Building a wellbeing economy in turbulent times with Katherine Trebeck and Till Kellerhoff

Why does the vision of a wellbeing economy remain both urgently needed and frustratingly out of reach?  In this episode of The Club of Rome Podcast, Till Kellerhoff speaks with political economist and Wellbeing Economy Alliance co-founder Katherine Trebeck to unpack this dilemma. As overlapping global crises continue to shake confidence in our current economic model, they discuss the promise and paradoxes of wellbeing economics: its appeal, its challenges and its limitations. Together, they dig into what’s stalling real systemic change, why hopeful visions struggle against the tide of rising authoritarianism and pessimism, and how ideology shapes our economic futures. Their conversation highlights the need for plurality and the need to move beyond dashboards toward courageous, structural reform. 

Full transcript:

Till: People are losing trust in our current system, and we are faced not only with environmental degradation, but also the destruction of our social fabric. Many of the challenges we see today are actually symptoms of a crisis of our economic system. An alternative to that is the Wellbeing Economy, something I will talk about in today's Club of Rome podcast, where we explore bold ideas for shaping sustainable futures.

I am Till Kellerhoff, Programme Director at The Club of Rome, and in this episode, I'm delighted to be joined by political economist, writer and advocate for economic system change, Katherine Trebek. Katherine co-founded the Wellbeing Economy Alliance and is a member of The Club of Rome. During the episode, we get into the concepts of wellbeing economy, the challenges of implementation in this crazy world, why this movement doesn't benefit more from the existing pain of the people and current crisis and why there's still hope.    Katherine, it's a real pleasure to speak to you today. How are you doing?

Katherine: I'm well, yeah, fantastic to be with you, and I'm buzzing at the moment, because yesterday, I was hanging out with incredible community group who are doing amazing work up in Sydney. We're coming up with some cool cornerstone indicators for the success of their locality. So I'm filled with hope at the moment.   Till: Oh, that's amazing. And we will both speak about communities indicators and hope later in this episode. And we want to talk about Wellbeing Economics today, what it is, but also what the challenges and hopes are in the implementation. Before we dig deeper into that, if you had 30 seconds to explain wellbeing economics to someone who isn't very familiar with the term, how would you do that? And what does it have to do with a picnic blanket?    Katherine: Ah, okay, so I'm not going to tell you about wellbeing economics. I'm going to talk about the wellbeing economy agenda. Wellbeing economics, I think of as more about the curricula and the sort of the study of wellbeing, but the wellbeing economy agenda is much more like a program for change that is essentially about transforming our economic systems, how we produce, consume, who's winning, who's losing, how we treat the environment, how we treat each other, the nature of businesses, transforming all of that. So it's very deliberately in service of people and planet.    Till: Excellent.    Katherine: You want to hear about a picnic blanket?   Till: Absolutely   Katherine: That's my, my way of describing how the wellbeing economy agenda is not some new on its own concept that's here to sort of shove out of the way all the existing amazing schools of thought and ideas and visions for economic system change. There are loads of concepts out there, loads of ways of describing an economy that is much better for people and planet. And lots of folk who have heard of many of these, from donut economics, regenerative economics, solidarity economics, feminist economics, future generations thinking, post growth economics and so on and so on and so on.

I think of the wellbeing economy as not so much coming along saying, Here I am in addition to this, pick me over the others, but more sitting on a sort of different level and saying it's a bit like a picnic blanket, that's making all of them feel welcome, but really showcasing that, yes, they'll have their slightly different emphasis and different terminology and thus resonate with different audiences. And that's, I think, okay, but at their core, they really share this idea of an economy that is in service of people and planet, rather than the other way around.    Till: Excellent. And you said in a TED Talk five years ago that some people call wellbeing economics a utopian vision. But since when is this a bad thing? And I would agree with that, you know, I think we need utopia. We need also vision, but that was five years ago. Has this hope and this vision and this utopia changed in the last years for you?   Katherine: Do you know Till, I think, five years ago, almost, in retrospect, feels like halcyon days. And of course, the challenges