Sustainable Wellbeing & Its Politics

Promoting the wellbeing of current and future generations equally - i.e. sustainability - seems an obvious organising principle for policy. However, it can sound radical to assert this because we’re so fixated on material growth. What if we shift our focus from material growth to wellbeing growth? After all, isn't wellbeing growth what we really want - and material growth just a proxy for that?

Such a switch makes net zero both much more plausible and much more desirable: we could achieve net zero in the next decade with large wellbeing increases – and do so much more easily than with average economic growth (which probably wouldn't contribute much to wellbeing!).

Finally, sustainability and wellbeing can stop being separate reformist additions to growth and instead replace it, altogether. Now, that would be a truly new green deal.

But how do we actually achieve such a shift and what does it look like? We explore political challenges underlying sustainable well-being and outline an emerging vision and movement strategy.