SOAN Professor Lester Kurtz attended a United Nations "High Level Meeting on Happiness and Well-Being: Defining a New Economic Paradigm" in New York on 2 April. The new economics should serve the human community and the natural world of which it is a part, not the 1% who profit from the current failed system in which much of the world goes hungry.
The proposed new paradigm has four pillars: ecological sustainability, happiness and well-being for all, fair distribution, and the efficient use of resources. It is inspired by the Bhutan practice of having a Gross National Happiness index that holds the government accountable not for the GDP or economic growth but for the happiness and well-being of its citizens.
In a situation perhaps rare at the United Nations, no US officials spoke; the president of Costa Rica gave the keynote address and the Prime Minister of Bhutan called on the world’s people to demand a change. Scholars, Nobel laureates, spiritual and civil society leaders, many from the Global South, made clear how the system does not work.
A follow-up meeting worked on details of the paradigm and strategies for a global movement of civil society that would demand that it be instituted. It calls for a new Bretton Woods convention in 2014 to replace the old paradigm. Dr. Kurtz is involved in mapping out groups in civil society who should be addressed for input and mobilization around creating the new paradigm.