17 May 2023 - I want to start by giving credit to Ursula Van Der Leyen and her exemplary leadership. With the support of this house she has steered Europe through a global pandemic, towards a European Green Deal and steered Europe’s response to an ongoing war in...
17 May 2023 - Honourable Members, Ladies and Gentlemen, Indeed, if we look back, a little over 50 years ago, The Club of Rome and a group of MIT researchers published The Limits to Growth report. It mapped the interaction between population growth, the economy and the...
15 May 2023 - There is growing interest from policymakers globally in the adoption of new indicators that go beyond GDP, foster greater wellbeing and enable people to thrive within environmental limits. Today’s polycrisis is raising awareness that the current economic...
15 May 2023 - Open Letter published all over Europe on day 1 of the European Parliament's Beyond Growth Conference As political leaders gather for a second conference at the European Parliament on how to move “beyond growth”, we, the undersigned academics and civil...
24 April 2023 - We are facing a plethora of environmental emergencies. In addition to climate change, human activity is also negatively impacting the Earth’s soil and waterways through chemical pollution, urbanisation and the ever growing reach of industrial...
23 March 2023 - The negative environmental and social side-effects of our current development trajectory, typically based on a narrow focus on growing GDP, are well known. In a previous article we argued that GDP is indeed a problematic indicator for progress and...
13 March 2023 - There is much debate presently in Europe about the transition towards a sustainable wellbeing economy that responds to the need for greater resilience, equity, ecological sustainability and societal wellbeing to better protect Europe’s citizens against...
07 March 2023 - There’s a golden rule for humanity, common across all major religions and societies: treat others as you would like to be treated. It is the bedrock of democracy and just legal systems. But when it comes to one part of society, this rule, it seems,...
24 February 2023 - NOT IMPOSSIBLY EXPENSIVE BUT IT REQUIRES AN ACTIVE AND WELL-FUNDED STATE Over the last 15 years, my colleagues and I have studied possible paths for human wellbeing on planet Earth in the 21st century. Our perspective is that of past and future...
09 February 2023 - Land use is responsible for about 22% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, which is why it is important to reduce emissions from land systems, for example related to deforestation and the conversion of other intact ecosystems to agricultural...
