#099 Towards Economies for People & Planet

With Dr Katherine Trebeck & Mike Salvaris

Momentum continues to build in our efforts to gear economies towards shared quality of life, rather than sheer quantity of stuff. With COP 26 starting in Glasgow next week, I reached out to Dr Katherine Trebeck for a sense of how it feels on the ground there, along with how the event might leverage more of that broader momentum. That’s our take-off point for looking at some of the significant shifts happening around the world in this space. And we’re joined again by Mike Salvaris, with a major update on the West Australian Development Index that featured in his Ministerial presentation in episode 55.

Katherine and Mike against a Scottish backdrop (pics of Katherine and Scotland are off Katherine’s website, and the one of Mike is from our Zoom conversation).

“We’re also seeing an impatience from citizens who are wanting to get involved in policy-making and particularly economic policy-making. And [they’re] really saying, this is about us, we need to be at the forefront.”

— Dr Katherine Trebeck

Dr Katherine Trebeck is a Senior Strategic Advisor for the Wellbeing Economy Alliance (or WEAll) – a global collaboration she co-founded in 2018, the same year she co-founded WEAll Scotland. She has also instigated the group of Wellbeing Economy Governments, previously developed Oxfam’s Humankind Index, and led Oxfam’s work downscaling Kate Raworth’s ‘doughnut economics’ for various countries. Katherine’s book The Economics of Arrival: Ideas for a Grown-Up Economy (co-authored with Jeremy Williams) was published in early 2019.

The last time we spoke on this podcast was at one of the Australian events launching that book. And one of our guests that night was Mike Salvaris, a global leader in the development of wellbeing measures, and Director of the Australian National Development Index. So what’s happened in the two years since that event in the development of ‘wellbeing economies’, and this prospective pilot Development Index in WA?

This conversation was recorded online at the Derby Media Aboriginal Corporation on Nyikina Country in the West Kimberley, with Katherine at home in Glasgow and Mike in Melbourne, 12 October 2021.