorry to understand what the city can do for itself with their citizens or with its citizens being involved so the identification of common needs and the search for solutions uh it's uh very very important uh and and this
• 63:00 - 63:30 speaks out of the necessity of participation not as an accessory but as a as a main this meaningful participation is is at the core of the possibilities but not only participation but the narration of this process so finally another lesson learned is that if politics do not moralize the gaze of the leader and the citizens
• 63:30 - 64:00 then it is not really useful for any other purpose so uh with with these uh lessons learned and the implementation of these lessons uh we were able to complement the power that was officially and formally transferred to us with the enough authority given to us from citizens
• 64:00 - 64:30 on day-to-day basis in other words designing services with the intentional aim to produce happiness award us with trust and trust uh it's a public deed not only a common policy is the most important public work that we can uh ask for uh as citizens and also as as people that govern
• 64:30 - 65:00 cities cities or countries so the way we use this trust needs more time to be explained uh let me only say that we ended this process uh designing the revitalization of the of of our cities of our city taking pollinators pollinators as the main informants
• 65:00 - 65:30 of that process of redesigning the cities or redesigning our city of kuritavat we declare them as agents of prosperity and furthermore we declare them citizens to do that in a anthropocentric society requires firstly to have the trust from the people
• 65:30 - 66:00 so this is what i will say for now and i'm open to any other question or comment that i can uh answer or participate with thank you thank you so much yes we'll definitely have some questions for you um at the end of this session and to kind of conclude on our policymakers here i'm going to bring susie onto the stage and susie's a
• 66:00 - 66:30 maker in new zealand who's worked on well-being in the ministry of finance and so please tell us more piano koto hello everyone so it's a pleasure to be here today so yeah i'm gonna talk to you about the new zealand experience so in new zealand um what well-being means has been thought of in a couple of ways so we've thought about it from a ministry
• 66:30 - 67:00 perspective and we've talked for the about it from a citizen perspective so our stat statistics office decided to collate some indicators of well-being and they went out and asked the people what was important to them and they ended up with a wide range of over a hundred indicators that cover a range of areas and we measure our progress against those so you can find those on statistics new zealand well-being indicators
• 67:00 - 67:30 so that's our first measure of well-being in new zealand the second one is the one i'm going to talk more about which you might have heard about and which is the treasury's living standards framework so treasury created a well-being framework in order to actually improve their policy advice so this came from the treasury is the ministry of finance so this came from treasury and they decided that they needed to have a better way of thinking about
• 67:30 - 68:00 policy so exactly those things that amanda was talking about at the start of this session so they developed what they call a living standards framework and so again you can find that on treasury.gov dot nz and just look for living standards framework so this was developed and based on the oecd's better life index which many of you might be familiar with so it's a stocks and flows model of current and future well-being i won't go into too much detail about
• 68:00 - 68:30 the framework now but you can look you can look it up for you for yourself so those are kind of the two formal ways we've been thinking about well-being what happened then after treasury had established this was that the incoming government in 2017 decided that they would use that framework as a basis to create what they call a well-being budget so we have an annual budget um that for the whole of the country and it's delivered in may each year and they decided that the well-being
• 68:30 - 69:00 that the budget of may 2019 would be a well-being budget they also decided that they would do what they could with the 2018 budget to be well-being so what their government now uses is the well-being assessment that the treasury produces they use that to determine what their budget spending priorities will be and this government has had a strong focus on mental health and child poverty and of course also um on the environment
• 69:00 - 69:30 and amanda put up a slide before about just transitions because we're moving to a carbon neutral by 2025. so government decided what the priorities would be and then the process is that the different ministries or agencies departments bid then for funds from the budget and the way that those bids are assessed is using the living standards framework so it's necessary to identify the improvements and well-being on one
• 69:30 - 70:00 of these different one or more of the facets of well-being that are contained within the living standards framework because it is a multifactorial approach so it was um so yeah so they're assessed against against those so that can so that you amanda was talking about cost benefit analysis before so some of it might be monetized but also some of it might not be monetized and so it might talk about the other either costs or benefits that are associated with it
• 70:00 - 70:30 so that's how it's been how it's been working so it's a very tangible kind of piece about tools and processes with the living standards ceramic is the tool and the process has been has been the budget budget process so i've alluded to some successes that have already happened um from the use of this tool and and that words and specifically in new zealand that we now have a child and youth wellbeing strategy
• 70:30 - 71:00 we have focus on child poverty reduction which includes measures and reporting to bring that down we've also from a environmental perspective of course signed the paris agreement and um instigated environmental reporting we've had the just transitions work where we've ceased um offshore oil extraction and so we've put a deliberate effort in then to that area of new zealand that's affected by that to help create alternative jobs so exactly
• 71:00 - 71:30 that that redeployment that we talked about we've also um introduced well-beings into the local government act so what i talked about so far was on a national level but obviously the small local governments are just as important as national policies and so we've put in a requirement for those governments to also be considering welfare so there's been a number of things that they have um that have you know tangible differences that have that have occurred as a fight as a
• 71:30 - 72:00 result of this focus on well-being but i guess let's be honest it's also important to think about challenges and so i think one of the things that's worth mentioning is that post covert um the next budget that came out after that and the expenditure that's occurred after that has been you could argue quite traditional in terms of physical infrastructure investment we called it shovel ready projects from a gender perspective there is that
• 72:00 - 72:30 the opportunity from gender budgeting and gender responsive analysis to understand what the impacts of spending are from a gender perspective and physical infrastructure given the cultural norms about gender segregated workforce obviously directly impacts men on average for a greater extent than women there's been really interesting research in the uk that shows how social investment ie into
• 72:30 - 73:00 education healthcare child care can actually have a greater impact than actual physical infrastructure investment so i think it's fair to say that there's kind of plenty of things that we can still be looking at um and and doing but we've definitely made a real move towards well-being um as a as a focus in terms of our both our national and local government so that is just a really brief snapshot
• 73:00 - 73:30 i'm conscious that we don't have so long for the session and we probably want q a so i'm going to wrap there but i'm more than happy to answer any questions thank you so much suzy do you want to do you want to say anything um before i sort of jump into questions oh no i just really want to thank you all it's just you know it's always incredible obviously you talk about policy making in some sort of abstract way and
• 73:30 - 74:00 then to have people who have really been actively engaged in building these wellbeing economies at you know your various levels um yeah thank you so much for these incredible insights so i'll hand it over to israel perfect so we've got 15 minutes so i'm gonna be very efficient and probably chop you guys on time because i want to make sure that everyone gets a chance um but okay so my first question is i'm gonna ask sort of a yeah so my first question is what's the biggest
• 74:00 - 74:30 challenge or who is your biggest challenger in and when when you're coming up against driving this kind of policy change so i'm gonna go to doreen first and i'll give you each of you about 30 seconds and i'm going to time you 30 seconds okay um i i mean undoubtedly tradition um the the inertia that comes
• 74:30 - 75:00 from people being afraid to step beyond uh what they're used to um so which is why this policy uh design guide is so fantastic because it enables people to uh to uh have a vision of something beyond that um but we really shouldn't underestimate the power of the existing economy it is still presenting itself uh as this rational being um that sits over here and and you all
• 75:00 - 75:30 have to uh stroke it and be nice to it otherwise it'll bite um and of course it isn't um we have to challenge that at every turn uh and we have to say there is another way i love it thank you edgar over to you 30 seconds sorry i think i think our main problem is
• 75:30 - 76:00 the problem of design we have to we have to acknowledge that everything has design that means everything has configuration everything has rhythm and everything has have scale so problems of design but the main problem of design is not our inability to design is that we are designing public policy from the supply side instead of designing public policy from the demand side
• 76:00 - 76:30 so we have to design tools capacity skills in order to aggregate information from the demand side that that is the main message we did or we we send when we uh declare pollinators as agents of prosperity we we were saying let's let's build the city from these uh from the eyes of these
• 76:30 - 77:00 beings that have been here even if they were not asked to be here and that is a very powerful message coming from the demand side so just to finish incentives to change are not in the supply side incentives to change come from the demand side yeah thank you and susie so the biggest challenge that i've been
• 77:00 - 77:30 thinking about is that in this country because a particular government introduced this approach i've always been concerned about its longevity when the government was to change so but i think edgar has probably just articulated the way around that is that actually we need people we need our citizens to be really supportive of their efforts and if that was the case then it would it would be a would become a political which would be um amazing and i think it's really necessary if we're going to go
• 77:30 - 78:00 if we're going to go forward yeah yeah thank you um amanda a question for you what do you hope will be the impact of this guide over the next year or two wow yeah well i mean my hope beyond anything else i think would be that people realize that a different economic system is not just an idea it's fully possible
• 78:00 - 78:30 but it's the economy is not something given it's something we construct through our collective decisions and actions and so and that that feels empowering to people to be actively engaged um and so we move beyond this idea of just oh that sounds good to okay let's start building it beautiful that was exactly 30 seconds let me just say um edgar i have a question for you
• 78:30 - 79:00 as you it seems like you were going around you were asking people you know in your community whether or not they were feeling like there there was impact happening or if they were happy and what do what do you think citizens can do or individuals can do to help policymakers such as yourself who are really trying to act in their interest and when you dealt with with individuals in the community like what were the actions that that supported your work well i think people uh need to speak out
• 79:00 - 79:30 people need to explain themselves and we have to acknowledge that there are limits to that that are imposed by the grammar uh are imposed by uh the the context where people live and the capacity for of them to express themselves and therefore uh we have to
• 79:30 - 80:00 also uh allowed people to to speak out with a lot of freedom uh it's our job as police of policy makers to uh to ask questions back to try to understand so so people have to share time with us and we have to use that time to understand people i i think that's basic but uh we we always forget to do that
• 80:00 - 80:30 and that is because we are very comfortable in our place in the supply side yeah absolutely um doreen you're next for this question so we're at world happiness fest and we are the well-being economy alliance and so what do you think the difference between well-being and happiness is i
• 80:30 - 81:00 think that's a cultural question if i'm honest i think well-being and happiness mean different things in different places um when i was a young mum i went to uh antenatal um classes and the midwife in my local area said we never ask our moms um how they're feeling because in our culture
• 81:00 - 81:30 in our area you will all just say i'm fine um uh so you have to get beyond uh that i use that as an example but it's really important what it means in your culture uh and um self-reported happiness uh actually isn't here the best measure um because people will just say i'm fine thanks and be brave um where we really want to
• 81:30 - 82:00 get under that and we want to look at the things that really make a difference to people's lives in some cultures it's absolutely the right word but for us i i think we want to be um uh able to really get under uh the things that that make a difference to people's lives uh and give them that agency uh in order to build the relationships be part of it and uh and help so um uh i'm happy but uh
• 82:00 - 82:30 you know it's not a question you would generally ask here yeah i love that um and it does relate back to the guide and it has to be context specific susie um do you think that taking well-being seriously contributed to new zealand dealing so well with the pandemic that's a good question um it's really it's it's you'd have to imagine that that it
• 82:30 - 83:00 that it helped um that it was part of it um but um it was we had we took some i guess the government took some bold moves um and that um i think you know perhaps it was their they felt they felt confident to to do that and whether they whether that was that they felt um that they had the mandate because they're quite a large majority or um because they felt it was in keeping
• 83:00 - 83:30 with well-being um i don't know but they certainly um this i can only imagine that it um that it supported their decision because because it means that when we because we locked our borders you know very quickly um and people were saying well then your economy is going to suffer and i guess it allowed them to say well that's not what this is about um justin just that our prime minister said that um people would die if we didn't do this
• 83:30 - 84:00 like she was very um you know she was very explicit um about why she was doing it to of and and i think that that and it's quite possible that having that multi-festive well-being approach kind of enabled her to to say look you know we don't just think about um traditional gdp here um can i also just answer that happiness question um so and the other um thing from a policymaker is that it's really important to explain
• 84:00 - 84:30 that what we're doing is robust that there is there's science behind um some the ways that we think about this multifaceted approach of well-being that we're um that we're not just offering you know an easy living and um dream space you know that we're offering something that's really tangibly going to save the planet and and address social inequality that um and sometimes the happiness um phraseology can can be problematic if
• 84:30 - 85:00 you're trying to turn turn minds so um there's a whole science of course to do with subjective well-being which is separate but i just thought it was just that with that noting that um what we're what we're doing is really um is actually evidence-based and really strong thank you and doreen i see you you want to make a comment so i'm going to come back on the cover covered comments yeah please it's a really important and
• 85:00 - 85:30 useful question actually um because the pandemic has brought out the best and the worst of people um so um as you know i'm head of open government in scotland uh and one of the things that we put in place was really solid listening to our people uh not necessarily directly but through all of our our communities local uh authorities through our um ngos and if you look at the open government
• 85:30 - 86:00 movement around the world the governments that have been transparent uh that have treated their um populations are like adults um i and of course new zealand is absolutely um the uh star in that uh that really has worked um but it re as as we come out of that the uh we identified four harms uh and the uh economy was one of those harms uh but absolutely on the same level um
• 86:00 - 86:30 was uh social justice uh and uh the the um uh coveted health but also our health services in general um so absolutely that well-being uh agenda within government was active uh in spotting that uh and beginning to think what comes next yes thank you um with the last couple of minutes here i'm gonna ask a question for all of you that i think is the most important
• 86:30 - 87:00 question of them all which is what gives you hope for this movement and for this work and for the future um yeah so let me go to adgar your first and you're muted sorry um so i was thinking about the well-being and the happiness and i'm i i very much agree about the cultural
• 87:00 - 87:30 uh differences of in the meaning of different words but i think there is a universal source of joy and how which is learning and here comes the minister of education or former minister of education to the to the to the set saying you know while people is learning people has this hope of saving the planet
• 87:30 - 88:00 and saving the planet is a utopia that allowed us to have a very na a very important trip germany in in our capacity to put in action the will of transformation and i think that is my desire and is a way of understanding well-being if you are in the track of
• 88:00 - 88:30 transformation if your city is if your country is and you get involved in it um uh yeah you you i mean i think you are great yeah and you are great come on um yeah that's beautiful please stated susie what gives you hope um i think that you know
• 88:30 - 89:00 this is like a tourism for advert for my beautiful country but um when i look at alternate it's it's just the most beautiful place in the world non-biased and i can't i can't believe that we'll continue to do things which could damage her so um yeah i look around and just think we will do better here because we must very strong doreen um what gives me hope uh people give me hope
• 89:00 - 89:30 um i spent the weekend at our climate change citizen assembly um and looked at the recommendations they were making um they are gonna broke no failure by government uh they want to see action and they want to see it now uh and the more we can do that um the more hope we have i think um it is properly um giving our populations the um ability and the tools uh for them
• 89:30 - 90:00 uh to be really really active yeah thank you amanda i'm going to pass over to you to answer that and also say any closing remarks as we're going to be up time in a minute here all right yeah well thank you so much isabel i'd love to hear your answer also but gives you hope too maybe first before i close what gives you i was just thinking like i'm full of smiles at this moment because we just brought like from new
• 90:00 - 90:30 zealand to scotland to costa rica to the us and i'm and nairobi at the moment and this is hopeful in and of itself like all of this is a very it's a beautiful um coming together of brains and uh yeah i'm exhausted so that's all i got for right now thank you oh that's beautiful yeah i mean i just yeah i really want to thank you all
• 90:30 - 91:00 for being here today and for helping to build this guide and for everybody else who has been a part of this journey and i look forward to yeah taking the next steps i think for me the biggest sort of thing of hope has really been joining we all this past year i worked in economic policy for a long time and it was always a very masculine kind of cold and technical space where this idea of visioning and of kindness and of warmth and of collective thinking
• 91:00 - 91:30 and collaboration was not always really celebrated or encouraged and being in the space and seeing how many people and policymakers and citizens and experts are just so wanting to uplift not only my voice but other everybody's voices and to come together to think about new solutions and ideas has just been yeah remarkable for me and so thank you to the whole well-being economy movement worldwide and thank you to the world happiness fest for having
• 91:30 - 92:00 us here and i know that this is just the beginning of this journey together and i hope people will check out the guy thank you thank you and be sure to follow us on twitter we have to plug ourselves at we all alliance are at we all underscore alliance the policy guide is at we all dot org backslash policy guide thank you doreen edgar and susie for your time today it was beautiful um and yeah let's do it change the world thank you
• 92:00 - 92:30 thank you so much everyone bye-bye
• 92:30 - 93:00 you