Frectally speaking

As Ireland makes it way through historic times of a world wide pandemic, there is also the business of government to sort out, a new government, to be negotiated as the outcome of our recent general election (Feb 2020).

It just so happens that the Green Party did well here at the last election, reflective of an understanding of how important Green/Environmental/Sustainability issues are to this country.
The other message that came out of the election was the appetite for change and in particular in addressing economic injustice issues that are affecting many people, esp issues of housing, childcare and healthcare etc.

You might say that the wellbeing of both people and planet is now being recognised as critical to good governance of this country. Yet electoral history has shown that if any party pushes a “Green” agenda in the long term interest of people/planet, as the Green Party did here in their last time in government, they can be /were severely punished. With due respect to the electorate, they balance a range of issues, short, medium and long term and small political parties tend to get punished in coalition, no matter what their noble aims are.

So as the country is looking like it is moving to a new Government with a Green agenda, then the issue of Governance is key. To my mind this is where the important work of the WellBeing Economic Alliance and its WeGo arm is key. The WellBeing Economic Alliance is something I have mentioned in the past as being , as its name suggests an alliance of those who want to encourage societies and economies to promote wellbeing of people and planet.

The WeGo movement is an emerging alternative to the G20 and encourages like minded governments from around the world to cooperate and collaborate to pursue well-being as a goal rather than simply pursuing growth in GDP at all costs.

With that end in mind, in my opinion this would be a very good time for the Irish Government to join that effort, as a team effort, rather than go alone, hence this related opinion piece encouraging the new Irish government to join this movement to help pursue a “WELLBEING ECONOMY AGENDA FOR PEOPLE AND PLANET”.

PS. thanks to co authors Dr Peter Doran, Katherine Trebeck and the Village Magazine for their help in publishing the article