The Inclusive Economy

Development agencies and philanthropic trusts have traditionally been focusing on poverty reduction based on the orthodox economic growth model in which profit maximisation and efficiency are prominent, as emphasised by traditional international development agendas. When adopting the concept of human wellbeing as our starting point, we find that development should no longer only be about reducing poverty but should instead be about fundamentally confronting the origins of the unequal distribution of human wellbeing that currently exists in the world. This is framed in terms of an understanding of sustainability that goes well beyond the natural environment, by explicitly including aspects of global social and political sustainability. Recognising that the purpose of development is the promotion of human wellbeing helped to focus our discussion. At the same time, it opened up and changed the agenda of issues that are at stake. This focus offered a new, powerful perspective with a great potential to confront the challenges that humanity is faced with today. If we adopt this significantly different perspective on what we are doing, how does this impact the way we look towards the future?