Wellbeing Policies for Countries and Cities

Today most countries and cities follow policies that strive for competitiveness, economic growth, and wealth creation. However, this uncritical pursuit of mainstream economic dictates is producing considerable “ills” in the Anthropocene, including climate change, biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse, and national and global inequalities. The current paper presents some of the leading alternative approaches of countries and cities that focus on creating wellbeing in a broad socio-ecological context. The emerging wellbeing focused policy framework includes the Gross National Happiness of Bhutan, Costa Rica’s National Decarbonization Plan, the Wellbeing budget of New Zealand, and the “doughnut economy” of Amsterdam. The wellbeing policy framework abandons the idea of GDP-centered economic growth and directly targets human wellbeing and ecological regeneration. It implies encouraging economic and business activities, and programs that create socio-ecological wellbeing and discouraging or even punishing activities and programs that create illbeing for people and the Earth.