Full Transcript for Rethinking planetary prosperity: are we measuring what we value?

happened over the last 30 years or so more than that now. 23 00:02:37,040 --> 00:02:45,800 And you know, the main thing, of course, has been massive deforestation, soil erosion and great biodiversity loss. 24 00:02:45,800 --> 00:02:53,120 And the area where I work as part of the Great Rift, as part of the Rift Valley and you know, 25 00:02:53,120 --> 00:03:01,610 in the time in living memory, that place would have been teeming with animals and birds and all kinds of things, 26 00:03:01,610 --> 00:03:06,650 including the pollinators on which so much of the ceremonial life of those people depends, 27 00:03:06,650 --> 00:03:12,650 which is all about collecting honey and making honeybee aerospace. And so people themselves have felt a great sense of loss. 28 00:03:12,650 --> 00:03:19,910 And I think that's the thing that sent me on the journey is is is being attached to that place in a very important way. 29 00:03:19,910 --> 00:03:28,310 I know that part of Kenya and I visited it over 30 years and just extraordinary the change that has happened over that that time. 30 00:03:28,310 --> 00:03:30,110 Yes, amazing. 31 00:03:30,110 --> 00:03:38,930 And I was also going to ask you before we get onto the Dasgupta Report to tell us a little bit about your work in the Institute of Global Prosperity. 32 00:03:38,930 --> 00:03:39,800 And in particular, 33 00:03:39,800 --> 00:03:50,840 I know that you have written a lot about issues about how we measure progress and the tyranny of GDP and better ways of measuring societal well-being. 34 00:03:50,840 --> 00:03:53,890 Why don't you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, absolutely. 35 00:03:53,890 --> 00:03:59,360 I mean, I think what's interesting there is that from different disciplines, including economics itself, 36 00:03:59,360 --> 00:04:04,910 there is a great pressure at the moment for a paradigm change in economic thinking. 37 00:04:04,910 --> 00:04:13,190 So perhaps the easiest way to think about it is to say, you know what really is an economy for and who is it for? 38 00:04:13,190 --> 00:04:22,580 And if you measure economic progress in terms of GDP, you very often end up in that situation where we've had massive growth in economies, 39 00:04:22,580 --> 00:04:27,380 we've had great growth in human capital over the last 40 years. But when you look around you, 40 00:04:27,380 --> 00:04:35,990 what you see is increasing inequality so you don't see the benefits of so-called trickle down and all the benefits supposed to be with, 41 00:04:35,990 --> 00:04:38,750 you know, rising tide raises all boats and so on and so forth. 42 00:04:38,750 --> 00:04:46,190 What you're actually seeing is is is a widening gap between people and that is translating in contemporary society, 43 00:04:46,190 --> 00:04:51,530 of course, into a great deal of disquiet and real anger. 44 00:04:51,530 --> 00:05:00,240 And I think probably many people are aware of that sort of rise of populism and lack of trust in government, lack of interest, in fact, even. 45 00:05:00,240 --> 00:05:04,340 In improper governance and most recently, of course, 46 00:05:04,340 --> 00:05:13,190 in the last year with the pandemic really a sense that politicians are not dealing in a straightforward way with people, 47 00:05:13,190 --> 00:05:18,950 but their words cannot be trusted and that is very, very corrosive in human society. 48 00:05:18,950 --> 00:05:21,140 If you have that level of mistrust. 49 00:05:21,140 --> 00:05:31,370 So what we've been doing in the institute is we've been working very, very in a very detailed way with communities in the UK, in Africa, 50 00:05:31,370 --> 00:05:38,030 in Cuba and in Lebanon talking to them about what really matters to them, 51 00:05:38,030 --> 00:05:43,400 what is quality of life, where would they like to see improvements in quality of life? 52 00:05:43,400 --> 00:05:48,560 And generally, when you take a sort of standard economic framework, people just say, well, it's about creating jobs. 53 00:05:48,560 --> 00:05:53,030 Everybody has to have a job and everybody must have an income. And of course, that's very important to people. 54 00:05:53,030 --> 00:05:55,400 But when you talk to people about what do they really want, 55 00:05:55,400 --> 00:06:02,390 they say what they want is a degree of security, of what we would call perhaps you and I livelihood. 56 00:06:02,390 --> 00:06:10,190 So it isn't. So work is important. Yes, yes, income is important, but so are infrastructures. 57 00:06:10,190 --> 00:06:15,110 Working public services, good quality housing, good quality green spaces, 58 00:06:15,110 --> 00:06:21,650 the capacity to have a say about how things are run and an ability to live well with others. 59 00:06:21,650 --> 00:06:23,150 And that's becomes very important. 60 00:06:23,150 --> 00:06:32,720 So we've been developing a way of what we call the first citizen led prosperity index because as you clearly understand, 61 00:06:32,720 --> 00:06:38,570 there are many of these different kind of indices around the world, the development and the Social Progress Index. 62 00:06:38,570 --> 00:06:43,400 There are so many of them. In fact, you can hardly move for indices at the moment. 63 00:06:43,400 --> 00:06:52,190 And that in itself is a good thing because it means that people everywhere are recognising that we are not quite measuring what we value. 64 00:06:52,190 --> 00:06:55,970 And the question is, what is the good way of doing it? And of course, as being an anthropologist, 65 00:06:55,970 --> 00:07:01,790 I'm interested in how to develop an index that can actually understand and record 66 00:07:01,790 --> 00:07:05,250 the major structural constraints that are bearing down on people's lives. 67 00:07:05,250 --> 00:07:12,590 So, for example, in the UK, something like deindustrialisation or mental health, those kinds of things. 68 00:07:12,590 --> 00:07:23,030 But combine it with something that is speaks

to what people in their local areas really matters and what they really want to see change in progress. 69 00:07:23,030 --> 00:07:25,490 And just a plug for people who are interested in this topic. 70 00:07:25,490 --> 00:07:34,100 We've had previous conversations and lectures from people like Diane Coyle from Cambridge and Paul Collier here at Oxford talking about these things, 71 00:07:34,100 --> 00:07:39,020 and they're available on the Martin School archive. Henrietta. 72 00:07:39,020 --> 00:07:40,280 In a perfect world, 73 00:07:40,280 --> 00:07:47,900 how would you like to see a government take an indices such as you've developed one of these other ones and actually operationalise it? 74 00:07:47,900 --> 00:07:58,160 Turn it into? How would it work when Treasury comes to make a cost-benefit decision, which now they largely do using economic criteria? 75 00:07:58,160 --> 00:08:03,140 Yes. Well, this is one of the things that we've been discussing with Treasury and with others. 76 00:08:03,140 --> 00:08:07,310 And I think the first thing to say about it is if I have my way in. 77 00:08:07,310 --> 00:08:11,040 Just take the United Kingdom for a moment. By the time of the next general election, 78 00:08:11,040 --> 00:08:19,640 every area of the United Kingdom would have its own prosperity index in the hands of local people who would understand whether or not they 79 00:08:19,640 --> 00:08:28,820 were making progress towards any of these quality of life indicators that mattered to them and how that intersects with macroeconomic policy. 80 00:08:28,820 --> 00:08:38,720 So there's an educational element to it. There is an element that's also about if you like democratic participation and voice. 81 00:08:38,720 --> 00:08:43,010 And I think one of the things that would have to be have to happen in the United Kingdom because we are very, 82 00:08:43,010 --> 00:08:51,560 very centralised polity is we'd have to have much more devolution than we currently have decentralisation. 83 00:08:51,560 --> 00:08:56,150 And so we are already working right across the UK, in several boroughs in London, 84 00:08:56,150 --> 00:09:03,470 but also in Leeds and in Liverpool and in Glasgow and other places developing these local based prosperity indices. 85 00:09:03,470 --> 00:09:13,550 So one of the reasons why this is important is because so much of government policy has been aimed at levelling up the regions, 86 00:09:13,550 --> 00:09:19,820 and everyone is very familiar at the moment with this discussion around levelling up and building back better. 87 00:09:19,820 --> 00:09:26,880 Is that actually most government policy aimed at doing that in the last 40 years has been fantastically unsuccessful? 88 00:09:26,880 --> 00:09:35,430 And one of the reasons is because it insists on seeing these things as working through a kind of technological innovation, 89 00:09:35,430 --> 00:09:43,470 so it says we will bring a massive new factory producing whatever

it is to Wales, and this will create lots and lots of jobs for Wales. 90 00:09:43,470 --> 00:09:50,190 But what tends to happen in these kinds of situations is that the number of jobs created is tiny, 91 00:09:50,190 --> 00:09:57,330 so most people are not going to be employed in one of these high end new kinds of factories. 92 00:09:57,330 --> 00:10:00,930 Producing whatever it is doesn't really matter. 93 00:10:00,930 --> 00:10:09,510 And so constant disappointment and constant moves of money into areas, which is not actually really doing anything for local people. 94 00:10:09,510 --> 00:10:13,590 They might be doing good things overall for the economy or good things for innovation. 95 00:10:13,590 --> 00:10:19,320 But actually, what is doing for local people is not providing them with any more livelihood security. 96 00:10:19,320 --> 00:10:26,330 So this is a huge issue at the moment in the UK with the levelling up agenda and in many other countries as well. 97 00:10:26,330 --> 00:10:29,670 So what concrete would you like to see the government doing more of? 98 00:10:29,670 --> 00:10:33,660 I mean, it's struggling at the moment, but flesh on the concept of levelling up. 99 00:10:33,660 --> 00:10:38,640 It is, and I've been writing about that and we've had a campaign for the UK, 100 00:10:38,640 --> 00:10:42,720 which we've been running the last few months called rebuilding prosperity for the UK. 101 00:10:42,720 --> 00:10:47,250 And the way I to think about it is something that I've learnt from actually from from 102 00:10:47,250 --> 00:10:51,930 from the work that I've done in areas to deal with environment and biodiversity. 103 00:10:51,930 --> 00:11:00,070 And that is to get local areas and indeed local authorities to take a kind of whole systems approach to what needs to change in that area. 104 00:11:00,070 --> 00:11:07,860 In other words, instead of thinking about, Okay, we need more jobs, we need better health service is to actually put these things together and say, 105 00:11:07,860 --> 00:11:18,330 OK, what do we need across these intersecting systems to take account of ecological approach to the economy at the local level? 106 00:11:18,330 --> 00:11:23,670 And then to see how you address some of the major top five six challenges that 107 00:11:23,670 --> 00:11:30,870 are in those areas through a combination of local employment and investment. 108 00:11:30,870 --> 00:11:35,640 And so we're building models for that using the prosperity index right now. 109 00:11:35,640 --> 00:11:43,800 So there are very concrete things that we can do, I think. But it's what's interesting about that kind of approach is that many of the jobs that 110 00:11:43,800 --> 00:11:47,490 you will actually create by addressing some of the issues that people care about, 111 00:11:47,490 --> 00:11:52,920 for example, lack of green spaces, no parks will not properly looked after or, you know, 112 00:11:52,920 --> 00:11:58,350 very poor quality

of old buildings for schools or and not enough social care and so on. 113 00:11:58,350 --> 00:12:06,570 All those kinds of jobs are what you call reasonably moderate skill entry kinds of jobs. 114 00:12:06,570 --> 00:12:13,440 So you're not having to wait for the whole of the area to have a whole new set of skills and a whole new education and so forth, 115 00:12:13,440 --> 00:12:17,150 you can actually begin to tackle problems at root you. 116 00:12:17,150 --> 00:12:24,270 A lot of sort of decarbonisation issues can be dealt with using those kinds of approaches in the UK and 117 00:12:24,270 --> 00:12:31,680 also talk very much to the sense of place which we tend to have lost and move on onto the Dasgupta Report. 118 00:12:31,680 --> 00:12:36,960 Just before I do that, can I ask our audience to feel free to ask questions? 119 00:12:36,960 --> 00:12:42,520 If you look at your screen, you should see done on the bottom right and ask a question tab. 120 00:12:42,520 --> 00:12:46,920 I see there are already two questions there do ask questions. 121 00:12:46,920 --> 00:12:54,420 You can also vote for questions that you that you particularly would like me to put to Henrietta. 122 00:12:54,420 --> 00:13:01,560 And please do vote because that's really helpful for me in picking the questions to choose. 123 00:13:01,560 --> 00:13:09,840 So, Henrietta The Dasgupta Report Yeah. And I guess one of the highlight conclusions and recommendations that comes out 124 00:13:09,840 --> 00:13:14,970 of the Dasgupta Report that talks very much to some of the measures you've 125 00:13:14,970 --> 00:13:25,890 been we've just been talking about the last 10 minutes is the need for countries or countries and globally to think much more about inclusive wealth. 126 00:13:25,890 --> 00:13:35,280 And as I understand it, that that is the combination of what we traditionally think of as they produce capital, the stock of materials. 127 00:13:35,280 --> 00:13:42,450 We have human capital, which we're used to thinking about labour and then also natural capital. 128 00:13:42,450 --> 00:13:48,240 And I wonder if you might say a little bit about what do you think the main messages of their Dasgupta report are in that? 129 00:13:48,240 --> 00:13:56,730 And perhaps how also it how you view it as a social anthropologist and it meshes with some of the ideas we've just been chatting about. 130 00:13:56,730 --> 00:13:59,640 Well, yeah, I know I'm very happy to. And I think firstly, 131 00:13:59,640 --> 00:14:11,730 what I'd like to say is that the The Dasgupta Report itself is a wonderfully elegant working out of a really difficult conceptual problem, 132 00:14:11,730 --> 00:14:19,920 which is how do you incorporate these issues of natural capital in a way that would actually make them actionable 133 00:14:19,920 --> 00:14:24,600 by governments and in a way in which they could actually incorporate them not only into their thinking, 134 00:14:24,600 --> 00:14:30,720 but

actually into their policymaking, so that the difficult the slight difficulty we have here, I think, 135 00:14:30,720 --> 00:14:36,840 is that we have to understand that what Potter has done is to create another essentially aggregate figure. 136 00:14:36,840 --> 00:14:45,660 So putting those three capitals together and his view and he argues it very carefully in the report is that inclusive 137 00:14:45,660 --> 00:14:53,190 wealth and social well-being are equivalent to the purposes of sustainability assessment and policy analysis. 138 00:14:53,190 --> 00:14:57,150 So they are the same. They are the same thing, essentially. 139 00:14:57,150 --> 00:15:03,510 And so what you would do the same thing by definition or the same thing because they're measuring the same thing, 140 00:15:03,510 --> 00:15:08,010 same things and measuring the same thing? Yeah, that's right. And that when he makes an argument for that, 141 00:15:08,010 --> 00:15:13,080 said one of the one of the one of the one of the issues that you could take up and people 142 00:15:13,080 --> 00:15:18,490 have taken up with it with the Dasgupta Report is in what sense is that true or is it? 143 00:15:18,490 --> 00:15:23,860 Sufficiently, the case to warrant action on that grounds. 144 00:15:23,860 --> 00:15:32,080 But he makes a very elegant argument for it, I think. And I would urge anyone who's interested actually just to look at the the main report itself, 145 00:15:32,080 --> 00:15:40,990 which is huge, but a very good read, a very good read, not embed too heavy. 146 00:15:40,990 --> 00:15:44,400 But there really can be very rewritten. It's an easy here. 147 00:15:44,400 --> 00:15:52,600 It's it's an easy read. It's an easy. But the difficulty we have with so let's just say one thing about the difficulty with it. 148 00:15:52,600 --> 00:15:55,060 So one of the things that acknowledges, but of course, 149 00:15:55,060 --> 00:16:00,850 can't resolve in the in the in the report and this speaks to the work that we're doing in the institute, 150 00:16:00,850 --> 00:16:07,750 is that as an aggregate figure, it's much more useful in GDP, which discounts anything to do with the natural world. 151 00:16:07,750 --> 00:16:16,870 Effectively, it's not interested in it. But as with GDP, because it's an aggregate figure, it does not reflect distribution across people. 152 00:16:16,870 --> 00:16:24,100 In other words, you know, it doesn't incorporate inequalities and particularly systemic inequalities of any kind. 153 00:16:24,100 --> 00:16:30,070 So you would be dealing with not understanding how it applies to the specifics of place. 154 00:16:30,070 --> 00:16:34,420 Mm-Hmm. That's one of the difficulties. It would be very, very difficult to to use it to do that. 155 00:16:34,420 --> 00:16:36,910 So in order to actually operationalise it, 156 00:16:36,910 --> 00:16:46,540 you would need to marry it together with something like the prosperity index to make it actually speak to the specifics of the place itself. 157 00:16:46,540 --> 00:16:56,350 And this is important because the ecological crisis is itself fundamentally an inequality crisis at so many different levels. 158 00:16:56,350 --> 00:17:02,680 Because, first of all, because those who were experiencing the sharp end or much of the sharp end of of climate 159 00:17:02,680 --> 00:17:10,510 change and biodiversity loss are not those whose actions have been driving these changes. 160 00:17:10,510 --> 00:17:14,860 That was at a planetary level, to put it bluntly. So what are you in Africa? 161 00:17:14,860 --> 00:17:21,280 Africa has not been causing these actions and with its consumption patterns, they have been closed elsewhere. 162 00:17:21,280 --> 00:17:27,640 And it's also an inequality crisis across the generations, which is something that Potter is very concerned about. 163 00:17:27,640 --> 00:17:34,570 One of the things he wants to do is to be able to hold governments to account using this notion of inclusive wealth, 164 00:17:34,570 --> 00:17:42,010 in other words, to educate the current generation and the following generations to understand that you need to say to government, 165 00:17:42,010 --> 00:17:51,160 Okay, so what is this going to do for inclusive wealth, this project or this policy or this particular government management of the economy? 166 00:17:51,160 --> 00:17:52,330 Where will it take us? 167 00:17:52,330 --> 00:18:04,180 Will it actually be an improvement in inclusive wealth or not so that there has to be work for distributive justice in his thinking? 168 00:18:04,180 --> 00:18:11,200 But he he cannot say what that is because in a way, it's this is where so much of the work we do is, you know, 169 00:18:11,200 --> 00:18:16,900 very well in your own work is about working in this quite novel kind of transdisciplinary way 170 00:18:16,900 --> 00:18:22,240 where we actually have to get together to solve these problems both at the intellectual level, 171 00:18:22,240 --> 00:18:24,850 but also at the sort of practical policy level too. 172 00:18:24,850 --> 00:18:32,380 I think we need to bring different people to the table to meet these kinds of decisions now as to how to go forward. 173 00:18:32,380 --> 00:18:37,330 I suddenly found that some of the writings on inequality in the report were fascinating. 174 00:18:37,330 --> 00:18:45,410 And I guess one immediately thinks about if one thinks about the different asset classes and clearly people differ in their material wealth. 175 00:18:45,410 --> 00:18:57,490 And we know all about that. The complicated issue about disparities in in in skills and human capital and actually what that's doing to the 176 00:18:57,490 --> 00:19:09,130 country with the with the shifting political divide now going along educational along an educational dimension. 177 00:19:09,130 --> 00:19:14,320 But I no thought really appreciated some of the disparities in natural capital. 178 00:19:14,320 -->

00:19:17,890 And I guess I got two messages from that from the report. 179 00:19:17,890 --> 00:19:24,880 One is sort of even within the country, then people have different local natural capital wealth. 180 00:19:24,880 --> 00:19:26,410 And I thought the point that Martha made, 181 00:19:26,410 --> 00:19:35,050 while all of you may very well was that much of our trade and actually much of our are the ways we have offshore samovar, 182 00:19:35,050 --> 00:19:43,600 for example, greenhouse gas emissions has been almost an exploitation of natural capital in low income countries, 183 00:19:43,600 --> 00:19:46,180 which in many ways can make us look good. 184 00:19:46,180 --> 00:19:55,120 Yes, and I and I think we all all of us ought to be especially business for working in this area and and all learning. 185 00:19:55,120 --> 00:20:00,910 And it's those students from of coming into the Oxford Martin School and the institute's own prosperity. 186 00:20:00,910 --> 00:20:11,290 Very, very attentive to some of these issues, which are about offsetting Dominicans types, right? 187 00:20:11,290 --> 00:20:20,680 Because I think that, you know, some of them will be important and will work at both at the global level and at the national level. 188 00:20:20,680 --> 00:20:29,890 But many of them are just a way of being able to carry on doing what you're currently doing and feel slightly less bad about it. 189 00:20:29,890 --> 00:20:33,180 And I think we need to be careful, very careful. 190 00:20:33,180 --> 00:20:41,590 Now you'll be aware that there are some people who really hate the notion of economics and being mixed with 191 00:20:41,590 --> 00:20:52,510 biodiversity and argue that biodiversity is literally invaluable and so economic thinking doesn't work. 192 00:20:52,510 --> 00:20:57,880 I think Pather has a really sophisticated response to that objection. 193 00:20:57,880 --> 00:21:02,170 But I was wondering how you, as a social anthropologist, respond when people say, 194 00:21:02,170 --> 00:21:09,340 no, you can't make something as wonderful and as inalienable as nature and. 195 00:21:09,340 --> 00:21:15,880 Quotidian economic thinking. Yes, and I do, and I understand this apprehension really well, and I mean, 196 00:21:15,880 --> 00:21:22,510 it's not just that that that that nature is something that's fundamental for all of us, 197 00:21:22,510 --> 00:21:26,230 but for many people around the world, it's something that's sacred as well. 198 00:21:26,230 --> 00:21:30,880 And so, you know, putting a monetary value on it really, really doesn't help. 199 00:21:30,880 --> 00:21:34,420 And I think two things to be said Wolf, as you say, 200 00:21:34,420 --> 00:21:39,550 also has this sophisticated way of dealing with it because basically what he says is you you have to 201 00:21:39,550 --> 00:21:45,220 understand these three forms of capital as having what he calls in economic terms and accounting value. 202 00:21:45,220 --> 00:21:53,800 But that is the value which is the market price plus the social worth or the social scarcity value. 203 00:21:53,800 --> 00:22:01,510 And he understands that social worth is the contribution of an additional unit of it would make to societal well-being. 204 00:22:01,510 --> 00:22:08,960 So he's trying here to incorporate a notion of social wealth, including even such things as ritual work. 205 00:22:08,960 --> 00:22:11,950 And he gives some very good examples in the report. 206 00:22:11,950 --> 00:22:17,980 For Baynham, for example, talking about, you know, the number of sacred groves that are no longer there. 207 00:22:17,980 --> 00:22:24,880 And what's happened to people's cultural life so that when he talks about the ammunition in natural capital at the time, 208 00:22:24,880 --> 00:22:30,460 he's also aware that he's talking about ammunition and cultural capital for many, many peoples of the world. 209 00:22:30,460 --> 00:22:39,370 And that's a very important sort of contribution. So he has come quite a long way to taking into account all of these social issues. 210 00:22:39,370 --> 00:22:45,490 But I think the the important thing that we need to focus on here is. 211 00:22:45,490 --> 00:22:55,870 What will what will make a change, so how can we get governments to act on this and how can we get governments to act on this in a way that we, 212 00:22:55,870 --> 00:23:01,210 the ordinary citizen, can actually follow and understand? 213 00:23:01,210 --> 00:23:08,260 And I think that here his contribution with economic thinking is to make trying to 214 00:23:08,260 --> 00:23:12,790 make economics more relevant to the ordinary citizen in the contemporary situation. 215 00:23:12,790 --> 00:23:19,600 So I think the job of a very good job of that, you know, where I where I have, 216 00:23:19,600 --> 00:23:25,960 where we discussed at length in during the sessions we had was over these issues of 217 00:23:25,960 --> 00:23:32,830 distributive justice and also over the fact that it's not just that things are external, 218 00:23:32,830 --> 00:23:36,970 externalised or outsourced if you like to two of the countries, but there are many, 219 00:23:36,970 --> 00:23:45,220 many situations in country where you have a system where people who are doing like down the river further up, 220 00:23:45,220 --> 00:23:47,380 so those further down don't get anything. 221 00:23:47,380 --> 00:23:55,720 So there are lots and lots of examples of how the budget for the production of produced capital has a massive impact on natural capital, 222 00:23:55,720 --> 00:23:57,250 but also does so in very, 223 00:23:57,250 --> 00:24:06,490 very uneven ways and usually manages to contribute to uneven situations that already exist, sort of making them worse rather than ameliorating them. 224 00:24:06,490 --> 00:24:14,430 Because obviously, if you the powerful guys, you are the guys with the dam and the guys who no water to the dam. 225 00:24:14,430

--> 00:24:21,840 Henrietta, this question is a slight digression, but given you did extensive fieldwork in Africa earlier in your career, 226 00:24:21,840 --> 00:24:28,770 how much is your thinking about some of these issues about the sort of non-economic management issues around biodiversity? 227 00:24:28,770 --> 00:24:37,740 How much was that influenced by observing how local people in Kenya managed their natural resources around their villages and things? 228 00:24:37,740 --> 00:24:49,740 Well, it's a huge impact, but I think one of the things I want to say it's not for us is that we we need to recognise 229 00:24:49,740 --> 00:24:54,570 that local communities across the globe and indeed particularly indigenous communities, 230 00:24:54,570 --> 00:25:01,380 have storehouses of knowledge for the management of biodiverse systems which have endured for generations. 231 00:25:01,380 --> 00:25:10,140 But we also need to recognise in the modern world that it won't just be enough to say, OK, let's go back to doing what we're doing in the past. 232 00:25:10,140 --> 00:25:12,120 That isn't that isn't going to work. 233 00:25:12,120 --> 00:25:20,600 First of all, the changes we've already wrought in these Earth systems are sufficient to have speeded up the process of natural capital decline, 234 00:25:20,600 --> 00:25:28,140 and this is a point that it makes. So our world, if you like, is is changing more rapidly than it was. 235 00:25:28,140 --> 00:25:34,290 So and the only thing that hasn't changed. Well, actually anything that's really grown effectively over time as being human capital, 236 00:25:34,290 --> 00:25:39,600 which has grown in a global sense, but actually natural capital has been going down. 237 00:25:39,600 --> 00:25:47,370 And the really big bruise growth has been in produced capital. So we've got massive skyscrapers and roads and so on everywhere. 238 00:25:47,370 --> 00:25:51,980 And the difficulty here, I think, is. 239 00:25:51,980 --> 00:25:59,960 Understanding that we would have to situate these forms of diverse knowledge in the complexity of the world we now inhabit, 240 00:25:59,960 --> 00:26:08,720 we can't have sort of we can't imagine a world where we say, OK, let's leave everybody with their diverse knowledge to just run their own little bit. 241 00:26:08,720 --> 00:26:12,980 And that, in fact, is not what many indigenous leaders and many community leaders are saying. 242 00:26:12,980 --> 00:26:15,950 So if you look at what's happening in Africa at the moment, 243 00:26:15,950 --> 00:26:25,280 there are quite a number of African organisations which now bring big platforms of farmers together to share knowledge about, you know, 244 00:26:25,280 --> 00:26:29,750 sequestering carbon in the soil, managing soils, better, managing local seed banks, 245 00:26:29,750 --> 00:26:37,100 better getting them to work with local scientists so that they have access to these improved seeds and so on. 246 00:26:37,100 -->

00:26:41,930 So it isn't a matter of sort of if you like removing science, 247 00:26:41,930 --> 00:26:50,000 it's a matter of bringing science and indigenous knowledge together in a way that the diversity of that approach is of benefit to us all. 248 00:26:50,000 --> 00:26:58,310 So it's important to recognise that I think that's so fascinating because there is a danger of sort of having a fairly condescending, 249 00:26:58,310 --> 00:27:08,630 condescending view of indigenous people and wanting to freeze their culture in aspect, which in aspect which may be not what they want and met. 250 00:27:08,630 --> 00:27:15,950 And of course, everybody else, you know, is interested as we are in having a challenge mobile foot. 251 00:27:15,950 --> 00:27:18,890 Yes. And again, you all know this very well from from Kenya, 252 00:27:18,890 --> 00:27:27,440 but the extraordinary reach of mobile phones and mobile phone knowledge into rural agricultural communities in Kenya, 253 00:27:27,440 --> 00:27:31,910 far in advance of of this country to be brought to this country. 254 00:27:31,910 --> 00:27:41,990 And you can get most of you, most of you, you know, your sort of farm support comes through your mobile telephone and kept saying it could hear you. 255 00:27:41,990 --> 00:27:50,930 We've got all the sort of systems in place. And so there's still, if you like, the possibility for people to be, you know, 256 00:27:50,930 --> 00:27:58,140 the bits going to your farm or visiting you or other support systems for farming and some to be effective. 257 00:27:58,140 --> 00:28:05,010 But in Africa, I mean, the cost of maintaining that is something that's been beyond most African governments for a very, very long time. 258 00:28:05,010 --> 00:28:12,050 So actually, the mobile phone has really produced an opportunity to share knowledge and to collaborate, 259 00:28:12,050 --> 00:28:17,240 which has been quite extraordinary and is extraordinarily important to the future of agriculture for Africa as well. 260 00:28:17,240 --> 00:28:23,660 And Kenya extraordinary that they deregulated just at the right time, whereas many of their neighbours didn't deregulate, 261 00:28:23,660 --> 00:28:29,270 and they have this wonderful ecosystem of of of individual entrepreneurs. 262 00:28:29,270 --> 00:28:35,870 Yeah. Henry, I suspect we could talk a lot about Kenya, but I'm going to go back to the Dust Guts report. 263 00:28:35,870 --> 00:28:42,740 I think one of the things that I did not expect Pather to have to write so strongly about not interested in your views as a 264 00:28:42,740 --> 00:28:53,510 social anthropologist about this is the disconnect that many people have from nature today and the fact how little we are. 265 00:28:53,510 --> 00:29:03,170 Many people are exposed to nature or natural environments. And I thought he had a wonderful clarion call for especially our children, 266 00:29:03,170 --> 00:29:09,520 to be more exposed to nature and for more nature studies to be taught in schools and things. 267 00:29:09,520 --> 00:29:13,790 It rather passed along to my colleagues in the biology department at Oxford. 268 00:29:13,790 --> 00:29:23,450 We argued at one point that everyone coming into university should do an ecology module and things which rather alarmed the people who teach them. 269 00:29:23,450 --> 00:29:29,060 But I did think it was a wonderful argument and coming from an economist as well. 270 00:29:29,060 --> 00:29:33,050 Quite strong, yes. It's not something you think is important. 271 00:29:33,050 --> 00:29:37,130 I do think this is hugely important. I think it has to be set, though, in a context. 272 00:29:37,130 --> 00:29:42,590 So both collecting is good fun. I mean, I certainly remember doing both collecting as a child or newts. 273 00:29:42,590 --> 00:29:45,200 I think we were interested in capturing, as I recall, 274 00:29:45,200 --> 00:29:53,550 but it's not that so much as setting this understanding of nature in two very important frames of reference. 275 00:29:53,550 --> 00:30:01,430 The first is the fact that human systems of all kinds are embedded in the in the natural world in ways, 276 00:30:01,430 --> 00:30:08,990 which means that what is happening is a process of co-evolution, which we have to continue to be part of. 277 00:30:08,990 --> 00:30:16,700 So in other words, it's not going to be possible to manage all of what we need to do in the world by just rewilding half the planet, for example. 278 00:30:16,700 --> 00:30:23,240 That's not going to that's not going to work. But the other is that we teach we do need to teach children in school. 279 00:30:23,240 --> 00:30:29,840 I think something very important, which is what I would call a whole systems approach to understanding the world they live in now. 280 00:30:29,840 --> 00:30:36,830 And in that sense, you I can see why you would argue for an ecological all undergraduates in the first year. 281 00:30:36,830 --> 00:30:41,030 Well, there is. You used to argue for a sort of basic economics course, 282 00:30:41,030 --> 00:30:48,260 and that's because the intersecting nature of these dynamic non-linear systems is something that everybody needs to be able to understand. 283 00:30:48,260 --> 00:30:58,610 And I think that really is a change. You view it marks the 21st century out quite definitively, I think, from the 2015 movies, 284 00:30:58,610 --> 00:31:02,900 ideas and then and the other thing it does is it for us as intellectuals, 285 00:31:02,900 --> 00:31:07,040 it marks the boundary between the kinds of disciplines we've all been involved in, 286 00:31:07,040 --> 00:31:13,730 which have their origins in the 19th century and had particular 19th century framings and forcing us into 287 00:31:13,730 --> 00:31:19,460 a situation where we have to realise that we now need to really unpick quite a number of assumptions, 288 00:31:19,460 --> 00:31:28,730 including in economics. And the father

isn't the only person being left in economics, although he's a leading figure in this field. 289 00:31:28,730 --> 00:31:35,630 To get us out of thinking about societies, for example, is moving towards steady states or towards equilibrium. 290 00:31:35,630 --> 00:31:41,810 Right? This problem for us, because that's not what's happening in the world and in the societies we're living in now. 291 00:31:41,810 --> 00:31:47,430 And I think the next generation really needs to understand that and where to intervene in it. 292 00:31:47,430 --> 00:31:55,610 I'm going to come to questions in five minutes. But just before doing that, I'd like to ask you a specific question. 293 00:31:55,610 --> 00:31:59,990 And this is about regenerative agriculture, which you've written a lot on recently. 294 00:31:59,990 --> 00:32:08,860 And again, if one's interested in biodiversity but has to think about agriculture and food supply and vice versa, I think now. 295 00:32:08,860 --> 00:32:15,380 And how did you get interested in that? And tell us a little bit about your recent thoughts on that. 296 00:32:15,380 --> 00:32:28,790 Well, I got interested in it. I think because of my experience of the fragility of African smallholder agriculture on the conditions of fertiliser, 297 00:32:28,790 --> 00:32:32,900 subsidy for mono cropping of maize. 298 00:32:32,900 --> 00:32:39,770 And so as soon as that happens, you realise that a number of things is not just that you're putting the fertiliser on the fields. 299 00:32:39,770 --> 00:32:43,640 I mean, you could that's something we can come back to in a second. 300 00:32:43,640 --> 00:32:51,540 But the fact is that you are. Reducing the dietary diversity of these communities was what tends to happen, 301 00:32:51,540 --> 00:32:55,290 is that people grow as much maize as they possibly can to try and sell it on the market, 302 00:32:55,290 --> 00:32:59,880 to make money and then buy everything back again, which is, of course, how you know you live. 303 00:32:59,880 --> 00:33:06,480 If you live in Oxford, you don't grow wheat to eat your bread, you know, it's not necessary. 304 00:33:06,480 --> 00:33:12,270 But smallholder agriculture across the world is still going to be the major way of living for many, 305 00:33:12,270 --> 00:33:17,330 many, many millions of people well into the next century. 306 00:33:17,330 --> 00:33:21,540 So we have to address the fact that those that form of agriculture is becoming 307 00:33:21,540 --> 00:33:26,670 increasingly precarious because the old economic model we had of saying to people, 308 00:33:26,670 --> 00:33:27,090 Okay, 309 00:33:27,090 --> 00:33:36,840 well, you will all leave agriculture and you will all move to the city and get employed in in something to do with industry or possibly services, 310 00:33:36,840 --> 00:33:42,090 cetera cetera. Except we now understand that the numbers of people moving to those cities. 311 00:33:42,090 --> 00:33:44,820 There is no formal

employment for these people. 312 00:33:44,820 --> 00:33:52,710 There's a huge crisis here of the of the model of economic progress, which we which we thought was, was was, was there. 313 00:33:52,710 --> 00:33:56,520 So that's one reason why I became very interested in it is, in other words, 314 00:33:56,520 --> 00:34:02,190 are we telling the story of how our economies and our world is going to evolve? 315 00:34:02,190 --> 00:34:09,180 And I actually think this was quite big holes in it at the moment that we need to address the informality of labour is one of them. 316 00:34:09,180 --> 00:34:17,650 But the other the the other reason is because. Being an anthropologist, I'm interested in diversity in all its forms, 317 00:34:17,650 --> 00:34:24,910 and one of the things I'm interested in is the diversity of human imagination, the diversity of its capacity for innovation. 318 00:34:24,910 --> 00:34:32,140 So in many contexts, it's quite clear to me that we do need to have lots and lots of people involved at the very local levels, 319 00:34:32,140 --> 00:34:40,480 including in local farming, regenerating our soils, reducing the toxicity in our waters, diversifying our food systems. 320 00:34:40,480 --> 00:34:44,770 Will we be able to feed the whole planet doing just this? No. 321 00:34:44,770 --> 00:34:48,580 And so we what we're talking about here is regenerative agriculture. 322 00:34:48,580 --> 00:34:56,710 What role it play? How significant is it? Each agricultural, regenerative agricultural aspects that you do, 323 00:34:56,710 --> 00:35:03,760 you soon realise when you're working on it that it has to be very specific to the local. 324 00:35:03,760 --> 00:35:11,770 Very specific to the soil types, to the seeds, to water availability, to labour availability, 325 00:35:11,770 --> 00:35:18,790 to huge range of things that are important for making it work and we will still need what we call modern agriculture, 326 00:35:18,790 --> 00:35:25,870 but that can be, you know, new types of genetically modified crops, for example, what's happening with rice? 327 00:35:25,870 --> 00:35:29,320 So what was going on with rice now will mean that there will be much, much, 328 00:35:29,320 --> 00:35:34,300 much less water needed to grow rice, which is such an important moment for so many people in the world. 329 00:35:34,300 --> 00:35:38,950 We've got nitrogen for new kinds of crops that can fix nitrogen from the air, 330 00:35:38,950 --> 00:35:45,140 which are coming in stream with precision watering systems, which we didn't have before. 331 00:35:45,140 --> 00:35:48,640 We've got new ways of controlling pests and so on and weeds. 332 00:35:48,640 --> 00:35:55,900 So we have we don't have to have these sort of deserts of the prairie, which are which we're going to be. 333 00:35:55,900 --> 00:36:03,610 They didn't have any longevity food systems as they currently are, and I think that's that we need the diversity of both approaches. 334 00:36:03,610 --> 00:36:06,280 So I couldn't agree more with you on that. 335 00:36:06,280 --> 00:36:17,170 And I think one of the barriers to achieving that is an area where actually the social sciences is going to be very, very, very important. 336 00:36:17,170 --> 00:36:22,090 And that is to stop destructive polarised narratives arising, 337 00:36:22,090 --> 00:36:29,680 which sort of sees the more high intensity farming as totally different from the low intensity farming that it's a spectrum. 338 00:36:29,680 --> 00:36:34,720 One needs variety and regenerative agriculture, depending on how you define it. 339 00:36:34,720 --> 00:36:38,710 It's a kind of really interesting social science question how these terms are used. 340 00:36:38,710 --> 00:36:48,250 But regenerative agriculture will be as important to the more intense ends of the spectrum as it will to the low and intense spectrum. 341 00:36:48,250 --> 00:36:54,790 Yes. And also, we have to think about how food the whole question of global food systems is. 342 00:36:54,790 --> 00:36:59,240 I mean, you know, talking about the human imagination, I don't know how we ever imagined to create such a system. 343 00:36:59,240 --> 00:37:04,600 I mean, it is extraordinarily complex and very, very difficult to manage in all its extremes. 344 00:37:04,600 --> 00:37:11,800 But you know, a country like the, you know, the United Kingdom has to bring in food from elsewhere. 345 00:37:11,800 --> 00:37:19,660 And understanding what we grow here and how we can live better with what we grow here is an important part of what we do. 346 00:37:19,660 --> 00:37:26,020 But we will never be in that situation unless we decide that no one is ever going to eat aubergine again or whatever it is. 347 00:37:26,020 --> 00:37:33,530 Right? So and and clearly we need we need practical understandings of this. 348 00:37:33,530 --> 00:37:40,780 But the more people who are urban dwellers, the more urban dwellers we have who actually become passionately interested in 349 00:37:40,780 --> 00:37:45,280 the question of quality of food and how we grow it and where it comes from, 350 00:37:45,280 --> 00:37:49,540 the better. Henry, I'm going to go to some questions now. 351 00:37:49,540 --> 00:37:55,540 And the first question is from McCarey Stewart Harawira, which I suspect might be a New Zealand name. 352 00:37:55,540 --> 00:38:03,580 And the question is the New Zealand Labour government promised at the beginning of its previous term to prioritise wellbeing. 353 00:38:03,580 --> 00:38:05,740 However, this is not continue to be the case. 354 00:38:05,740 --> 00:38:14,290 Analysis indicates that the lobbying power of certain industries overcome such critical endeavours across the board, in particular, 355 00:38:14,290 --> 00:38:22,330 the dairy industry points that how can governments resist the power of industries that contribute so much to the country's economy? 356 00:38:22,330 --> 00:38:30,520 This is a

really terrific question and and a hugely important one, and the answer is I am not entirely sure. 357 00:38:30,520 --> 00:38:36,580 I mean, in the sense that I'm very often dismayed by the effectiveness of different lobbying bodies, 358 00:38:36,580 --> 00:38:44,080 particularly and not just of good food food industry bodies, but also, you know, fossil fuel, 359 00:38:44,080 --> 00:38:55,720 fossil fuel companies and others and the and the way in which they can get governments to deviate from a larger policy plan by saying, Well, you know, 360 00:38:55,720 --> 00:39:05,290 we can create a few jobs in this area or we can do this or we can contribute to that so that here we see the problem of political trade-off. 361 00:39:05,290 --> 00:39:13,180 And of course, in these kind of changes, we're going to be dealing with this as you as you realise there will need to be trade-offs, 362 00:39:13,180 --> 00:39:20,530 but the need to be just transitions and we need to have much more oversight over these just transitions. 363 00:39:20,530 --> 00:39:25,630 And I think it's fine by all of us speaking up more about these things that matters. 364 00:39:25,630 --> 00:39:29,860 In other words, we cannot have a situation where the British government says it's going to 365 00:39:29,860 --> 00:39:38,920 be in favour of a green transition and then decides to open a new coal mine. 366 00:39:38,920 --> 00:39:46,500 I do agree with you about the importance of trade offs, and one can't wish them away and one will end up having to make compromises. 367 00:39:46,500 --> 00:39:50,540 Yes. Jo Flowers. There are a number of questions along this lines. 368 00:39:50,540 --> 00:39:53,320 I'm just going to ask one. Jo Flowers asked Politics. 369 00:39:53,320 --> 00:39:59,440 How does one get around the fact that politicians, local and natural national are looking to the next election, 370 00:39:59,440 --> 00:40:04,780 which is to surely to short term for dealing with the. Some of the more fundamental issues. 371 00:40:04,780 --> 00:40:07,750 Yes, and that's a very good point again. 372 00:40:07,750 --> 00:40:17,230 And what I would say is that Wales has done is perhaps a way forward here for us to think about as a as a possibility. 373 00:40:17,230 --> 00:40:19,870 So they have passed the Future Generations Act, 374 00:40:19,870 --> 00:40:30,670 which means that any legislation that the National Assembly considers has to fulfil criteria with regard to its impact on future generations. 375 00:40:30,670 --> 00:40:38,320 And some of the stuff that's coming out of Wales now because of that future generations is truly innovative. 376 00:40:38,320 --> 00:40:50,680 For example, in some of the Welsh valleys communities have been have been told that standing in their village and looking up at the hills around them, 377 00:40:50,680 --> 00:40:55,510 that they that land will be given to them for their future wellbeing, 378 00:40:55,510 --> 00:41:01,960 provided that they create businesses and activities which improves the quality of life for future generations. 379 00:41:01,960 --> 00:41:09,100 So to have that kind of imaginative idea of what you would do with it, this future generation perspective, I think, is really important. 380 00:41:09,100 --> 00:41:11,320 And of course, New Zealand is trying to do that. 381 00:41:11,320 --> 00:41:18,430 And the Wellbeing Alliance, which includes Iceland and Scotland and lots of other people now as well, are also trying to do similar things. 382 00:41:18,430 --> 00:41:28,240 So I think the what you need is a longer term framework which isn't derailed by whether or not you're conservative or labour or green or whatever. 383 00:41:28,240 --> 00:41:33,130 You know, that is the pathway that goes on between generations. 384 00:41:33,130 --> 00:41:38,560 I strongly second your comments that about the really interesting things happening in Wales at the moment. 385 00:41:38,560 --> 00:41:44,230 Do you think that sometimes it's a bit too convenient to blame politicians the whole time? 386 00:41:44,230 --> 00:41:50,950 I don't normally quote Jean-Claude Juncker, but he said often we politicians know what to do. 387 00:41:50,950 --> 00:41:54,460 What we don't know is to how to get elected once we've done it. 388 00:41:54,460 --> 00:41:58,090 Yes. Well, I think I think he did have a very good point there, 389 00:41:58,090 --> 00:42:04,450 and I think that the we should always think about the short termism of our own, of our own thinking. 390 00:42:04,450 --> 00:42:13,270 And I think if we thought that government policy was much more directly addressed to solving problems at the local level, 391 00:42:13,270 --> 00:42:20,200 then I think it would make a difference in terms of people's own commitment to voting for people who do see through these things. 392 00:42:20,200 --> 00:42:28,260 So one thing I often say when I'm asked about this is, you know, let's think about one of the biggest problems, people. 393 00:42:28,260 --> 00:42:37,960 Across Europe at the moment, which is the cost of housing, and this is particularly important in the UK and housing costs a lot of money for people, 394 00:42:37,960 --> 00:42:47,790 but it also produces 40 percent of of all emissions in the UK come from households if you take waste into account and all the rest of it. 395 00:42:47,790 --> 00:42:51,690 And part of that problem is that we're currently paying people who are elderly, 396 00:42:51,690 --> 00:42:57,870 who live in houses to be able to burn enough fuel to keep themselves warm during the winter. 397 00:42:57,870 --> 00:43:07,650 So why don't we just change the policy rate the House bill again and sort out the economics, right? 398 00:43:07,650 --> 00:43:18,390 And question from Alan Hayes now, Alan points out to the extraordinary things that happened at the last Exxon shareholders meeting, 399 00:43:18,390 --> 00:43:29,280 where a group called Engine No one managed to

get together, a group that has got so, so Allen says, three seats on the Exxon board. 400 00:43:29,280 --> 00:43:34,050 I knew it was two and they were thinking of them. Hope is right that it's three. 401 00:43:34,050 --> 00:43:41,010 So an example of the investor community actually bringing about about change. 402 00:43:41,010 --> 00:43:47,940 Allen asks, Can investments and I guess the investor community's help with levelling up and 403 00:43:47,940 --> 00:43:55,110 with to expand it slightly to getting the corporate sector to be more sustainable? 404 00:43:55,110 --> 00:43:59,100 Yeah, I think they can, and I think there's a huge amount that can be that can be done. 405 00:43:59,100 --> 00:44:10,650 So one issue, one issue, of course, is is the question of investment and the way you see the return on that investment. 406 00:44:10,650 --> 00:44:14,970 So one of one of the difficulties is that all of these big companies in the financial 407 00:44:14,970 --> 00:44:21,270 institutions around them need to be involved in the process of shaping future markets. 408 00:44:21,270 --> 00:44:26,100 So it's not just a matter of how you make lots and lots of money out of the markets as they currently are. 409 00:44:26,100 --> 00:44:33,390 But how do you shape the future markets? So really, for example, for that for the United Kingdom would be the renewables market. 410 00:44:33,390 --> 00:44:37,410 So if you go back a few years, even only a few years, people would say things like, Well, 411 00:44:37,410 --> 00:44:41,940 we'll never be able to produce enough out of renewable energy to really get rid of fossil fuels. 412 00:44:41,940 --> 00:44:45,960 And that debate has shifted dramatically. And it happened. 413 00:44:45,960 --> 00:44:51,570 It was shifted only by a combination of investment, financial investment into renewables, 414 00:44:51,570 --> 00:44:58,530 shaping and regulating the renewables market, making it more attractive and allowing companies and so on to invest in it. 415 00:44:58,530 --> 00:45:06,780 So there is a big role, but there's also a big role for the big pension Hulu as well in redirecting 416 00:45:06,780 --> 00:45:11,970 this investment to long term investment and not looking all the time for very, 417 00:45:11,970 --> 00:45:22,050 very short term and immediate returns. And part of that is about how do we how do we get quickly, for example, for me, 418 00:45:22,050 --> 00:45:29,550 and one of the things I'm very exercised about is how do we leave many of these fossil fuels as actually as stranded assets? 419 00:45:29,550 --> 00:45:35,460 How do we leave them right? And a lot of that is about how we will manage the financial sector. 420 00:45:35,460 --> 00:45:41,220 So why don't we have many more green bonds? Why did we have to build back better to the U.K., particularly? 421 00:45:41,220 --> 00:45:45,660 Those have been suggested. And I think there are lots and lots of things that could be done there. 422 00:45:45,660 --> 00:45:54,810 But the big change for business is that business has to think more about the long term benefits of being 423 00:45:54,810 --> 00:45:59,580 a long term business as opposed to how do you get short term profits and that that is really difficult, 424 00:45:59,580 --> 00:46:04,540 that that's a long, long term thing. And some businesses manage it very well. 425 00:46:04,540 --> 00:46:09,930 I mean, IKEA, for example, has managed investment and the pension fund for IKEA managed investment into 426 00:46:09,930 --> 00:46:14,070 social housing into things which do make a very good return for the pension fund. 427 00:46:14,070 --> 00:46:18,930 But they're very, very long term and not about immediate ways of running a business. 428 00:46:18,930 --> 00:46:23,010 So is that a problem with the Anglo-Saxon business model? 429 00:46:23,010 --> 00:46:30,930 The tyranny of the quarterly report as opposed to IKEA from and is a bit crass to say it as 430 00:46:30,930 --> 00:46:37,800 a as quite separate to this as a sort of Central European Supervisory Board type model. 431 00:46:37,800 --> 00:46:44,550 Yeah, I mean, lots of people have made that argument. And actually, at the moment, we've got someone in the world working on precisely this, 432 00:46:44,550 --> 00:46:51,310 looking at what has happened with the quarterly report and what's what happens with the annual report in 433 00:46:51,310 --> 00:46:58,890 the AGM meetings and why it's important to do do the shareholders actually raise anything with management? 434 00:46:58,890 --> 00:47:03,220 And it turns out that they very rarely do so. 435 00:47:03,220 --> 00:47:07,980 They they make they make noises behind the scenes, but they very rarely raise them at the AGM. 436 00:47:07,980 --> 00:47:11,670 So by the time you get to the AGM, lots of decisions will already have been made. 437 00:47:11,670 --> 00:47:17,910 So it's really about changing the long term management of the company's objectives, I think. 438 00:47:17,910 --> 00:47:22,620 So just as we've done some good work on this shift between, you know, stakeholder and shareholder and, 439 00:47:22,620 --> 00:47:28,380 you know, whether it's the form of the company that some of the energy companies, 440 00:47:28,380 --> 00:47:31,140 the problem just going back to the previous question, 441 00:47:31,140 --> 00:47:37,620 I think that's one of the reasons why the engine number one initiative and action was was so extraordinary. 442 00:47:37,620 --> 00:47:42,600 And at least reading what the economist said about the meeting, it completely nonplussed Nexon, 443 00:47:42,600 --> 00:47:47,090 who had to go away in a dark room to see if they could reverse it. 444 00:47:47,090 --> 00:47:57,810 It did not seem to be able to. Are you a fan of disclosure as a means of getting better practises in the corporate sector? 445 00:47:57,810 --> 00:48:04,380 So we have a lot about climate disclosure, and we're beginning to

see things about nature disclosure. 446 00:48:04,380 --> 00:48:08,620 And again, it criticises this. In greenwashing, do you think that can be a force for good? 447 00:48:08,620 --> 00:48:19,930 No, I think it can be a force for good because I think all of these things need all of the institutions we have in our lives in know so businesses, 448 00:48:19,930 --> 00:48:23,980 governments and educational institutions and so on. 449 00:48:23,980 --> 00:48:30,250 You know, we need to be much more aware of where they are investing their money and how they are managing 450 00:48:30,250 --> 00:48:34,390 their long term future because actually they're involved in managing our long term future. 451 00:48:34,390 --> 00:48:44,200 So all of those forms of disclosure, and I think one of the things I would say is I'd like to see when I've been writing about this, 452 00:48:44,200 --> 00:48:55,030 the climate emergency and the biodiversity crisis as seen as an intertwined emergency rather than one and the other going together. 453 00:48:55,030 --> 00:48:59,140 So I would be very keen to see disclosure on nature based things as well. 454 00:48:59,140 --> 00:49:04,810 I think that would be hugely important. I think now there's wind in the sails of that movement. 455 00:49:04,810 --> 00:49:10,120 I think really what's happened over the last 18 months is is really encouraging. 456 00:49:10,120 --> 00:49:16,150 Let me go to another question. It's just initials de at the Manischewitz D.H. Lawrence. 457 00:49:16,150 --> 00:49:23,410 How diverse are views on what contributes to prosperity and how do we balance different ones? 458 00:49:23,410 --> 00:49:29,320 What if I value undisturbed countryside? But you want high speed trains and more housing? 459 00:49:29,320 --> 00:49:36,100 So I guess. Well, I guess this difference in in economics said. 460 00:49:36,100 --> 00:49:42,700 But I suspect what the H is getting at is people have different values and these may not be commensurate. 461 00:49:42,700 --> 00:49:46,540 How does one deal with that in a democracy? Well, that's extremely good question, 462 00:49:46,540 --> 00:49:57,910 because the first thing is we have to understand is that the prosperity itself is a is is an emergent property of a complex assemblage on the ground. 463 00:49:57,910 --> 00:50:03,970 So a social and ecological and environmental and economic assemblage. 464 00:50:03,970 --> 00:50:07,540 So how it works in each place is going to be slightly different. 465 00:50:07,540 --> 00:50:14,470 And that diversity is a good thing, not a bad thing. But when we adopt prosperity index for particular areas, we are, of course, 466 00:50:14,470 --> 00:50:20,170 we have elements in it that are comparative so that we can compare across and then understand bigger trends in the economy and stuff. 467 00:50:20,170 --> 00:50:26,560 But also what we're looking at is what are the top things that need action in that area for people themselves? 468 00:50:26,560 --> 00:50:30,520 And that process is a process of working with communities over time. 469 00:50:30,520 --> 00:50:38,070 What you tend to get in that process is a number of things bubble up to the top of what are the top five or six? 470 00:50:38,070 --> 00:50:43,930 Now that doesn't mean that you can have everything you want in the notion of prosperity, because if, for example, 471 00:50:43,930 --> 00:50:50,830 everybody in a community suddenly decided that prosperity for them and everybody had to have a personal swimming pool, 472 00:50:50,830 --> 00:50:59,840 this would not be environmentally sustainable. Nor would it long term be actually a form of socially sustainable prosperity. 473 00:50:59,840 --> 00:51:03,790 And so there are issues here about people's different values. 474 00:51:03,790 --> 00:51:13,300 But what's most important is how we negotiate them and when they're in conflict and they can be in conflict. 475 00:51:13,300 --> 00:51:20,290 But at the local level, what you tend to find is a great deal of solid social solidarity comes out of this process of 476 00:51:20,290 --> 00:51:27,310 working on what is prosperity for us together at that level so that some of that is done there. 477 00:51:27,310 --> 00:51:33,070 The question of how you deal with the fact that Birmingham wants to have a high speed rail link and those people who are 478 00:51:33,070 --> 00:51:38,710 living right next to where it's going to come into London don't want it is it is a is a perennial problem of government, 479 00:51:38,710 --> 00:51:42,850 but that's not really about the prosperity itself. You understand prosperity. 480 00:51:42,850 --> 00:51:51,500 And I guess it relates to your point very early on about we're going to have to devolve more decision making down to more local levels. 481 00:51:51,500 --> 00:51:59,290 Yeah, we want that if we want more sensible decisions to be made that affect the lives of people in the local place. 482 00:51:59,290 --> 00:52:08,260 But that I guess the more decision making centres you have, the more capacity there is for disagreement. 483 00:52:08,260 --> 00:52:19,090 And how does one navigate that? And again, it's easier if you're authoritarian China, but much harder in a democracy is much harder in the democracy. 484 00:52:19,090 --> 00:52:25,120 But I think the one of the issues is to think about the fact that we are already locally. 485 00:52:25,120 --> 00:52:28,030 So we just speak about the UK government because we're here in the UK, 486 00:52:28,030 --> 00:52:35,610 but we already all of our community is very diverse and so we already have to negotiate that 487 00:52:35,610 --> 00:52:41,770 diversity is itself a strength because different people bring in different and innovative solutions. 488 00:52:41,770 --> 00:52:48,190 And so when you bring people together to solve problems, you have all of their imaginative capacities. 489 00:52:48,190 --> 00:52:53,860 When you only have one

set of people with one set of fixed ideas, then they're only going to come with their one fixed idea. 490 00:52:53,860 --> 00:53:01,000 So diversity in these things is, is, is, is a is is a good, it's public good in a way. 491 00:53:01,000 --> 00:53:05,530 And so that has to be how we have to work with the democracy. 492 00:53:05,530 --> 00:53:13,990 Because we can't, for example, in the UK have people deciding that they're not going to allow anybody into their area who doesn't look like that. 493 00:53:13,990 --> 00:53:19,420 Yes. And a final question is this from Sophie Taylor? 494 00:53:19,420 --> 00:53:26,230 How might the index, I think says the Prosperity Wellbeing Index, you were talking about help. 495 00:53:26,230 --> 00:53:33,700 Are you spiritual or bequest value largely within in indigenous and Aboriginal cultures? 496 00:53:33,700 --> 00:53:35,650 Yeah, that's a great that's a very good question. 497 00:53:35,650 --> 00:53:47,320 And I think the way it does that is by looking at what would be and ways of representing those spiritual values within the index itself. 498 00:53:47,320 --> 00:53:52,090 So very often that's about protecting mountains or protecting waterways, 499 00:53:52,090 --> 00:54:03,700 or protecting particular ways of being able to manage and own the land and have a relation and relationship of kinship with the land and so on. 500 00:54:03,700 --> 00:54:08,830 So those issues we're working on active at the moment. 501 00:54:08,830 --> 00:54:12,820 So thank you for asking that question in the work that we're doing in Kenya, 502 00:54:12,820 --> 00:54:19,420 because one of the things that really makes a difference in doing the prosperity index in Kenya as opposed to doing it here in central London, 503 00:54:19,420 --> 00:54:26,020 is that here in central London, people hardly ever mention the environment, except for green spaces by which they mean parks. 504 00:54:26,020 --> 00:54:36,070 In Kenya, almost all of the prosperity index is environment, plus tarmac roads and some other things. 505 00:54:36,070 --> 00:54:41,870 But mostly the things that people really care about are in broadly what we would call that space. 506 00:54:41,870 --> 00:54:48,330 So you see those things reflected in the way in which I want you to ask a final question. 507 00:54:48,330 --> 00:54:53,440 And we've been through an extraordinary time in the last 18 months with the pandemic. 508 00:54:53,440 --> 00:55:00,040 Hopefully, we're coming out of it. Hopefully, you've been vaccinated with the Oxford vaccine. 509 00:55:00,040 --> 00:55:10,120 But as I say, social anthropologist and looking back about what we have gone through communally over this 18 months, 510 00:55:10,120 --> 00:55:20,170 a pandemic which is really stressed the interconnectedness has made government do things that are unprecedented in peacetime. 511 00:55:20,170 --> 00:55:24,930 How much do you think that that is going to change the way we approach some of these other issues? 512 00:55:24,930 --> 00:55:34,540 I'm not thinking about the pandemic now. I'm thinking about issues such as biodiversity and climate change, but I guess also equality as well. 513 00:55:34,540 --> 00:55:43,540 Economic disparities, do you think in a couple of years will we be just back to status quo ante or do you think it will have made a difference? 514 00:55:43,540 --> 00:55:51,190 No, I think it would have made a difference because I think that one of the things that it's made a difference to is the younger generation. 515 00:55:51,190 --> 00:55:59,800 And I think that it's clear to them now the kinds of actions that they would like to take and the things that they would like to see happening. 516 00:55:59,800 --> 00:56:06,520 And I think the more we can speed up that process, I think that, you know, for me, 517 00:56:06,520 --> 00:56:13,300 if I compare it to not just two years ago, but also to sort of 40 years ago, you know, the discussion about biodiversity. 518 00:56:13,300 --> 00:56:19,600 I mean, I don't remember any old even mentioning, you know, so we have come a very, very long way and we see many, 519 00:56:19,600 --> 00:56:25,720 many other changes which have had that capacity to be a very slow burn and then push forward. 520 00:56:25,720 --> 00:56:29,920 So gay marriage is one of them, for example, which nobody ever thought would happen. 521 00:56:29,920 --> 00:56:30,820 And then it did. 522 00:56:30,820 --> 00:56:38,680 No, it turned it turned very quickly, and it turned because there were enough people who suddenly thought, you know, honestly, what is this about? 523 00:56:38,680 --> 00:56:44,410 We need to be doing this. And I think that the the biodiversity is one of those things. 524 00:56:44,410 --> 00:56:52,720 What's more difficult is that we do have really deeply embedded systems of all thumb 525 00:56:52,720 --> 00:56:59,710 of profit and elitism and gain that are going to be very difficult to unseat. 526 00:56:59,710 --> 00:57:03,710 And it's there that we need to have people working in all those businesses. 527 00:57:03,710 --> 00:57:12,660 So as you go up and go out into jobs, that's what needs to change. Actually, it's two minutes to go, so I can spend a final question. 528 00:57:12,660 --> 00:57:19,620 So Henrietta Rishi Sunak calls you in to his wonderful office in the Treasury and says 529 00:57:19,620 --> 00:57:26,520 I've just finished reading passes 400 page report and you can you can see his tied hands. 530 00:57:26,520 --> 00:57:33,300 And he asks you, what is the priority of legislation I need to bring in now? 531 00:57:33,300 --> 00:57:44,580 What what should I do first? Well, I think the priority would be to to bring in a form of all inclusive wealth accounting that Carter is asking for, 532 00:57:44,580 --> 00:57:50,460 but also to make sure that it becomes the backbone of the way you think about the changes you 533 00:57:50,460 --> 00:57:59,670 want to see in in illness that is in the management of our own landscape and farming systems. 534 00:57:59,670 --> 00:58:05,610 Just to interrupt there. So Elms is a scheme that they're bringing in that will help support rural communities. 535 00:58:05,610 --> 00:58:15,120 The substitute for the Common Agricultural Policy will have to make those different parts of both of policy work together. 536 00:58:15,120 --> 00:58:24,660 So the environmental and mental scheme has to work alongside the idea that natural natural capital accounting will be part of this inclusive wealth, 537 00:58:24,660 --> 00:58:30,750 and therefore you will adequately recompense farmers for managing public goods. 538 00:58:30,750 --> 00:58:34,830 Yeah, and that it might happen. Let's keep our fingers crossed. 539 00:58:34,830 --> 00:58:38,760 Fingers crossed, Henrietta, just before thanking you. 540 00:58:38,760 --> 00:58:41,190 Let me thank everyone else, 541 00:58:41,190 --> 00:58:49,080 everyone who's joined us this afternoon for some really super questions and apologies for the people whose questions I didn't get to. 542 00:58:49,080 --> 00:58:52,620 There is one more talk in the series. It's on the 17th of June. 543 00:58:52,620 --> 00:59:00,730 It's not at our normal time, it's at 12:30 and it's with Natalie Sutton, who's at Oxford, who's an expert in nature based solution. 544 00:59:00,730 --> 00:59:05,430 Then she'll be talking to my colleague Cameron Hepburn, Henrietta. 545 00:59:05,430 --> 00:59:11,910 That was the most fascinating conversation. Thank you so much. You bring a really fascinating perspective to these issues. 546 00:59:11,910 --> 00:59:15,840 We're enormously grateful for you spending time with us this afternoon. 547 00:59:15,840 --> 00:59:19,340 Thank you very much and thank you very much, Charles. Lovely.