Care Work is an Essential Dimension of Human Wellbeing

This ProgBlog article by Make Mothers Matter, was a contribution to the Wikiprogress online consultation - “Reducing poverty is achievable: Finding those who are hidden by inequalities"

Care work is an essential dimension of human wellbeing. It encompasses indispensable domestic services within households, education and childcare, care of the sick, the disabled and the elderly, and services to communities.

Yet it remains, in the vast majority of countries, unrecognized both economically, legally and socially.

Time-use studies indicate that women bear at least 2/3 of the unpaid care work burden. As a result, women, and mothers in particular, suffer from “time-poverty” that prevents them from engaging in income generating activities. This devotion is often a necessity to compensate for the lack of social services available.  All too often women have to give up paid work outside the house to care for an elderly or sick child.  And in many areas unpaid work also has to compensate for the lack of public infrastructure (water and sanitation, energy, communications, transportation, health services…). Unpaid work is at the root of women’s poverty and discrimination.

Still, Nobel Price Laureate Gary Becker famously stated:

“The mother at home raising her children makes a greater contribution to the economy than the father in the workplace” (1998 UN Conference on the Family).

Notwithstanding the recognition of its importance in the Beijing Conference outcome document, and the recommendation that states create “household satellite accounts” that include a valuation of unpaid work into GDP figures for a better indicator of development and wellbeing, unpaid care work remains hidden from most statistics.

It is therefore urgent that:

• countries agree both on a common time-use survey framework and a common valuation methodology that balance simplicity/cost of implementation and comprehensiveness/meaningfulness of results;
• the economic and social  value of mothers’ caring work for her family be better recognized;
• new statistics be taken into account in development policies, that could notably aim at reducing the burden of unpaid work through the implementation of better social policies and infrastructure.

An encouraging sign is that during the High Level Panel held at the UN during the Commission on the Status of Women on march 12th, many countries have expressed the desire and recommendation that unpaid care work be recognized in national statistics, namely GDP, to underscore its importance and value to society as a whole.

One way to accelerate progress would be to integrate unpaid work in the post 2015 agenda: the implementation of an unpaid work indicator would not only underscore its economic value but also point to its uneven distribution between men and women, forcing states to act.

Make Mothers Matter

A Sustainable Human Development Index in the Post 2015 era

‘Only one thing matters: sustainability’. This may very well make people frowning and provoke lots of question marks. However, when one realises what sustainability is all about, one can only agree. The famous Brundtland Commission has defined sustainability – already nearly 25 years ago – as follows:

A sustainable society is a society

• that meets the needs of the present generation,
• that does not compromise the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

To avoid any possible misunderstanding whether all three wellbeing dimensions are included or not, this definition can be extended with a third sentence

• in which each human being has the opportunity to develop itself in freedom, within a well-balanced society and in harmony with its surroundings.

The Brundtland definition leaves no doubt with respect to the necessity of both intra- and intergenerational solidarity and equity of Human Wellbeing (HW) around the globe and across the years. Many international treaties, among these the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, lead to the same conclusion. In order to ensure the possibility of a reasonable level of HW in the near and distant future, a reasonable level of Environmental Wellbeing (EW) is an absolute precondition. And again, many international agreements have been signed in which many if not all countries commit themselves to take the utmost care of our environment. Thus there are two main goals: Human Wellbeing and Environmental Wellbeing. HW without EW will be a dead end, EW without HW makes no sense, at least not from an anthropocentric point of view.

Since the achievement of HW and EW requires a reasonable level of Economic Wellbeing (EcW), the latter has to be taken care of also. This requires that not only the two main goals, HW and EW, are to be achieved, but also EcW, the latter not being a goal in itself, but the precondition to achieve a reasonable level of HW and EW. That will be the challenge for the UNDP now it is considering to extend the valuable Human Development Index (HDI) with the main sustainability issues into an Sustainable HDI (S-HDI).

Framework HDI 

The current HDI comprises

• Life expectancy
• Education (mean years of schooling, expected years of schooling)
• Income (Gross National Income per capita, PPP)

It has already been suggested to extend the current HDI with 

• CO2 emissions
• Water consumption
• Land area / crop area
• Ecological Footprint – EF 
• Biodiversity (Red List)
• Adjusted Net Savings – ANS 
• Inequality (expressed by income distribution)
• Employment

This certainly is not a complete list. Further indicators will soon be suggested. However, take care – for reasons of transparency and easy communication – that the number of indicators remains limited.

Clustering

The current as well as the already suggested indicators vary a lot in nature. One can cluster them – and probable further indicators – into the three wellbeing dimensions:

HW	EW	EcW
1. Education 2.Life expectancy 3.Income distribution	1. CO2 emissions 2. Water consumption 3. Land area 4. EF 5. Biodiversity	1. GDP 2. ANS 3. Employment

This will result in a transparent framework, which comprises a limited set of indicators and shows at a glance the actual situation for each indicator as well as the actual level of wellbeing for HW, EW and EcW. One might consider to also calculate one overall figure for the level of sustainability for each country as well as for the world as a whole.

Nine planetary boundaries

Beside the indicators which will be included in the S-HDI, it is most valuable to regularly report the actual situation of the nine planetary boundaries, which have been determined by Rockström et al. Within these boundaries humanity can expect to operate safely. According to the authors, three boundaries already have been transgressed: climate change, biodiversity loss and changes to the global nitrogen cycle. The impact of an individual country on some boundaries (CO2, water consumption and loss of biodiversity) can be measured and expressed in the S-HDI. For other boundaries this can only be done with great difficulty and uncertainty. Therefore, a separate presentation of the state of the art of the planetary boundaries, beside the S-HDI, is preferable. This will have a high added value.

Post 2015 era

Will it be possible to connect S-HDI with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) after 2015, when the MDGs will be renewed and replaced by Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)? And if possible, does it makes sense to do so? Both instruments, S-HDI and SDGs, are aiming at the same goal: The future we want, thus enhancing and accelerating progress towards a sustainable society. The paths followed by the two instruments are similar, though maybe not completely equal. Until now the HDI comprises a very limited number (3 – 4) of indicators, whereas the MDGs include 60 indicators to monitor progress. As said above, most probably the number of indicators for the S-HDI will be quite a few more than the current 3 – 4. And it is very possible that the number of indicators for the SDGs will be substantially less than the present 60. It will make the SDGs more transparent. Even more important is that less detailed targets (and indicators) offer countries the opportunity to decide themselves where to give priorities in improving for instance a country’s health: by reducing child mortality, or by combatting HIV/AIDS, or by measures against malaria etc.

Thus it might very well be that S-HDI and SDGs will converge in the near future. Until that stage has been achieved, it is preferable to keep both instruments, the S-HDI and the Monitor of the SDGs. Don’t throw away a valuable instrument until one can be sure that the new one lives up to one’s requirements and expectations.

The most important measure will be to regularly – yearly – publish the results of the monitoring process, not only in a global report but also in a – public – report for each country separately; the country report to be sent to the Government and the Parliament. Keep the pressure high. No country can accept to be blamed for its poor performance on the long run, be it Afghanistan or Zimbabwe or any country in between A and Z.

And finally, let’s not forget the urgent call of the Stiglitz Commission: we need up to date and reliable data. A challenge for governments and their statistical offices.

March 7th, 2013

Geurt van de Kerk

Sustainable Society Foundation

www.ssfindex.com 

geurt.vandekerk@ssfindex.com

The SDGs e-Inventory: Stakeholders outline their visions for post-2015 global goals

This ProgBlog article written by Jack Cornforth, Stakeholder Forum for a Sustainable Future, is part of the Wikiprogress Post-2015 series. 

This month Stakeholder Forum has launched a new online tool to crowdsource stakeholder proposals for global goals for the post-2015 period. The Sustainable Development Goals e-Inventory provides all stakeholders with a platform to outline their visions for new universal goals for development, whether they be individuals, organisations or networks, from developed or developing countries, or representatives from NGOs, the private sector, or any other stakeholder group.

With the target date for the Millennium Development Goals fast approaching, attention has turned to what will happen beyond 2015 and several international processes are now working towards determining a new development agenda with new set of global goals. One such process is the negotiation track to create a universal set of sustainable development goals (SDGs), which aims to integrate the development and environment agendas under one framework.

Acting as an online repository, the e-Inventory aims to support stakeholders, including governments and intergovernmental organisations, to become better informed about the wide range of proposals, expectations and evidence-based arguments on SDGs, and other global goals for development, that are being proposed as part of the ongoing discussions on the post-2015 development framework.

Crucially, the SDGs e-Inventory is interactive, allowing stakeholders to submit their own ideas, update their submissions, and provide feedback and comments on other proposals as the discussions on the Post-2015 Development Agenda and the SDGs develop. Stakeholders visiting the site are encouraged to propose specific goals, together with targets and indicators, or they can simply emphasise the principles and themes that they think the new framework should be based upon and address.

The e-Inventory is targeted at sustainable development  practitioners, and aims to provide  users with the resources to develop their thinking, and the space to outline and disseminate their experiences of, research on, and recommendations for, global goals. Accordingly, the SDGs e-Inventory includes a capacity building component (currently being populated) to help stakeholders to fill knowledge gaps around the intergovernmental process, develop their own proposals, build alliances, and develop advocacy strategies.

There are a number of other consultation processes already underway – such as the My World campaign, which is soliciting broad priorities from the general public – which aim to gather stakeholder inputs for post-2015 development agenda. However, the e-Inventory is one of the first projects aiming to source recommendations for global goals directly from stakeholders and to feed into the intergovernmental process on SDGs via the Rio+20 mandated Open Working Group (OWG). Whilst the modalities for the OWG are still being determined, it is ultimately this UN process that will outline an overall vision for SDGs for Members States to consider in the General Assembly.

It is important to emphasise that the SDGs e-Inventory, as a project, is itself not aiming to make prescriptive recommendations for goals based upon the submissions it receives. Rather, it aims to provide an evidence base to support stakeholders and governments to reach well-informed positions on SDGs, and see that the eventual outcome takes stakeholder recommendations into account. As well as encouraging users to utilise the information housed in the e-Inventory to support their own advocacy activities, Stakeholder Forum will also conduct and disseminate regular analysis of the data. 

Reaching a large and diverse cohort of stakeholders, whilst ensuring that the most marginalised sectors of society are not excluded, will be one of the main challenges the project must overcome to be successful. To do so, Stakeholder Forum has partnered on the project with organisations and networks covering all geographical regions. These partners will not only be integral to ensuring the wide dissemination and use of the SDGs e-Inventory, they will also play a key role in seeing that the capacity building resources provided are tailored to the different needs of a wide range of stakeholders; that the information the inventory houses is optimal for advocacy purposes; and that the project receives strategic input from organisations and network with different areas of focus (both environment and development), as well as a full range of regional perspectives.

To further increase accessibility and use by parties around the world, we also plan to translate the user interface – which is currently only available in English – into French and Spanish.

Overall, it is hoped that tool will increase the likelihood of achieving a SDGs framework which fully integrates the three dimensions of sustainable development (social, environmental and economic).

To find out more, search existing proposals, or make your own submission, visit: www.SDGseInventory.org

Jack Cornforth

The OECD Global Forum on Development would like to hear your opinions on the following major themes.

• Post 2015: Effective partnerships for development in a changing world. Click here to discuss
• Beyond Poverty reduction: The challenge of social cohesion in developing countries. Click here to discuss
• Measuring poverty, well-being and progress: Innovative approaches and their implications for statistical capacity development. Click here to discuss
• The global-national nexus and country-level policy action. Click here to discuss

In Global Downturn, Sustainable Development Begins at Home

In preparation for the Global Forum on Development 2013, Lova Rakotomalala of Global Voices discusses how to better link remittances and sustainable development.

As Western economies struggle with rising debt and unemployment, their approach to development and cooperation with low-income countries and emerging markets has taken a twist. It is becoming more clear that sustainable development should not be based on external wealth or redistribution, but must instead be generated at home.

Foreign investment and remittances have long been identified as a crucial source of revenue for poor populations in countries like Mali or Cape Verde. Entire villages have been built out of remittances in Mali, for instance, mainly from immigrants to France. However, this does not mean that these countries are being helped to develop sustainably.

 Preparing a new thatched roof in Mali. Photo by Jean-Marc Desfilhes on flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

For most African countries, the positive ability to attract capital is often negated by lenient fiscal policies towards foreign investors that strip countries of public revenues to build up their economies. This trend seems was still on the rise worldwide in 2007 according to an OECD report "Tax Effects on Foreign Direct Investments".

A report by Matthew Martin and Nils Bhinda from Development Finance International shows that in Tanzania, for instance, the influx of private capital from global mining companies increased the volume of gold and diamonds sales. However, this failed to produce the expected social benefits, such as increased government revenues or public investment in social infrastructure. In fact, various tax exemptions and fiscal incentives ended up costing Tanzania $140 million USD from 2005-2008.

Remittances: Money at what cost?

A growing number of poor households worldwide are subsisting on remittances, according to the World Bank. Still the question remains: can these seemingly successful flows of migrants and money secure sustainable development and reduce poverty in the most affected countries?

Remittances from abroad to Mali amounted %3.7 of the countries GDP for the year 2005-2006, and according to some estimates remittances significantly decreased the number of poor in Mali and also reduced inequality. Cape Verde is another nation that has seemingly benefited from emigration as the country with the highest per capita remittances of any African country. With remittances amounting to 8% of the country's GDP, it has even overcome the challenge of establishing banking institutions for the poor on its many islands thanks to financial capital from migrants in Portugal, Brazil and the USA.

Because of such statistics, many international development institutions have attempted to design development policies based on remittance flows, by trying to convert this “subsistence” money into capital for infrastructure. There are some caveats to consider though.

Despite the growth of remittance flows, one should keep in mind that the very concept of remittances originates from a major outcome of global poverty: economic migration. Those who choose to leave their country are often exposed to risks and dangers during the transition (illegal border transfer, human traffickers, social and cultural isolation).

Moreover, remittances from migrants are highly dependent on the economic growth of the host countries. When unemployment in host countries rises, it frequently affects the type of labor available to most immigrants, putting both them and families back home at further risk of precariousness. Finally, the peer-to-peer nature of remittances is both a blessing and a curse. As Hein de Haas writes in an article for Third World Quarterlyin 2005:

The much-celebrated micro-level at which remittances are transferred is not only their strength, but also their main weakness, since this also implies that individual migrants are generally not able to remove general development constraints.

Because of the lack of incentives for locally-produced added value, it appears that remittances based on value created abroad can never be the sole base of a sustainable development strategy for low income countries.

Good measures for sustainable development

There are some measures that can be implemented to support foreign direct investment and remittances towards a more sustainable world.

First, transparency and accountability. With respect to foreign investments, governments should offer proper projections of the benefits for public finance, or projects should not be allowed to take place. Financial policies should encourage a permanent check and balance system for both private and public flows with an obligation of transparency for the source of the revenues and their further use. Transparency, in the form of regular and mandatory publications to civil society should be mandatory.

Low income countries often resort to the setting up Industrial Free Zones (IZF) to spur industrialization and create jobs in strategic locations with mineral resources. The creation of these zones have often led to economic and social instability through a constant race to lower costs, geographical mobility and low-quality production. Therefore if a government chooses to implement an IZF, it should also plan for a rapid conversion of labor and production capacity to evolve with markets.

This concept is all the more important because so far there has been no concerted effort to integrate local products of low income countries and services in global trade. Inter-regional trade should remain the main goal because it provides geographical proximity and reduces vulnerability to the whims of highly mobile multinational companies.

With respect to migration and remittances, a drawback of global inequality is the tendency of qualified students from low income countries to remain in richer countries to pursue careers, a phenomenon also known as the "brain drain". As the recession takes its toll on employment in Western countries, a “reverse brain drain” effect has emerged for Nigeria, Ghana, Morocco and other countries where there are competitive salaries and working conditions.

It would make sense for policymakers worldwide to start to embrace a simple idiom to ensure sustainable development: the creation of wealth through added value and redistribution must start at home. Policies based on short term incentives, social inequities or external wealth injection might spur growth temporarily, but it is doubtful that they will sustain poverty reduction in the long run.

Lova Rakotomalala of Global Voices

This blog first appeared on the OECD Global Forum on Development 2013 site, here.

The OECD Global Forum would like to hear your opinions on the major themes.

• Post 2015: Effective partnerships for development in a changing world. Click here to discuss
• Beyond Poverty reduction: The challenge of social cohesion in developing countries. Click here to discuss
• Measuring poverty, well-being and progress: Innovative approaches and their implications for statistical capacity development. Click here to discuss
• The global-national nexus and country-level policy action. Click here to discuss

Issues for a Global Human Development Agenda

Issues for a Global Human Development Agenda is a new paper from the Human Development Report Office at UNDP. Building on a wealth of Post-2015 reflections and analysis, the paper discusses some of the key issues that need to be tackled in making the development agenda Human Development-focused. We argue that looking at progress through a human development lens could contribute to a coherent framework that many hope will underpin the next set of development goals.

The world of 2013 is different from that of 2000 and the next set of development goals needs to reflect this. Our planet is more global - more interconnected - than ever before. What happens in one country affects others. Major crises – food, financial and climate – blight the lives of billions. Issues that were a concern in 2000 have risen in urgency. And the development landscape has changed too: nations that are home to almost three-quarters of the world’s poor are now classified as middle income countries. Just some of the changes we need to keep in mind when we consider the next global development agenda.

But do we even need a new set of goals? What could they achieve? At the risk of stating the blindingly obvious, we use goals because we hope they can help achieve global sustainable human development. We may all hold different views about what sustainable or development means in practice, let alone how to achieve it, but - as a lowest common development denominator - few in the world would argue against the basic sentiment. Therefore, goals are useful if they can help achieve this.

And a set of development goals can contribute in several ways – from focusing attention to mobilizing resources to making governments more accountable. But it is important to remember that one of the distinguishing features of the MDGs is that they are a set of goals… not a collection of disparate targets. In the paper we argue that by focusing on the whole, rather than the sum of its parts, setting goals could be instrumental in promoting a more holistic view of development. One that encourages whole-of-government and multi-sectoral thinking. One that lays out the linkages between the different areas. So let’s not try to construct a set of goals one target at a time. Let’s build a coherent set instead. Thankfully the Human Development approach can help with this.

At the same time, and as debate continues about whether the goals should be universal or targeted, there are a number of issues that just about every country is grappling with. Issues that must surely have a place in the next set of development goals.

• How can development be sustained within the planet’s boundaries?
• How can poverty—in all its dimensions—be reduced for this and future generations?
• How can decent employment be provided for all?
• And how can inequity, within and among nations, be reduced?

We believe the HD approach can help not just with goal setting, but can also help government and societies design the policies needed to address these challenges. The HD approach can help ensure that development challenges are tackled in a way that recognizes their complexity. And these problems are nothing if not complex. The approach can also promote a coherent set of economic, social and environmental solutions that complement, rather than contradict, one another.

Development goals and indicators must be chosen to ensure that the root causes of development challenges are addressed, not just their symptoms. The smartest indicators will provide national policy-makers with support and focus, without dictating the specific actions they need to take: local problems often require local solutions.
Our paper touches on other issues too, ranging from the importance of new global governance arrangements to the different roles (and types) of goals and targets. You can read the whole thing here

We welcome your comments.

Jon Hall

This blog first appeared on the HDRO Human Development Blog site on 20 March 2013

Protecting Children in Conflict Zones

This ProgBlog article, will focus on the destructive affects of conflict on children and the need  the issue to be a priority when the final post-2015 framework is put in place. The article is part of the Wikiprogress Post 2015 series.

"Millions of children inside Syria and across the region are witnessing their past and their futures disappear amidst the rubble and destruction of this prolonged conflict," Anthony Lake, UNICEF Chief

Since the Syrian Civil War erupted mid way through March 2011, 70,000 people have died, millions are said to be displaced and the battle scarred country has been segmented into areas controlled by Bashar al-Assad’s regime and those who oppose him. Through articles, photos, tweets, Youtube videos, interviews, documentaries, and reports, the world has been witness to genocide in, second by second detail, experiencing the hopeless situation in all the exactitude that modern information engines provide.

To mark the two year anniversary of the conflict, UNICEF and Save the Children have released up to date reports on the war’s devastating affect on Syria’s children. UNICEF notes that nearly half of the four million people in need of aid are under the age of 18 and 536,000 of them are children under the age of five. Furthermore, some 800,000 below the age of fourteen have been internally displaced, while more than 500,000 are spread across neighboring nations as refugees.

Similarly, Save the Children’s report 'Childhood Under Fire' details the impact of the war on children, showing that many are starving, living in pitiful conditions and are losing out on the chance of an education. Citing new research carried out in refugee camps by Bahcesechir University of Turkey, the report reveals that children have been specifically targeted in the war, with one in three children claiming to have been hit, kicked or shot. Instead of going to school, girls are being forced to marry early as a form of protection against the threat of sexual violence and the armed militias are using boys as porters, runners and human shields. One man, Safa, said:

‘I don’t think there is a single child untouched by this war. Everyone has seen death, everyone has lost someone. I know no one who has not suffered as we have. It is on such a scale.’

Save the Children warns that the conflict had brought about ‘a collapse in childhood’ echoing UNICEF’s caution that Syria’s children risk becoming ‘a lost generation’. We need only look at how the lengthy conflict in Somalia catalyzed a collapse in the country’s education system to know how war can curb the development of a country’s child population.

Both reports emphasize the necessity for governments to deliver the $1.5 billion pledged to the humanitarian appeal for Syria, which is designed to target aid both inside the decimated country and to refugees living on its borders and beyond. While STC and UNICEF scramble to acquire these funds, it is arguable that the international community must take a step back and readdress how it can better prevent the fallout of war and disasters.

The brutalities being enacted on Syria’s children is a strong example of why governments must try and find new solutions to deal with the changing nature of modern conflict, which, according to the Minister of International Development of Finland, Heidi Hautala, usually features child- and gender- based violence. On March 13^th, more than 100 delegates from over 20 countries met in Helsinki to urge the Post 2015 panel to make conflict prevention, violence reduction, peace building and disaster resilience an integral part of the final framework. The UN convened discussion agreed that despite the relative success of the Millennium Development Goals, they have not managed to fully encompass the vision of the Millennium Declaration, particularly in relation to human rights, justice and equality. In a similar vein, a statement from the Civil Society Core Group stipulated that ‘supporting change in conflict affected and fragile states is now a central challenge in international development.’ The document made a concise and practical list of suggestions for how the Post 2015 development agenda should prevent violent conflict in all societies and concluded with a call for the panel to:

‘build on the vision of the Millennium Declaration and upholds the right of all people to enjoy peace, security and human rights as essential elements of sustainable development.’

Only the coming years will tell if this grandiose statement can be realistically implemented, and if we are to turn our eyes back to Syria, its people will find little comfort in such words. However, it seems essential that in the future, financial aid programs must be supported by a more far-reaching framework that will go some way to preventing such atrocities from happening again.    

Robbie Lawrence

Wikichild Coordinator

@Wiki_child

The Economics of Happiness

On the 15^th to 17^th March the International Society for Ecology and Culture (ISEC) hosted its second international conference entitled The Economics of Happiness in Byron Bay, Australia.  Last year the event was held in San Francisco following the release of the feature film “The Economics of Happiness”.  The conference and the film seek to promote the economic, social and environmental benefits of re-localising economies. 

Attended by 450 people the conference was host to a range of international thought leaders on the activities and benefits of localization.  International speakers included author and the developer of the 350.org international climate change campaign Bill McKibben, Vandana Shiva and economists James Skinner and Mark Anielski, who is an early developer of broader measures of progress which incorporate wellbeing of citizens.  

Mark Anielski called for local governments to take an audit on all community assets, monetary and non-monetary, and to move a full accounting of all that is of value in a government area, such as open spaces, roads, forests, rivers and libraries and all aspects considered of “value” to the community.  Then to take this inventory and to gather information on what is important to people, what is of value and what they want to utilize from the community.  In this way a richer picture of the economy is developed.  This description is part of a model which has been developed that is entitled Genuine Wealth.

The main streams of the plenary sessions and interactive workshops covered the themes of educating the new generation to thrive in a rapidly changing society, economics and money systems for building resilience in local communities, local food production including farming and home gardens, social cohesion including culture and heritage and methods for creating change.  

The founder and director of ISEC, Helena Norberg-Hodge, was motivated to create this ISEC after spending many years in Ladakh, a peaceful rural part of northern India, and seeing first hand the impacts of new economic policies on the economic, social and environmental aspects of communities there.  

One of the key benefits identified throughout the conference was the way in which choosing to invest time and resources in our local communities leads to greater resilience and mitigation of risk felt by the shocks experienced in financial markets, which have affected communities around the world.   The localization movement, which the conference promoted, is offered as a counter balance to some of the negative impacts on communities which have been felt as a result of policies stemming from the globalization of trade.

The event program including the complete list of speakers and topics can be found at:  http://www.theeconomicsofhappiness.org/conference-program

Tani Shaw 

Tani Shaw is a PhD Scholar with the Institute for Sustainable Futures and a member of the Global Progress Research Network (GPRNet).  Tani attended the Economics of Happiness Conference held in Byron Bay, Australia on 15-17 March, 2013.