Research, Advocacy, and Practice on Wellbeing economics
At the core of Gaya's work lies the notion that our current economic goal of growth is degenerative, and should be replaced with the goal of human and ecological wellbeing: a wellbeing economy. Our economy is a social construct, wholly embedded in society, and society in turn is wholly embedded in nature. Our economic "story" should serve society and all non-human life; right now it doesn't.
Our obsession with growth is clearly environmentally destructive, but what's sometimes less understood is that a growth-based economy is also socially harmful: it drives inequality, fraying social cohesion and eroding democracy.
With her research on The Limits to Growth, a 1972 bestseller that forecasted collapse setting in around now if humanity continued business as usual, Gaya showed how global society is essentially still on this course. Gaya argues that humanity has a now-or-never moment in history to deliberately change its current trajectory: either we limit growth ourselves, or limits to growth will be forced upon us. Whether those countries currently living above their share of Earth's carrying capacity deliberately bring down their ecological footprint, or not, will determine human wellbeing levels for the rest of this century.
But as Gaya describes in her book, this is not a capitulation to grim necessity. In a wellbeing economy, people's needs are met by design, not indirectly - fingers crossed- through growth. That is a society in which we work fewer hours, in sectors that focus on care work and ways to restore nature, while the most polluting sectors like fossil fuels have been phased out. A society with much lower income and wealth inequality than today, powered by renewable energy, with high-quality public transport and housing, and in which fresh nutritious food is available to everyone and grown in a way that is regenerating, rather than depleting, the soil. A place where we feel satisfied on a fairly constant basis through the fulfilment that comes with a sense of connection to others, nature, and purpose. As Gaya often points out, we'd want to make this economic transformation anyway, even if we weren't facing ecosystem breakdown, because this place is where we long to be.