Join us in celebrating the work of our Prosperity Co-Lab for the UK (PROCOL UK) led by Dr Saffron Woodcraft Our PROCOL UK team is preparing to hold an exciting week of celebrations for our 10th Anniversary. UK Week will run from 17-21 June 2024 and will include a Citizen Science Festival at UCL East Marhsgate, co-curated by UCL Citizen Science Academy lead Joseph Cook and Newham citizen scientist Twinkle Jayakumar; an event around our work advocating for and ...
Juan Manuel Moreno
Early in February this year, the Edinburg University Press published The Edinburg Companion to the New European Humanities, a collection of essays prepared by colleagues from the ‘new’ and ‘old’ humanities from across Europe. Edited by Rosi Braidotti, Hiltraud Casper-Hehne, Marjan Ivković, and Daan F. Oostveen, the volume contains two chapters contributed by th...
Hannah Sender
Post-natal depression affects around 20% of women in low- and middle-income countries – nearly twice as many as women in high-income countries. An ongoing trial I’m working on together with Professor Henrietta Moore is examining the effectiveness of a culturally-appropriate form of group Interpersonal Therapy in Lebanon and Kenya, testing whether this adapted therapy will yield superior outcomes in terms of child development, maternal depression, and the mother-child relationship compared to ...22 January 2024 Join us for a week of Lebanon-themed events in London to recognise the significant work of the IGP’s Prosperity Co-Laboratory for Lebanon (PROCOL Lebanon) initiative which is a collaborative network of academics, citizens, entrepreneurs and other stakeholders interested in improving quality of life in Lebanon. Dates: 18 - 22 March 2024The theme of the week is ‘The politics of decolonial investigations and the ethics of solidarity...
Joana Dabaj
28 February We are very honoured that the work of Catalytic Action charity got recognised internationally with Co-founder and Director of Programmes Joana Dabaj shortlisted for this year’s WAwards 2024: Moira Gemmill Prize for Emerging Architecture. The WAwards celeb...Amanda Kartikasari
14 February 2024 As social entrepreneurs, our goal is to make a positive impact in the community we care about. To ensure our solution really reaches our intended beneficiaries to the desired level, we need to measure our impact to ensure effectiveness and find funding to ensure financial sustainability. We often face a dilemma within these twofold interests - delivering on our social mission while securing our own livelihoods as founders and those of our employees. This leads...Promoting Global Prosperity through Citizen Social Science (Translation in English) By Mirong Chen Traditional prosperity is often regarded as economic growth, and the only indicator of growth is GDP growth. However, the development model that constantly pursues GDP growth comes at the expense of continuously consuming limited global resources and does not provide solutions to challenges such as global inequality, environme...
Sumrin Kalia
15 February 2024 On 8th February elections were held in Pakistan, under the military tutelage. These elections were significant for three reasons. Firstly, they were being held at a time when the country had barely avoided an economic default and its foreign exchange levels are dangerously low. Secondly, they were elections of a young electorate; 44% percent of total registered voters are below the age of 35. And thirdly, these elections were mired by heated tensions b...
Nikos Tzivanakis
14 February 2024 The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPTs), such as ChatGPT from OpenAI, represents a significant technological advancement in academic research. This advancement will (if not already) impact how we conduct research, analyse data and write academic papers[1]. However, as these AI tools are increasingly integrated into research, it is critical to understand their challenges, such as the moral questions t...
Sam Tamayo and RP Duterte
2 February 2024 Last week, we released the final episode of our mini-series, To Prosperity and Beyond. MSc PIE program leads Dr. Onya Idoko and Dr. Konrad Miciukiewicz gave insights on how the program was built and how the direction has changed through the years as well as tips on how to succeed in this course. Aside from our brilliant mentors, we were fortunate to have sat down with some ...24 January 2024 Join us in celebrating the significant work and impact of the IGP across the globe during its first ten-year legacy Since its inception, the Institute for Global Prosperity (IGP) has established a teaching programme that now admits over 150 MSc students each year, and has proudly evolved into a well-renowned research institution dedicated to improving the lives of people and promoting equal access to services for all. ...
Rahaf Zaher
23 January 2024 On 22nd November 2023, Lebanon celebrated its 80th anniversary of independence from the French ‘mandate’ that ended in 1943. This anniversary coincided with the announcement of a ...
Eva Coulibaly-Willis
22 January 2024 A text I have turned to recently is anthropologist André Chappatte’s recent book In Search of Tunga: Prosperity, Almighty God, and Lives in Motion in a Malian Provincial Town (2022), unpacking prosperity as it links to migration, mobility and social aspiration in Mali. These are important themes in our work as we attempt to tackle livelihood insecurity and environmental degradation, and steady the ship of uncertain global futures. Several years o...
Sam Tamayo and RP Duterte
11 January 2024 Whereas we began this podcast with the intention of understanding prosperity and how we can develop solutions for problems through innovation, we realized that it’s a different story to place things into action. A lot of aspiring entrepreneurs get so caught up in placing ideas on paper, but fail to translate these concepts into action. And even if they manage to bring these to life, the lack of real-world validation can hinder their progress and ul...
Professor Henrietta L. Moore
08 January 2024 IGP Director and Fellow of the Clean Growth Leadership Network (CGLN) shares her thoughts on the outcome of COP28 Following the conclusion of COP28 in December, we have seen some more progress towards sustainable prosperity with food and agriculture finally being addressed in COP’s remit this year. While it has been a long time coming at COP, this has been central to our work at the ...
Sam Tamayo and RP Duterte
29 December 2023 As we delved into the world of transformative entrepreneurship, we were initially daunted by the complexities involved in navigating multiple systems and bringing about positive change. Unlike conventional entrepreneurship, where the focus is on creating value for customers, transformative entrepreneurship aims to address societal challenges and drive positive impact. This shift in perspective necessitated a deeper understanding of where to begin when developing socia...
Sam Tamayo and RP Duterte
18 December 2023 Earlier this year, we talked about starting a podcast based on our experiences as students under the MSc Prosperity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship program at the Institute for Global Prosperity (IGP). We worked tirelessly and poured our heart and soul into turning this idea into reality and are delighted to have the ‘To Prosperity and Beyond’ s...15 December 2022 Recommendations for your Christmas reading from Professor Henrietta L. Moore and the Institute for Global Prosperity We have published the Director’s Christmas Reading List 2023 which includes an array of short books, short videos and music for you to enjoy over the holidays. Eight books are in the list: ‘Power and Progress’ by Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson who talk about the link between tec...
Nawal Hamad
06 December 2023 There are many scenes of war in Gaza. The killing and bombing is broadcast live by the media: Houses destroyed above the heads of their residents, and missing people under the rubble. The bodies of martyrs fill the streets and blood is on the clothes of the rescue teams. Entire families were killed and their names deleted from civil records. Phosphorus bombs fall like rain on schools and shelter homes. Bodies have been stolen from mass graves. Amputee children smile ...
Professor Henrietta L. Moore
28 November 2023 IGP Director and Fellow of the Clean Growth Leadership Network (CGLN) writes on her hopes and expectations ahead of COP28. Ahead of COP28, I am optimistic that progress can be made following the previous COPs. However, the present situation in the UK is particularly concerning, not only regarding our goal to reach to net-zero by 2050, but the implications of this for sustainable prosperity and future flourishing. In September, Prime Minis...
Sam Tamayo
27 November 2023 Over the years, Lebanon has gone through massive difficulties across different areas from economic meltdowns to tensions between communities, while facing the exceptional task of providing secure and vibrant opportunities for its people. The Institute for Global Prosperity (IGP) is committed to...
Nikolaos Tzivanakis
27 November 2023 The financial crisis highlighted the shortcomings of traditional measures of a country's prosperity. The Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Commission played a pivotal role as it emphasised the significance of comprehensive assessments beyond simple economic transactions. It rekindled interest in including additional indicators such as environmental sustainability, ...Maysa Mohamoud
27 November 2023 Last month, I had the incredible opportunity to co-host a showcase event for a citizen social science project I have been part of, presenting our findings to key community groups and stakeholders. The project is a collaboration between the Institute for Global Prosperity at UCL, The University of Manchester, and Westway Trust. Over the past few months, together with a group of local residents from my area, we worked collectively to establish what ‘The Good...22 November 2023 A new high-tech methodology to help farmers track their sustainable activity by Professor McGlade, who teaches at the Institute for Global Prosperity, and the team at Downforce Technologies, a company she co-founded in 2021, has recently been awarded a US patent (Patent No: 11790410). Soil organic carbon is the world's largest carbon sink, and increasing it at the farm level is vital for achieving sustainability goals, whilst also contributing to soil health...
Dareen Sayyad
17 November 2023 In our recent research on the concept of prosperity in Palestine, we faced a great challenge. We found ourselves confronting difficult questions and a complex context. So, what does prosperity mean for Palestinian citizens? Theoretically, it was important that a range of relationships must be taken into account to arrive at an effective definition of prosperity. For instance, understanding the local environment, examining the economic structures and...Balsam Gharib
27 October 2023 On 27 September 2023, PROCOL Lebanon organised a half-day workshop that brought together prominent stakeholders and academics from Lebanon to discuss ideas, experiences and research findings about Lebanon’s current policy priorities, and the research and solutions needed to advance socioeconomic and political reforms. The first session was mediated by IGP Director Professor Henrietta Moore and brought together MP Ibrahim Mneimneh and Sami Atallah, Director of ...Reema Shbita
26 October 2023 During our research examining how financial inclusion policies could produce inclusive prosperity, as local researchers we interviewed people about their perceptions of a good life in Ramallah and Al-Bireh. Most of the answers spoke about the necessity of prioritizing basic human needs before luxuries. Many of those interviewed said they did not feel safe due to the p...
Rayhaan Lorgat
28 September 2023 On Tuesday 12th September, I attended the launch of the Southwark Land Commission‘s landmark report, ‘Land for Good’ in Peckham, London. The report is the culmination of six months of collaboration between landowners, a group of experts and community members, who worked collectively on how to maximise the best use of land, a finite resource that is essenti...Eve Njau
22 September 2023 The Prosperity Framework of the Institute for Global Prosperity (IGP), which advocates for engaging the stakeholders within the target ecosystem, helps in shaping a well-informed and tailored intervention plan that can tremendously enhance equitable prosperity for all. IGP PhD student Alina Marm based her research on this key principle, with stakeholder participatory workshop...Dareen Sayyad and Reema Shbeeta
12 September 2023 In Palestine, where the elements of a true national state do not exist, the policies of the Palestine Monetary Authority (PMA) get lost between the illusion of the state and the reality of the occupation. The PMA was created as part of the Oslo Accords in the mid-90s to be a central bank in waiting for the promised future Palestinian state. However, the promised future state never materialized. The global-facing financial policies now pursued by the ...
Andrew Percy
8 September 2023 Can economic growth address both poverty and climate change? Andrew Percy discusses McKinsey’s latest report. Sometimes a simple turn of phrase with a little alliteration brings a fresh new perspective to light. The idea that governments should set their sights on “higher empowerment” is a welcome development, and not one that I expected to hear from a global consulting firm more commonly associated with hard-nosed economics and geopolitical p...
Mayssa Jallad
29 August 2023 What research methods do we need to address today’s pressing public health challenges and create pathways to prosperity? What role can citizens and members of the public play in public health initiatives that effectively benefit communities in need of urgent health solutions?On 2 August, I explored and discussed these questions in a presentation entitled “Climate and Health: An Introduction to Citizen Science for Health Prof...
Hannah Collins
25 August 2023 A new Transformation Map on Inequality produced by a research team at the Institute for Global Prosperity for the World Economic Forum aims to identify the most pressing issues impacting inequality, including not just income, but also other disparities. The rise of income and wealth inequalities since the 1980s has not been uniform. Certain countries have experienced huge increases in inequality, while others have seen relatively smaller rises. As a result, whil...
Gillian Chan
14 August 2023 Housing inequality, the changing face of racism, inadequate support for people with special educational needs and disabilities, safety, crime, and mental health. These were the themes explored during an interactive art exhibition titled ‘Prosperity in east London: a citizen’s view’, showcased at the Applecart Arts theatre from 14 – 21 August. Over the course of 3 months in Spring 2023, citizen social scientists Abdul Aleem, Alexis Charles, L...Robert Costanza (IGP), Brian Fath, Bojie Fu, Alan Hastings, B. Larry Li, Brendan Mackey, Olaf Meynecke, Michelle Maloney, William J. Mitsch, Zhiyun Ouyang, Sergei Petrovskiy, Alexia Stokes, Jigmi Thinley, Ouyang Zhiyun
1 August 2023 We - an international community of environmental researchers and practitioners - met in Australia for the 6th International EcoSummit. We acknowledged the traditional custodians of the land on which we met and their elders, past, present, and emerging. We met at a time of multiple...
Professor Henrietta L. Moore
28 July 2023 IGP Director Professor Henrietta Moore writes for the Times Higher Education (THE), on how universities can play an important role in levelling-up by transforming the way it conducts research for the realities of the 21st century. Read the full article on THE, Campus here. Photo by ...24 July 2023 This year our recommendations include works from South African cellist Abel Selaocoe, IGP's poet-in-residence Cameron Holleran, and award winning author Khaled Khalifa. Our list includes books, documentaries, games, poems, podcasts and music about the Green New Deal, uneven distribution of land and social inequality, inspiring people to play a role in our collective future, the circular economy, and much more. ...
Climate Emergency Public Services Work
Narjess Hachena
04 July 2023 It’s almost 9pm on a beautiful summer day and I have just returned home from a flagship event during London Climate Action Week 2023. At the event, the London Sustainable Development Commission (which advises the Mayor of London) finally released its embargoed report: ...
Twinkle
29 June 2023 Sarah (not her real name) is 9 this year. She loves comic books and likes to draw. Drawing helps her to express and think through her emotions. Twinkle, Sarah’s mum, explains that Sarah has autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and like 20% of people on the spectrum, Sarah experiences alexithymia.“Alexithymia is a term to describe problems with identifying and expressing emotions. In Greek, it loosely translates to “no words for emotion.” It is estimated...
Hannah Collins and Amos Tirra
28 June 2023 Elections around the world are often a fraught time of false promises, misinformation, dramatics and, sometimes, violence. With the rise of social and online news media, tensions and population divisions are growing. In countries with newer democracies the political system is threatened and provoked by this division. Our new working paper explores the impact of social media and print news on the 2022 Kenyan general election.Drivers of the electora...
Rahaf Zaher
27 June 2023 Since the beginning of the Syrian Civil War in 2011, Syrian refugees have been portrayed as an added strain to the catastrophic situation in Lebanon and even scapegoated as a cause of the crisis, wit...
Professor Henrietta L. Moore
22 June 2023 A 21st century economy needs to produce and to assure supply of the essential goods on which we all depend: soil, water, biodiversity, healthcare. Today I am proud to announce the publication of the IGP’s first book focussed on this challenge: Prosperity in the 21st Century: Concepts, Models and Metrics. The volume presents a compilation of research and thinking from people at the IGP, drawing on ...22 June 2023 Part of the ‘Global Prosperity Thought and Practice’ series, the book sets out a new vision for prosperity in the twenty-first century and how it can be achieved for all Today the Institute for Global Prosperity (IGP) published an exciting new book, Prosperity in the Twenty-First Century. Concepts, models and metrics which shares the latest work on rethinking economics...
Dr Onyaglanu Idoko
13 June 2023 How do individuals and organisations respond to an innovation such as generative AI? Do we resist it for as long as possible and continue with business as usual, or do we acknowledge and embrace the need for a paradigm shift? Some individuals or organisations respond by innovating but some do not but instead continue with the status quo. During my recent visit to the Design Museum, I came across a section on the evolution of technology that included a display on c...
Fahri Karakas
25 May 2023 When we think of Islamic Art, we tend to picture intricate geometric patterns graced with divine calligraphy in awe-inspiring architectural wonders. Think of historical mosques and tiles decorated with Islamic geometric designs (repeated patterns, including triangles, squares, stars, circles characterized by symmetry). W...Robert Costanza
22 May 2023 An EU conference on sustainable wellbeing provided a real vision for a future that’s fairer for all. I’ve just been to a three-day conference on sustainable prosperity in Europe, attended by thousands of people. In a stirring opening address, the speaker said governments must stop misusing GDP growth as their goal and move swiftly and urgently to sustainable wellbeing within planetary boundaries. They got a sta...
Nicola Vimalanathan
18 May 2023 In a recent conversation with a friend who was about to move to another country, she bemoaned the state of the UK, and said something along the lines of, ‘I feel like people just sit back and take it, no matter how bad things get’. Initially defensive, considering I was included in her denouncement, her words stayed with me. I asked another friend who works in campaign organising if they agreed, and why this was the case. They pointed to the discouragement people feel aro...
Gillian Chan
11 May 2023 “It’s not about empowering people, it’s about holding space” Dr Leah Lovett, a socially engaged artist and senior research fellow at UCL’s Centre for Spatial Analysis corrected me with these words when I asked her about the challenges she faced in conducting participatory research. Leah’s words emphasise the subtle importance of reframing our approach to social justice and participatory research. No...
Balsam Gharib
09 May 2023 Lebanese parliamentarians are yet to agree on a solid socioeconomic recovery plan capable of situating Lebanon on a pathway to recovery and prosperity. In early February of this year, the Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Elias Bou Saab, and a few other Lebanese parliamentarians headed to Washington to discuss a number of difficulties that Lebanon faces locally, most notably the presidential vacuum, the IMF deal to Lebanon, and the sanctions imposed by t...
Zeinab
20 April 2023 Unaffordable spaces, unequal living Given the mix of social housing, shared ownership and private housing, Chobham Manor and East Village comprised of residents from starkly different backgrounds. Yet, residents with different tenancy backgrounds expressed a shared feeling that living costs were rising and that housing, amenities, and shops in their neighbourhood were unaffordable. How they responded to these rising costs, however, varied significantly. While...
William Hynes, Angus Armstrong and Rayhaan Lorgat
The Festschrift for Alan Kirman was held at the Bank of England on 16-17 March 2023. The discussions highlighted the important contributions which Alan has made to economics and policy in the company of some of the world’s leading and emerging economists and scientists. The discussion comprehensively challenged the foundations of modern ...
Lorraine Owusu
19 April 2023 Sometime-y spaces “Before you enter the estate, you’ll notice there are two lampposts – the functions of these are ‘sometime-y’: works one at a time; doesn’t’ work at all or dim yellow lighting” Lorraine The lamppost at the corner of your street, lighting the way as you go about your evening - Like air, light is so essential you forget you need it till it’s missing. In Gascoyne Estate, people are always aware of the importance ...
Victorine Ngobo
18 April 2023 According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word ‘basic’ means ‘forming an essential foundation or starting point; fundamental’. What does basic mean to people with special needs and disabilities? Basic shouldn’t mean average, basic means what is essential to each person’s diverse needs Access to education, housing and healthcare are fundamental needs. Yet, they are often designed for the “average” person in mind. “Basic” services are therefore...
Twinkle Jayakumar and Terry Regan
17 April 2023 Twinkle and Terry, two local residents and citizen social scientists from Beckton and Custom House, Newham, conducted research on the obstacles to prosperity that local residents in North Woolwich experience, as part of the Prosperity in east London 2021-2031 Longitudinal Study. These are their thoughts, images, and findings. Poverty: reliance on food bank services and cuts to benefits The Food Bank is what brings many people to the RADLAC (Royal Albert...
Terry Regan
14 April 2023 In 2001, plans to regenerate the Custom House estate were first shared with residents. The plan was part of the broader “Custom House and Canning Town Regeneration” initiative, involving 19 different areas, which promised to transform the area and improve quality of life for residents. Although some regeneration has already occurred in parts of Canning Town, Custom House remains little changed if not worse.The shops along Freemason’s Road have had the same struct...
Alexis Charles
3 April 2023 Parts of Hackney Wick and Fish Island are dotted with seemingly obscure shops surrounded or even fronted by layers of graffiti. Alexis describes these places as “looking like poverty but inside there’s wealth”. Look inside and you’ll find items that residents just a walking distance away living in social housing (towards the north of Hackney Wick) can hardly afford. “A cup of coffee is 5 pounds, why would I go there” – one resident from Gascoyne Estate told Alexis. ...
Abdul and Zainab
31 March 2023 Although quality of life in Coventry Cross has generally improved, barriers to prosperity persist in changed form. Racism now takes on a different hue. While overt racism has reduced, institutional racism remains the most significant barrier to improved life chances. Barriers to opportunities for a better life have also shifted. Educational opportunities have significantly improved, yet access to employment, training, and further education remain stunted due to limited r...
Alexandra Boothroyd and Rayhaan Lorgat
27 March 2023 The ‘Connecting Communities’ inclusive broadband project is a digital Universal Basic Services (UBS) pilot aimed at tackling digital exclusion in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. The project developed in two phases, which both trialled the delivery of key elements of digital access and education to families experiencing digital exclusion. ...
Eva Lamorgese
21 March 2023. Lebanon's severe economic crisis and political instability is having a devastating impact on people's livelihoods. The crisis has led to critical deficits in the provision of essential public services and to the erosion of public trust. These issues and how we can approach them were the main topics of discussion at Procol Lebanon’s Annual Conference ‘Vital Lebanon: uncertainty, solidarity, activism and energetics’, that took place from 9-11 March 2023 in Beirut. ...
Eve Njau
17 March 2023. An ever-growing consumer demand is putting tremendous pressures on natural capital. In Kenya, and especially in the Mau Forest complex (MFC), with a population of 10 million people, ecosystem degradation has affected agricultural production, hydrological cycles, severity and frequency of natural hazards and carbon sequestration cycles. The depletion of natural resources leads to a loss of livelihoods and prosperity. For enterprises, their profitability and ...
Professor Robert Costanza
06 March 2023 Societies, like individuals, can get trapped in patterns of behavior called social traps, or “societal addictions,” that provide short-term rewards but are detrimental and unsustainable in the long run. Current examples include our societal addiction to fossil fuels, and the “growth at all costs” economic model. The need for human society to rapidly deal with climate change is widely accepted in the scientific community, but movement in this direction has been slow. Desp...
Cameron Holleran
27 February 2023 A poem written by IGP's Poet-in-Residence Cameron Holleran, in response to Professor Henrietta Moore's recent lecture at Keele World Affairs on "Regenerative Agriculture: A Global Solution." As a child, you caked dirt beneath smiling fingernails, filthy cuticles swarming with life. Even crawling on your belly, dirt is not your diet but odd mouthfuls made their way onto the menu.In giddiness your cheeks tighten, showing the world the ground in y...13 February 2023 Warnings that the UK is facing a ‘crisis of care’ are growing in volume. NHS wait times have reached a record high, and staff shortages across the social care workforce are predicted to rise to 500,000 by the end of 2030, as poor working conditions and the lowest wages of almost any sector in the UK make these careers increasingly unsustainable. The shortfall is being met by the most vulnerable, and over 350,000 people aged 16-25 in England and Wales now provide unpa...
Eve Njau
1 February 2023 December in Kenya is usually sunny and seen as a great precursor to the festive holidays. However, this year’s season weather has been uncharacteristically cold or was it expected considering this year’s erratic hot and rainy seasons? But sure enough by mid-morning, the blazing sun makes a determined appearance. Nairobi’s double-fac...
Alina Marm
26 January 2023 Your waste travels. Quite a lot, actually. It travels down rivers. It travels through oceans - as waste exports in ship containers, through the currents as small pieces of plastic litter. It travels away from affluent to poor neighbourhoods. And many of us are quite happy to see waste travel – out of our sight. In the past few weeks, I have travelled with waste and for waste. I saw what we usually try not to see. The past weeks I have spent tim...
Professor Robert Costanza
10 January 2023 The Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) created at the recent COP15 in Montreal, Canada is a historic and critically important international agreement. It includes 4 major goals and 23 targets, that would, if achieved, halt the global loss of biodiversity, and restore ecosystems and the valuable services they provide. Th...
Balsam Gharib
15 December 2022 The banking sector in Lebanon has shifted from being perceived as the bastion of the country’s economy to becoming a prime culprit in the crumbling of the financial system. Ever since the protests erupted against the political establishment in 2019, local commercial banks have been consistently blamed for Lebanon’s economic collapse, and in many instances physically attacked, vandalised and damaged. The country is currently enduring a “worse-t...15 December 2022 Recommendations for your Christmas reading from Professor Henrietta L. Moore and the Institute for Global Prosperity Explore the reading list ...
Alexandra Boothroyd
12 December The UK is suffering a sustained crisis, as the cost of living and energy prices soar. In recent months, and across successive changes in leadership, the government has announced various policies to mitigate the effects, yet they have failed to act systemically. The government’s response so far has reflected a reactive fixation on the rising price of energy, but the UK is ultimately facing a deeper livelihood crisis, that exists at the ...
Rahaf Zaher
6 December 2022 Since November 2019, local banks in Lebanon have been imposing a Capital Control scheme, unratified by parliament, under the decree of the Central Bank. For a while, depositors were prohibited from withdrawing foreign currency deposited prior to that month, and a weekly limit was set on withdrawals in Lebanese Lira. Later on, while the official Lebanese Lira was still fixed at 1,507 to the dollar and the black market rate was escalating rapidly, reachi...
Mezna Qato
30 November 2022 Arms outstretched, he hollered from across the street, “Where’s my parade? Where’s the crowd?” “What?” I stared at him. “Get over here!”, I shouted. Grinning, K flung over to B and I, earning ear-splitting horns and shouts from windows. “That’s more like it!” All limbs and a crisp fade, he bellowed, “I just got out of jail, and no one even picked me up. I had to take a cab here!” “WHAT?” B and I shouted at once. Then B took ove...Jose Izcue Gana
25 November 2022 A team of Citizen Social Scientists recently held an event to showcase the findings of the UCL East Meanwhile Use Research Project. This is an innovative initiative that aims to inform the design of an inclusive innovation hub at UCL East’s meanwhile use site by drawing on insights from interviews with local entrepreneurs in Carpenters Road, Chobham Manor and East Village, as well as ethnographic observations of local spaces. ...Professor Robert Costanza
23 November 2022 Fifty years ago, a book was published that foresaw a world where economies were focused on improving wellbeing for all, rather than continuing the environmentally and socially destructive growth that only benefited a few. This book was Herman Daly’s classic “Toward a Steady State Economy”. Sadly, Daly passed away recently, but his ideas are more sorely needed now than ever. There are some hopeful signs that they are finally beginning to gain traction....
Ida Kubiszewski, Robert Costanza, Lorenzo Fioramonti, Paul Sutton
15th November 2022 The world population has just hit a new record of 8 billion. Scientists and experts have been arguing that we need to limit population growth to avoid an ecological catastrophe. It is said the overall impact of affluence is also a function of living standards. Our approach to affluence needs to be reconsidered to optimise energy use and efficiency. We also need to think about regenerative practices and homegrown solutions in food pr...
Eve Njau
16th November 2022 The onset of the rainy season usually means the start of the planting season not only in the Mau Forest Complex but also in other Kenyan farmlands across the country. The usual subsistence and cash crops are being meticulously tended to but this season round, farms, public institutions and natural areas in the heart of the Mau Complex are introducing a novel category: indigenous tree seedlings. Started as an offshoot of the TEEB Agri-food project, IGP’s PROC...
Eve Njau
10 November 2022 All eyes are currently set on Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt ahead of the 27th Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC (COP27). “Our vision is that COP27 should reflect our commitment to move from pledging to action as an implementation COP, where commitments become immediate and effective,” COP27 President Designate and Egyptian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sameh Shoukry said ahead of the conference. “This allows moving rapidly towards full, timely, inclusive and at scale act...
Shuaib Jalal-Eddeen
8 November 2022 People around the world have faced significant challenges to building and maintaining a secure livelihood, whether because of the Covid-19 pandemic or high levels of inflation. How are people dealing with these massive challenges to inclusive and sustainable prosperity? A new report by the Institute for Global Prosperity’s (IGP) Financ...
Balsam Gharib
08 November 2022 Lebanon has entered yet another political impasse following the end of President Aoun’s term on October 31st of this year and parliament’s inability to form a new cabinet. Currently, the country is enduring a dual governmental vacuum with no president to appoint a new Prime Minister and a caretaker cabinet that has limited functional capacities. President Aoun’s last move whilst still in office was to send a letter to Nabih Berri, Speaker of the Parliament, d...
Sertaç Sehlikoglu, Fatemeh Sadeghi, Sumrin Kalia, Mezna Qato
27 October 2022 On Friday October 7th, the members of Takhayyul, an ERC Project at the Institute for Global Prosperity (IGP) at UCL, launched the "Takhayyul Nativeness and Emergent Issues" podcast series. The Takhayyul project is carried out in eleven different countries in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and South Asia, often included in the concept of the Global South, where people are more vulnerable to global changes and crises - as we have seen ...
Mara Torres Pinedo
24 October 2022 Student partners: Amanda Kartikasari, Hemant Kumar, Ismat Juma, Keneth Franco, Maria José Ascenzo Teaching excellence and innovation in higher education often evoke images of the newest gadgets to increase scholarly performance and teaching rooms equipped with the newest technology. Sometimes, innovat...
William Fletcher
18 October 2022 In May this year, the Economist published an article describing ‘sustainability’ as one of ‘the woolliest words in business’; writing that it is ‘so fuzzy’ that it is ‘at the point of being useless’.i This comes fifty years since ‘Limits to Growth’ report made it crystal clear that the natural world cannot support the way the global socio-economic system produces and consumes. This Club of Rome commissioned project led by MIT researchers used systems modelling ...
Fatemeh Sadeghi and Vrinda Narain
17 October 2022 On Sept 16, 2022, Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian woman, died in Tehran, Iran, while in police custody. Amini was arrested by the Guidance Patrol, the morality squad of the Law Enforcement Command of the Islamic Republic of Iran that oversees public implementation of hijab regulations, for not wearing a hijab properly. Soon after the news of her death was broadcast and a photograph emerged on social media of her lying in a Tehran hospital in a coma, people througho...
Gillian Chan
11 October 2022 What does prosperity in Hackney Wick and Gascoyne Estate look and feel like? Citizen social scientists Alexis and Lorraine, both graduates of the IGP’s Citizen Science Academy led the Mayor of Hackney and his team from Hackney Council on a tour of their neighbourhood. Drawing on interviews and ethnographic research Alexis and Lorraine conducted during Wave 1 of the Pro...
Angus Armstrong
30 September 2022 Much ink has been spilled this week on how the UK Government’s mini-budget either ‘spooked’ or ‘frightened’ the markets, giving the rather silly impression that markets are either afraid of the supernatural or bizarrely timid, and that the world’s markets should be viewed as having a single collective opinion. The problem with such terms is that they obscure what actually happens, and therefore what might happen, and maybe even how best to respond. A better a...Gillian Chan and Rayhaan Lorgat
On the 12-13th September, the Bartlett’s Institute for Global Prosperity (IGP) and UCL Urban Laboratory , in collaboration with the University of East London, Cardiff University (Welsh School of Architecture) and Oxford Brookes University hosted the ‘State of the Legacy Conference’ at UCL at Here East and Timber Lodge. The Conference, which was free and open to the public, assessed the past decade of t...PROCOL UK Public Services Infrastructure Europe
Rayhaan Lorgat
On the 21st of September, the IGP’s Dr Saffron Woodcraft and Rayhaan Lorgat delivered a presentation on the key findings and recommendations from IGP’s think piece “Unleashing the power of data to drive shared prosperity': A roadmap to a transformative data society”. The think piece was publicly launched and forms part of Chapter Two of Newham Sparks. Since the summer of last year, the IGP has been collaborating ...
Dr Sumrin Kalia
22 September 2022 Pakistan is drowning. The country has been hit with extreme flooding due to rapidly melting glaciers, which Pakistan is home to, more than other country outside the polar regions. With 95,000 square meters of land submerged under water, and 33 million directly affected, the country is literally, and not only metaphorically ‘in deep waters’. While flood water stands, food and health crisis are expanding the impact of floods to its 220 million population. ...
Dr Erol Saglam
16 September 2022 In summer 2022, while interviewing treasure hunters as part of my ongoing research project on alternative modalities of remembrance in northern Turkey, I came across Hasan, a well-spoken and witty farmer in his early seventies. A self-professed Turkish nationalist and a devout Muslim residing in Unye, a small town on the Black Sea littoral, Hasan was adamant to uphold the well-rehearsed nationalist line around the region’s long-debated history and recounted ...Professor Henrietta L. Moore
28 July 2022 On 26 July 2022, the leader of the Labour Party, Sir Keir Starmer spoke on the BBC Today programme about the issues of taxation and tackling the cost-of-living crisis. He outlined three key principles of a taxation system: A fair tax system with a lower tax burdenAn efficient tax system which closes tax loopholesReducing the burden on businesses It is on the first principle that he outlined where the ...Recommendations for your Summer reading from Professor Henrietta L. Moore and the Institute for Global Prosperity - including books, podcasts and musicView the Reading List ...
Adrien Plomteux
25 July 2022 Online Conference at UCL: Discussing just sustainable futures at the Development Studies Association Conference Historically, the development sector has often intended to bring Western ideas of progress to the so-called Global South. The opinions and knowledge of local communities were considered irrelevant, threatening their prosperity and well-being. I was therefore enthusiastic to take part in this year’s ...
Rayhaan Lorgat
Is the Governments levelling-up agenda really doing anything to tackle rising inequality and soaring inflation? With the current UK Government in a state of chaos, there is a significant risk of the levelling-up agenda stagnating, perhaps even collapsing altogether, as we seek to tackle the incumbent cost of living crisis and soaring inflation. Since the announcement of the Government’s flagship ...
Israel Amoah-Norman
7 July 2022 It seems as if the UK government has another plan up its sleeve. On the 15th July 2021, Prime Minister Boris Johnson in his speech outside 10 Downing Street spoke about levelling up the UK. Seven months later, Levelling Up the United Kingdom White Paper (WP) was published. A 300+ d...The UK cost of living crisis has thrown the government’s Levelling Up agenda into sharper relief. The fall in real incomes is already having uneven effects across the income distribution, hitting low-income households the hardest. With inflation at its highest rate in three decades, and the value of benefits dwindling, the picture is only set to get worse over the coming months and years. The long-awaited Levelling Up white paper signals a welcome shift towards greater devolution and communit...
Open spaces are considered a lifeline for urban residents’ health and wellbeing and yet their importance is often overlooked. Parks and playgrounds have a significant impact on everyone in the neighbourhood, but they are particularly important for the development and wellbeing of children and young people. In Lebanon, as in many other countries, the experience of Covid-related restrictions has highlighted the critical role of public spaces to maintain one’s physical and mental wellbeing. The ...
Financing Prosperity London Prosperity Board Social Prosperity Climate Emergency Prosperity Index Public Services Europe
Professor Henrietta Moore and the IGP co-chair the Think7 Task Force on ‘social cohesion, economic transformation and open societies, providing policy recommendations to support systemic transformations on social cohesion. To overcome the major challenges the world is facing today – from recovering from the pandemic to mitigating climate change – the global community will need concerted, transformative policy efforts, aligned with collective values and societal g...Social Prosperity Prosperity Index Public Services Europe
IGP Director Professor Henrietta Moore calls for empowering decision making by local communities through the training of Citizen Social Scientists. Could we adjust our current political framework to local government where no overall control was the norm? In an opinion piece for the ...
Dr Alessandra Radicati
27/05/2022 What ways of working are best for ensuring the longevity of relationships between citizen social scientists and the organizations that employ them? What infrastructures need to be in place to provide support for citizen social scientists, make sure their findings can impact policy, and eventually scale up these types of initiatives? On May 18 2022, the PROCOL UK team convened an online roundtable as part of the ...Social Prosperity Public Services Europe
IGP Director Professor Henrietta Moore writes for Environment Journal along with Sarah Davidson, CEO of Carnegie UK Is GDP really a good measure of prosperity? How could GDP better account for our lived experiences, climate, biodiversity and social capital? In a new joint opinion piece for Environment Journal, IGP Director Professor...
Dr Sumrin Kalia
May 13 2022 On Saturday, 9th of April 2022, two minutes before midnight, the vote of no-confidence against the sitting prime minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan was set in motion in the National Assembly. One hour past mid-night on Sunday, Imran Khan was removed from the office. He is the first prime minister to be dismissed from power after losing vote of no-confidence. This was termed as a ‘historic’ moment by the opposition parties as Imran Khan’s Naya (new) Pakistan had been...Social Prosperity Climate Emergency Arts Europe
Imagine a world where all exchange is based on radical solidarity... We humans currently extract Earth’s limited natural resources and distribute them unequally. Current economic systems encourage the idea that nature is separate from us and is a free resource for us to exploit. However, ...
Dr Bridget Storrie
29 April 2022 Attending a sustainable prosperity workshop as a mining specialist can be fraught. I was once asked by the organizer of one of them what ‘a nice girl’ like me is doing tied up with the extractive industry. She was holding her mobile phone in her hand as she talked, an intricate assemblage of minute pieces of mined ore keeping her connected to her social and academic networks, her family, and the daily churn of events, local and global, with which her life is ent...Dr Saffron Woodcraft
12 April 2022A narrow definition of prosperity as material wealth measured by economic growth and rising GDP has dominated political thought and action throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) challenge this vision and seek to redefine prosperity as a state of shared flourishing to be pursued alongside eradicating poverty and hunger, tackling inequalities and safeguarding the environment. This vision represents a major shi...Andrew Percy
6 April 2022During Covid the importance of a network of integrated and supporting public services took on greater meaning for many, as communities responded to the food needs of isolating families, and the digital connectivity needs of children after schools closed. Suddenly the notion that digital connectivity should be universally accessible seemed like an obviously good idea! Now the government’s Levelling Up agenda highlights once again the importance of local Pr...Dr Fatemeh Sadeghi
23 March 2022We cannot be happy alone. When we live in a region where there is war and damage all over the place, we can't be happy either. Leila Arshad, Civil Activist and Founder of the House of Sun As the neo liberalization of economy has dislodged governments from their social duties, NGOs - particularly in the Global South - have taken on the burden...The government’s levelling-up agenda has to avoid the pitfalls of the past by putting local communities front and centre, argues Professor Henrietta Moore, director of the Institute for Global Prosperity. Read the full article on prospect: https://www.prospectmagazine.c... Image: The Beatles’ yellow submarine at Liverpool’s garden fes...
Dr Bridget Storrie
The blog was written on 24th February. I had my own war-induced wakeful night, after Putin declared war on Ukraine. Unlike people across that country, I wasn’t scrolling through news feeds searching for signs of an invasion, planning if (and how) to evacuate or working out what I need to do to keep myself and my family safe. As one Twitter user remarked it seemed like nobody was asleep that ni...Elisabetta Pietrostefani, Joana Dabaj, Yara Sleiman, Mayssa Jallad, Sara Maassarani and Efrosini Charalambous
The case of Mar Mikhael neighbourhood On the 4th of August 2020, a large amount of ammonium nitrate stored at the port of the city of Beirut exploded, causing at least 200 deaths, over 7,000 injuries, US$3.8-4.6 billion in material damages, and the displacement of over 300,000 people. Lebanon was already suffering from a rapidly escalating financial crisis, further aggravated by the outbreak of COVID-19. The explosion devastated va...Professor Henrietta Moore
3 February 2022 Tax reform and Green universal basic services could help both level-up the country and build a more sustainable, resilient and inclusive economy, argues Dame Professor Henrietta Moore of the Institute for Global Prosperity... Read the full article on BusinessGreen: https://www.businessgreen.com/opinion/4044316/choose-levelling-net-zero Image Credit: ...London Prosperity Board PROCOL UK Public Services Europe
Dr Saffron Woodcraft
2 February 2022 East London based housing association Poplar HARCA, on behalf of its partners LETTA Trust, The East End Community Foundation and the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, partnered with the Institute for Gl...PROCOL UK Prosperity Index Europe
Dr Saffron Woodcraft
28 January 2022 Black and minority ethnic groups reported lower scores in a study using new measures of prosperity devised by researchers. At the Institute of Global Prosperity (IGP) we have been rethinking what prosperity means for people around the globe, and to challenge the structural features of the economy and the values upon which they are built. The IGP was founded in 2015 and is now deep into the task of creating more accurate indicators of prosperity...Dr Saffron Woodcraft
25 January 2022 “To me, the word prosperity means harmony” Adriano Emilio Zayas, Havana, Cuba What does it mean to live a good life and prosper? How do ideas about what constitutes prosperity change from place to place and evolve between generations? How are world events from climate change to COVID-19 changing how we feel about the possibilities for people and th...PROCOL Kenya Climate Emergency Africa
Dr Sam Lunn-Rockliffe
20 January 2022 85% of agricultural output across Africa is produced by small-holders. What do they need to simultaneously maintain ecological balance and sustain a continent? The need to rethink innovation in relation to agriculture is imperative. Approximately 85% of total agricultural output across the African continent is produced by small-holder farmers, yet there remains a persistent imagining of African farming practices as static, inefficient and vulne...
Dr Ida Kubiszewski
17 January 2022 Ecosystem service valuations are becoming more common as both the public and the private sector are realizing that we need to take nature into account for our own good. There are a wide range of uses for the values of ecosystem services, including raising awareness and interest, developing national income and well-being accounts, analysing specific policies, planning urban and regional land use, creating payment for ecosystem services schemes, doing full cost accountin...Mariam Daher
12 January 2022 Lebanon's severe economic crisis and political instability has had a devastating impact on people's livelihoods. The crisis has led to critical deficits in the infrastructural provision and essential public services, from electricity cuts and fuel shortages to pressures on the physical and social infrastructures. ‘Infrastructural Solutions for Lebanon's turbulent times: research, innovations and interventions’ explored current research around the challenges...PROCOL Kenya Climate Emergency Food Africa
Dr Matthew Davies, Dr Sam Lunn-Rockliffe and Roberta Pismel Chapchap
10 January 2022 In the first blog in this sequence, we examined how ‘innovation’ has become a buzz word in much thinking on solutions to current Global Challenges. However, using an example of agricultural innovation in Africa we pointed to some of the challenges with how innovation has often been conceptualised, most notably how innovation h...Maura Muldoon
4 January 2022 What’s that noise? Seventeen years ago, billions of newly hatched periodical cicadas of Brood X burrowed deep into the ground. The insects aimed to feed on xylem fluid in the root system, nonchalant to the anthropogenic processes ongoing above them. Instead, urbanization, wildfires, and forest clearing for agriculture threatened many populations and their habitats. In the decidu...17 December 2021 Recommendations for your Christmas reading from the Institute for Global Prosperity. This year our recommendations include books, poetry, podcasts, music and films and includes works from Lea Ypi, Zachary D. Carter, Kathleen Jamie, Joni Mitchell and many more.View the Director's Christmas Reading List...
Andrew Percy
17 December 2021 On the 110th anniversary of National Insurance, the IGP is releasing its report on National Contributions. The report calls for the modernisation of the UK’s tax system to fund levelling-up and Net Zero without relying on taxes on wages.The existing tax system is not fit for purpose and cannot raise the revenues needed for social care, levelli...PROCOL Kenya Climate Emergency Food Africa
Dr Matthew Davies, Dr Sam Lunn-Rockliffe and Roberta Pismel Chapchap
14 December 2021 How we think about designing and implementing change to sustainably tackle Global Challenges is of pressing concern. Whilst much work remains to be done on the kind of futures that we may want to build, there is an overwhelming consensus that ‘innovation’ is a core heuristic for enacting much needed transformation (Nicholls et al 2015). This is not only understoo...Professor Henrietta L Moore
29 November 2021 The climate crisis is a crisis of such depth and significance that it cuts through many ideas that have shaped the modern world, and calls for an unprecedented recalibration. We cannot deal with climate change without transforming our social, economic and political institutions to ones that place people and planet before growth at any cost. Our prosperity today and that of future generations depends on safeguarding, managing and regene...Professor Henrietta L. Moore
15 November 2021 The Autumn Budget delivered in the last week of October failed to make significant headway and investments towards ‘Levelling-Up’ and achieving the UK’s Net Zero commitments. By focusing too much on GDP and growth, the Budget fell short of the real reform needed to address the urgent and most pressing challenges of the 21st century. While the Chancellor spent a considerable amount of time reforming alcohol duty and business rates, he missed t...Professor Jacqueline McGlade
5 November 2021 Global challenges like climate change, land and ecosystem degradation, in addition to a growing, and highly urbanised, population call for new ways of producing and consuming within the planetary boundaries. The need to achieve sustainability while ensuring the prosperity and wellbeing of people constitutes a strong incentive to rethink our land, food and health systems, transform our industries and reimagine our cities. The circular bi...Cameron Holleran
2 November 2021 IGP's Poet-in-Residence Cameron Holleran reflects on the roles of researchers as they interact with communities and the importance of community led knowledge in climate adaptation strategies Are we awaiting revelationtranscribed by a single,special, source in secret tongues?Do we beg before a throne of wantfor life and light?Do we hold the myth of genius too tight? Our first fire starter watched exp...Professor Jacqueline McGlade
26 October 2021 Marine litter and plastic pollution are accumulating in the world’s oceans at an unprecedented rate. The volume of plastics currently in the oceans has been estimated at between 75 million and 199 million tons. Plastic pollution is becoming part of the Earth’s fossil record and has even created a new habitat known as the “plastisphere”. Plastics are now found in all the world’s marine ecosystems and all forms of marine life, not just birds, seals and t...Professor Robert Constanza
25 October 2021 Coastal communities around the world are facing increasing threats from tropical cyclones. Climate change is causing rising sea levels and bigger, more frequent storms. Many coastal communities are pondering what to do. Should they build massive seawalls in a bid to protect existing infrastructure? Do they give up on their current coastal locations and retreat inland? Or is there another way? In the US, the US Army Corps of Engineers ha...
Professor Henrietta L. Moore
14 October 2021When Nobel prize-winner Simon Kuznets declared in 1934 that “the welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income”, he likely did not imagine that gross domestic product (GDP) would still be in use as shorthand for wellbeing and prosperity in the third decade of the 21st century. Kuznets developed GDP as a means of measuring the impact of the great depression. It enabled governments to track any increase or de...Dr Christopher Harker
12 October 2021 Finance often conjures up images of glass towers, (white) men in suits, extravagant wealth and extravagant lifestyles. But finance also takes place in mundane spaces, involving a diverse cast of characters doing things to help ordinary folks get by. These alternative stories of finance need more airtime if we are to rethink and reshape the role finance plays in society. This article retells one such story, about a group of ten Jamaican migrants, living...PROCOL Kenya Climate Emergency
Dr Sam Lunn-Rockliffe
28 September 2021 On Thursday 16th September the IGP co-organised an interdisciplinary workshop with the British Institute in Eastern Africa, the University of Cambridge and the University of York as a run-up event to the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26). The workshop discussed the critical role that research must play for building transformational pathways towards resilient, sustainable and prosperous fu...
Angus Armstrong
29 September 2021 The Institute for Global Prosperity welcomes the Rebuilding Macroeconomics research network At Rebuilding Macroeconomics, we place macroeconomics squarely within society. We begin with a description of human activity, then decide which method to use. Macroeconomics has to be, first and foremost, about our propensity for almost continuous direct interaction. Some of these interactions are largely economic, but they ar...London Prosperity Board Prosperity Index Europe
Rayhaan Lorgat
We read a great deal about the importance of innovation in productivity, jobs, growth, UK competitiveness and prosperity, but we rarely read about the importance of people and participation in innovation. The UK Government’s recently published Innovation Strategy talks of needing “the whole system of businesses, government, R&D-performing ...London Prosperity Board Prosperity Index Europe
Sarah Nisi
6 August 2021 UK’s first longitudinal study of prosperity using citizen-led metrics will produce robust, actionable, and local evidence about prosperity, as defined by local communities. Place-based prosperity has become a policy priority for national, regional and local government in the UK in recent years, in response to growing regional and intra-urban inequalities and social and economic exclusion. “In every country in the world, the means...Recommendations for your summer reading from the Institute for Global Prosperity. This year our recommendations include books, poetry and podcasts and includes works from Gillian Tett, Tyson Yunkaporta, Arthur Sze, Priya Satia and many more....
Farah Khokhar
The experience of systemic racism and inequality has not only put Black and Minority ethnic groups (BAME) at greater risk of dying from Covid-19 but also made them more vulnerable to the economic impacts of the pandemic. After Black Lives Matter grew increasingly popular in 2020 and after witnessing the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on Black and Minority ethnic groups a growing number of studies continue to provide evidence of existing and ongoing socioeconomic and racial inequaliti...Howayda Al-Harithy, Abir Eltayeb, and Ali Khodr
07 July 2021 Lebanon has witnessed multiple waves of displaced people throughout its recent history, including the displacement of Palestinians to Lebanon after the occupation of Palestine in 1948, the internal displacement of families from occupied South Lebanon after the Israeli invasion of 1978, and the influx of Syrian refugees after the outbreak of the Syrian crisis in 2011. According to the UNHCR data from 2013 to 2015, the number of registered Syrian re...
Andrew Percy
5 July 2021 Until societies accept responsibility to provide the basic infrastructure of universal safety they are are condemned to decline from contorted economic and political systems. Over the last hundred years we have tried two different strategies to deal with the increasing requirement for greater solidarity that is the necessary accompaniment for our technical development. For 50 years we first tried to accommodate the increased collective costs of gre...
Ala'a Shehabi and Kae O Yeboah
In March 2021, we launched a staff and student forum for the BAME members of the Bartlett community. The formation of this group was part of the Bartlett 2020 Dean's Race Equality Pledges. A series of commitments resulting from the Bartlett Dialogues on race and the built environment held in the summer of 2020. No change in any organisation striving for racial equality can do it w...
Juan Manuel Moreno
1 July 2021 In May 2019, I began working with Professor Henrietta L. Moore on the World of Humanities Report (WHR) project – an international collaboration between The Consortium of Humanities Centres and Institutes (CHCI), the International Council of Philosophy and the Human Sciences (CIPSH), and the United Nations Education, Science, and Culture Organisation (UNESCO). Our contribution was to the...
Georgios Melios
28 June 2021 Looking back, 2020 was a year of momentous social, political and economic disruptions, ranging from the Australian bushfires to the tensions between the US and Iran and from the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 to the US presidential elections. Another remarkable social phenomenon was the series of Black Lives Matter protests that erupted in the spring of 2020. In the wake of George Floyd’s murder on 25 May 2020, millions of Americans took to the streets to...
Andrew Percy
24 June 2021 The pace and scale of change needed in the coming decades exceeds current ambitions. At present the advanced societies are wrestling with the changes that would be required to ...
Silvia Velasco
17 June 2021 The world’s reliance on technology is changing the way we live, influencing our economic, social and financial behaviour; undoubtedly, it is changing our relationship with money. Yet, the new normality exacerbates the relevance to address fair access to technology for all, especially for those who are in the move for prosperity such as international migrants. It can be thought that the fintech (financial technology) revolution and digital solu...
Hannah Collins and Farah Khokhar
The Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated and exposed inequalities worldwide, highlighting the damaging impact of poor infrastructure, the lack of adequate health services, divergent work security and caring responsibilities, and how poor political strategies not only impact individual lives but have significant effects on a global scale. Differential vaccine rollouts between the global North and South illustrate not just poor political foresight for tackling what is a global crisis, but the...
Sam Lunn-Rockliffe
As the climate and biodiversity emergency continues to loom, there is a resounding recognition that we urgently need to reshape our current economic systems in ways that cease to erode the biosphere and exceed planetary limits. The case to do so has been recently made in a number of globally significant scientific and policy reports, including the UN environmental prog...Jack Isaacs
25 May 2021 Investing in local social enterprise is the best way to make progress towards the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It is easy to be overwhelmed by the SDGs. There is a lot of work to be done if we are to make progress in tackling 17 of the world’s biggest challenges in the space of a decade. Whilst we may agree on many of the fundamental issues, their relevance and potential solu...Charlie Moir
12 May 2021 The decentralised PAYG solar business model encapsulates many of the conceptual challenges encountered when defining and conducting transformative entrepreneurship. Specifically, regarding the extent to which an enterprise can be perceived as truly transformative, as opposed to merely a perpetuation of the existing system from which an issue has arisen. Providing a clean decentralised alternative that benefits remote rural communities...Dr Sam Lunn-Rockliffe
30 April 2021 Re-thinking the role of small-holder farmers in the future of food production: Prosperity and Innovation in the Past and Future of Farming in Africa (PIPFA) Over the past year, the Institute for Global Prosperity has been coordinating an AHRC-funded partnership (PIPFA) linking institutions in Kenya and the UK, including the University of Eldoret, Elgeyo-Marakwet County Government, the East African Herbarium, the UN Environmen...Professor Henrietta L. Moore and Patrick Vickers
22 April 2021 This Earth Day, we harbour some hopes that we may be witnessing the beginning of a regenerative renaissance. Across different parts of society, there seems to be a growing understanding that our prosperity must be rooted in a symbiotic relationship with nature if it is to last. Across different systems, degenerative practices are being challenged by regenerative alternatives. This dynamic is clear to see when it comes to agriculture. Two differen...21 April 2021 What is Prosperity? That is the question posed by Professor Moore and Dr Mintchev in the latest IGP working paper. It is not about just uncovering what prosperity means for people, but to challenge the structural features of the economy and the values upon which they are built. A redesigned prosperity opens doors to innovative ideas and new practices allowing us to tackle inequality in novel ways. To interrogate how systems change and how knowledge is sh...
Farah Khokhar
With limited digital and food access becoming imminent realities for many people during the Covid-19 pandemic, changing what we prioritise in policy and practice is increasingly important. A recent paper by the IGP on rethinking livelihood security argues that to address the democratic deficit in policy-making notions of inclusion need to be expanded t...
Kitty Parker Brooks
In grappling with the concept of ‘transformative entrepreneurship’ I have consistently found myself returning to two key questions: What do we actually mean by ‘transformative’? What is needed for an enterprise to be transformational? Changes and fluctuations are an inevitable fact of human society and entrepreneurship plays a key role within this. There are countless examples of entrepreneurs identifying needs and developing solutions to them. Increasingly, these enterprises are buil...Suzy Kirby
Prosperity: How can we define it, measure it, achieve it? Money A+E and the Institute for Global Prosperity (IGP) were first brought together by a shared interest in exploring these questions in 2018. Since then it has driven a deep collaboration and partnership between our organisations. When Covid-19 posed the biggest challenge t...Silvia Velasco Arellano
What is behind prosperity and urban regeneration projects for young people? For Suraya, a young Camden resident, there is a sense of belonging and the need for community support. For Farzana, another young resident, a concern about safe and affordable housing in her neighbourhood; a fear to be priced out of the area where she grew up. For Joshua, there is an interest to better his community, to make it a better place to live.Like Suraya, Farzana and Joshua, young people in the...Hannah Collins
The complexity of challenges we are faced with demands a rehaul of the 2017 Industrial Strategy. In a recent paper Professor Moore and I focus on industrial strategy as a tool to coordinate public, private and third sectors to meet the government’s objectives to level up and reach net zero GHG emissions by focussing on prosperity through securing livelihoods. Historically, industrial strategy has been used to co...Professor Jacqueline McGlade and Professor Philip Landrigan
Ocean pollution is widespread, worsening, and poses a clear and present danger to human health and wellbeing. But the extent of this danger has not been widely comprehended – until now. Our recent study provides the first comprehensive assessment of the impacts of ocean pollution on human health.Ocean pollution is a complex mixture of toxic metals, plastics, manufactured chemicals, petroleum, urban and industrial...Professor Henrietta L. Moore
The independent review on The Economics of Biodiversity led by Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta has now been delivered to the government. The report underlines our failure to grasp that our economies are “embedded within Nature, and not external to it.” We rely on nature to “provide us with food, water and shelter; regulate our climate and disease; maintain nutrient cy...Social Prosperity Public Services Europe
Juan Manuel Moreno
The prosperity of individuals and communities cannot be reduced to aggregate analyses of income, wealth, productivity, or GDP; these issues are affected by a series of factors including geography, institutions, culture, infrastructure, and governance, the weight and significance of which remain poorly understood. At the IGP, we think that prosperity and wellbeing encompass a series of effects produced in specific times and places through the relationships established by living well tog...Social Prosperity Public Services Europe
Juan Manuel Moreno
The uncertainty and disproportionality of the Covid-19 crisis have highlighted the critical importance of local public services in supporting people and communities. In the UK, the disparate experiences of digital exclusion during lockdown exacerbated deep-rooted gender, intergenerational, ethnic, socio-economic, and geographical inequalities surrounding internet access, prompting ...Professor Henrietta L. Moore and Dr Ala'a Shehabi
On 4 August 2020, a massive explosion at Beirut’s port killed at least 200 people and caused up to $15bn in damage to buildings and infrastructure – including the destruction of the public electricity company building. It was the latest blow for a country battling a 30-year energy crisis and facing chronic shortages as a result of an ageing infrastructure based around fossil fuels.Now, against a backdrop of popular demands for economic and political reforms, Professor Henrietta Moo...Ying Wang
On November 7, 2020, I joined a group of colleague students on a public beach in the north coast of Hainan province, China. It was a Sunday after the region was hit by a powerful typhoon. The beach was covered with garbage and debris, which we were there to clean up. But this event was also part of a scientific project.The volunteers were separated into small groups and received training on the harms of garbage before cleaning up the beach. They were asked to sort the garbage into four...Social Prosperity Public Services Europe
Professor Henrietta L. Moore
In 1945, the UK’s welfare state was set up to address the want, need and misery caused by unemployment. Seventy-five years later, prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, we had almost full employment in the UK – and yet we still have massive levels of poverty and precarity experienced by people in work. Political priorities do not currently offer a guide to addressing these challenges. We can no longer imagine that if we get everybody into the labour market, everything will be fine. That’s why...
Charles Stott
On the 8th December I joined 73 think tankers, youth activists, educational lobbyists and other civil society leaders for the launch of NSxNG (A National Strategy for the Next Generations). An initiative, convened by the School of International Futures to develop a new method for national strategy. The goal is for political decision-making in the UK to centre the...Recommendations for your Christmas reading from Professor Henrietta L. Moore and the Institute for Global Prosperity - including books, videos, music, podcasts and poetry...
Professor Henrietta L. Moore and Hannah Collins
Professor Henrietta Moore and I ask in a recent article – what will be the equivalent of safe sex in Covid-19 times? With the vaccine now being distributed in the UK – perhaps this article falls on deaf ears – but our argument remains relevant in the context of rising global pandemics. Lessons from Covid-19 can help us be better prepared for the next pandemic.It has been to the detriment of the UK and t...Alexandra Thorne
As the Coronavirus pandemic continues to spread across our country and planet - creating both immense chaos and confusion in its wake - at least one thing that’s become spectacularly clear by now is that this crisis is hitting some much harder than others.For although the national lockdown at the start of this year offered an opportunity for some to perfect their baking talents - for others it saw severe cutbacks on an already minimal food supply.Whilst for some, the year of 202...
Tony McKenzie
Reflections on the IGP - British Academy workshop on Citizen Social ScienceOn December 2, 2020, the IGP and British Academy convened a workshop entitled “Citizen Social Science for the Twenty-First Century’s Challenges.” The event included presentations and panel discussions from IGP citizen scientists from Lebanon, Kenya and the UK. Team members discussed their research activities and experiences, as well as the methodological challenges of citize...Steven Solasta
During the ‘first wave’ of the COVID-19 pandemic, over 90% of the people sleeping rough on the streets of England were offered accommodation, and an estimated 266 lives were saved.Working on London’s pandemic response at the Healthy London Partnership, I have been blown away by what has been achieved in such difficult circumstances.Pre-COVIDAdequate housing is a fundamental human right. Yet homelessness persists as one of the greatest global challenges, w...RELIEF Mass Displacement Middle East
Samar Maqusi
Reflections from Burj el Barajneh camp and Beirut cityIt has been a year since I last visited Lebanon to conduct my field research; investigating socio-spatial forms of vitality that displaced communities construct to maintain livelihood and resist a protracted displacement; a joint work with Prof Nick Tyler through the project ...Dr Sam Lunn-Rockliffe
Acting as a new coalition of leaders catalysing actions to drive alternative pathways to prosperous futures, the Africa Assembly gathered for its second meeting on Monday 9th November to discuss the possibilities for building a better future in a post COVID-19 world. Keynote speakers Professor Henrietta Moore, Dr George Njenga, Dr Morris Mthombeni and Professor Jacqueline McGlade explored a range of issues built upon the premise that now is the time for a new era of experimentation...Allan Lavell, Colin McFarlane, Henrietta Moore, Saffron Woodcraft, and Christopher Yap
The transmission of the coronavirus is determined by the organisation of societies; by the flows of goods and people, of knowledge and resources. Covid-19 reveals the metabolic natures of health and pathogens, of food and waste, of air and space. It lays bare the relational qualities of mobility and communication, of safety and security, of power, privilege, and freedoms. The impacts of Covid-19, too, are products of metabolisms and political economies; determined and amplified by inequalitie...Nikolett Puskas
On the night of 10th March, I arrived back in Beirut from Egypt on literally one of the last planes allowed into the country. I was on holiday when the ‘Corona talks’ had started, but none of us understood what was yet to come. I considered myself lucky to be back, starting home quarantine the next day. None of us thought we would be in full lockdown for over two months, with restricted movement and the airport closed until 1st July.Beirut has many balconies that ...Hannah Collins
The question many people are asking as we enter the next lockdown here in the UK is what did we learn last time? And, thinking to the future, what do we want to prioritise if we want to recover better? These were the questions posed by each of the Centre for Understanding Sustainable Prosperity Advisory Committee at the event ‘Thinking about Recovery’ chaired by Professor Tim Jackson. The Advisory Committee included Professor Henrietta L Moore, Fou...Dr Ala'a Shehabi
Over the past two weeks, members of a Citizens Assembly in Lebanon have concluded work deliberating energy justice, and making key decisions on where Lebanon should get its energy and the best way to reduce energy demand. One of the key aims of the pilot was to work on building a model of a CA that works on a local and regional level and to begin an educational process about the method. Followin...RELIEF Mass Displacement Middle East
Dr Ala'a Shehabi
A pilot of the first Citizens’ Assembly launched with its first session on Friday 23 October 2020 under challenging conditions. The physical meeting took place under several adaptation measures including a reduction in the number of members from 50 to 33, covid-screening, social distancing and mask-wearing. To limit the need for overall face to face contact, the sessions were also reduced to two hours spread over three days, with digital engagement with presentations and material in th...
Cameron Holleran
This is not an obituary, though I’ll write one for every polar bear whose floe I’ve stolen writing proseand poesy, dying at a speed of 10km/h (adult, swimming) as I type (one letter at a time) on a miracle machine that would be useless as a raft. Today I’ve learned of eight animals I never knew existed till they didn’t – don’t ask about the fungi.The world is cruel and beautifuland both those things mean nothing if we’re dead.This is not an obituary, even i...Dr Ala’a Shehabi
The RELIEF Centre is launching a citizens' assembly on Energy on 23rd October 2020The recent devastating explosion in the port of Beirut, as well as destroying lives, homes, livelihoods and dreams, has propelled Lebanon into a more profound political and economic abyss. One of the critical facilities that were damaged severely was the iconic building of Electricité du Liban, and key figures in the organisations were killed or injured. As with many other public services...Patrick Vickers
When Professor Henrietta Moore and Arthur Kay co-founded Fast Forward 2030, they knew a new generation of transformative entrepreneurs could help solve some of the biggest problems we face, and wanted to start an organisation which would inspire and empower people to start these businesses. This week, On 29th September as part of ...Climate Emergency Prosperity Index
The IGP has joined the Wellbeing Economy Alliance (WEAll) – a collaboration of organisations, movements and citizens working to transform the economy so that it works for people and planet. This transformation calls for a different way of being within human society – shifting from “us vs. them” to “WE All.” This means delivering equitable distribution of wealth, health and wellbeing, and protecting the planet for future generations and other species...Charlie Stott
Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030 will require a concerted effort from everybody on the planet but while governments, large organisations and big business inevitably have key roles to play in this, critical contributions will come from the growing number of small, fast-moving, innovative organisations that are springing up all over the world. To harness and maximise these contributions, Professor Henrietta L Moore established Fast Forward 2030, a network of London-bas...Health Prosperity Index Europe
Dr Efrosini Charalambous
“We may all be weathering the same storm, but we are not in the same boat”, commented Zubaida Haque, interim director of the Runnymede Trust, a race equality think tank. The experience of systemic racism and inequality has not only put...Dr Eileen Kennedy
MOOCs are usually defined as Massive Open Online Courses. At the RELIEF Centre we are shifting that definition to understand their role as Massive Open Online Collaborations– learning experiences that are formally organised like courses, but are designed so that participants can share ideas with each other to build solutions to the world’s pressing problems together. We have a highly participatory approach to co-designing MOOCs with...RELIEF Mass Displacement Middle East
Dr Maha Shuayb
RACISM, XENOPHOBIA, AND CORRUPTION RENDERED HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF SYRIAN CHILDREN “A LOST GENERATION”.The World Refugee Day this year was celebrated amid a surge in anti-racism movements around the globe. But, the humanitarian response to the refugee crisis is still greatly influenced by geopolitics, racism and xenophobia which were exploited by many politicians in Lebanon for financial gain.Nine years after the beginning of the Syrian refugee crisis, with hundreds of milli...Social Prosperity Public Services
Andrew Percy
New Zealand election offers glimpse into the futureNew Zealand's 102 day stretch without any new Covid cases three months before their next general election provides an opportunity to see what kinds of priorities emerge in a society that has just experienced a shock that stretched its welfare system to its limits. New Zealand’s government and society have received plaudits internationally for their swift and effective response to the pandemic however, like many most developed societi...Soheila Shourbaji
Citizen social science opens up an ethnographically intriguing space. In 2019, I worked with RELIEF’s citizen science team in Hamra while they carried out a household survey about prosperity and its different dimensions. My aim was to get a glimpse of what the surveying process looked like, and to understand the social interactions and emotions that are involved in data collection – experiences that ultimately get lost in the quantitative data that comes out on the other end of the process. R...The Institute for Global Prosperity and RELIEF are extremely saddened by the tragic loss of life, damage and destruction caused by the explosions at Lebanon's Port of Beirut on 4 August 2020. We are working with our partners in Lebanon to assess the impact of this tragedy on the neighbourhoods in Beirut and determine how best we can provide support and assist in their recovery.At the IGP and in the RELIEF Centre our purpose is to create pathways to a prosperous future. We stand firmly ...
London Prosperity Board Prosperity Index Europe
To effect meaningful change in a neighbourhood takes more than an idea and good intentions. It is vital to establish a clear picture of the needs of the community in question, then to collect data and information about how an area is improving once projects have been introduced. With a benchmark in place, a project can understand its level of success and communicate this to all stakeholders. Crucially, this data and measurement needs to be generated by and for local citizens.“Understan...PROCOL Kenya Climate Emergency Africa
Dr Sam Lunn-Rockliffe and Dr Matthew Davies
‘When led by farmers, Regenerative Agriculture offers the potential to create a new farming future for Africa that addresses multiple social and ecological challenges’Agricultural systems across the African continent have recently come under unprecedented stress as climate extremes have contributed to recursive droughts, severe flash flooding and the worst desert locust outbreak for 70 years. Failed harvests and crop destruction, coupled with pandemic-related collapse of globa...Dr Ala’a Shehabi
Economies across the world are on course to face the worst fall in GDP figures since 2008. In the UK, GDP fell by 10.4% in the first three months of 2020, and a whopping 20.4% in the month of April, the largest fall since records began in 1997. The Bank...Hannah Sender & Joana Dabaj
Lockdown is beginning to lift in Lebanon, but COVID-19 cases continue to rise and to exacerbate the terrible economic conditions that threaten people’s livelihoods and lives. We are not certain when we will be able to meet the people we have gotten to know and work with. When I first visited the Beqaa Valley in 2016, I was accompanying a team of architects called CatalyticAction, who were building ...Recommendations for your summer reading from the Institute for Global Prosperity. This year our recommendations include books, speeches, poetry, documentaries, podcasts and music. Click the link below to see works from Cornel West, Ilhan Omar, James Baldwin, Fiona Apple and more. To view the list on a mobile, please use this link ...
RELIEF Mass Displacement Middle East
Dr Samar Maqusi , Kae Ohene-Yeboah, Mariam Daher
In the era of Covid-19, the call to imagine feels more important than ever.‘To imagine’ means to picture something you can’t currently see. To step beyond the current moment, and perceive something different. Rather than being a flight away from reality, imagination is sometimes the best response to it – the only way to get us somewhere new. Yet, how is imagination different when you are a refugee? How is it different when you are a refugee living through both ...Professor Jacqueline McGlade
The oldest business model in the world is the circular bioeconomy. Nothing wasted, everything used and reused, with Nature as the powerhouse. A growing number of the world’s top CEOs, investors, political leaders and researchers consider it to be the blueprint for the post-COVID recovery. Back in the 1970s, ideas of modernity were inextricably linked to fossil fuels. New affordable vehicles, global aviation, amazing branded packaging, plastics everywhere, new textiles, and construction...Financing Prosperity Mass Displacement Middle East
James Shraiky & Dr Christopher Harker
How do people impacted by migration and displacement finance their lives and how do technologies shape such practices? We know that there are many ways in which those living in contexts of displacement obtain food, shelter, medicine and education. In so doing, they appropriate and make use of the technologies that structure flows of investment, savings, credit/debt and gifts. However, often these financial technologies make them more vulnerable.Huda, a Palestinian refugee living in Sab...Climate Emergency Energy Europe
Professor Henrietta L. Moore
The government has announced a £3bn stimulus for green buildings and for improving the energy efficiency of public buildings. At a time when we need the economy to deliver climate and social goals, this is welcome news. Currently, as much as 34% of the UK’s emissions come from buildings, in large part due to poor insulation. This comes at a great social cost too, with the UK seeing al...Professor Jacqueline McGlade
Every piece of plastic discarded, whether it is a food packaging, cigarette end, milk carton, synthetic fabric, baby wipes and diapers, or personal care products, will eventually end up clogging our waterways and breaking up into microplastics, harming our health and wellbeing. A zero-plastic waste future is one that will turn our cities into liveable spaces for everyone. Plastics are big businesses worldwide. By 2022, the market for manufactured plastic products is projected to exceed...Yara Younes
While the COVID-19 pandemic proceeds, strict measures have to be taken by authorities to control the spread of the virus and protect groups that are more vulnerable to the disease.Cities that were throbbing with life in different parts of the world were forced to shut down. Although the spread of the virus spotlights inequalities in the accessibility to basic services, and highlighted different challenges for vulnerable communities who couldn’t afford to stay home, the lockdown also ha...Social Prosperity Public Services Europe
Andrew Percy
It seems the most natural thing in the world to think that once a society has reached the levels of wealth that we see in most modern advanced countries and their economies, that the worst deprivations would be easy to banish and that most people would feel secure in the material sense. And yet that is most assuredly not the case, so what is going wrong?There are two things that wealth can never banish: uncertainty and mutual interdependence. No amount of riches or advanced technologie...Hannah Sender
Young people in Hackney are witnessing massive changes in their communities, and this affects their ability to prosper in their own homes.It might seem inappropriate to talk about young people’s prosperity during this period of deep uncertainty. But if COVID-19 has taught us anything, it is that the things we thought we needed to live a good life have been thrown into question. Now is the time to talk about what young people mean by ‘prosperity’ and the barriers that prevent them from ...Social Prosperity Climate Emergency Mass Displacement Europe
Juan Manuel Moreno
On the morning of Thursday 21 May, I was preparing me a maté as I logged on to Microsoft Teams from the tatty décor of my kitchen. Everyone was ‘there’… in London, Bologna, Gottingen, Utrecht, Belgrade, Lisbon. Over the course of two days, we engaged in eight hours of lively and intense discussions on the role(s) of the Arts and the Humanities for society, the planet, and contemporary existential challenges. The plan h...Professor Henrietta L. Moore
The destruction of nature is the driving force of the current dominant progress story, which is why we need to change the story. As more roads were paved, cars bought, and airports built, economies grew, but so did the destruction of nature. For a while, perhaps the planet seemed just about big enough to absorb the shocks we cause it. Nature seemed forgiving, with forests so large and the seas so deep and full of life. But the Dasgupta Review on the Economics of Biodiversity is clear: ...Social Prosperity Public Services Work
Professor Henrietta L. Moore
The economic impact of the Covid-19 outbreak has been immense. There has been a worldwide call to action in response to the Covid-19 pandemic and many are calling for progressive policies to ‘build back better.’ The Global Solutions Summit 2020, this year taking place virtually, seeks policy responses to major global challenges addressed by the G20, the G7 and other global governance fora. To this end, the Global Solutions Initiative ...Financing Prosperity Public Services Europe
Dr Christopher Harker
“Community work is never easy, but it is worth it” said one member of the Money Advice and Education (Money A+E) steering group at their meeting on Wednesday 6th May 2020. I can see other Zoom participants nodding their heads. After the meeting, I remember this sentence vividly, because it points to the work that is needed to reshape societies across the world. This work will not be easy, but it will be worth it. It will not just be about responding to pandemic diseases, but other ...Social Prosperity Public Services Work Europe
Professor Henrietta L. Moore
How should we reform our economies and bring people back to better work, aligned with major social, political and economic challenges, notably climate change?On Thursday 28 May, I co-hosted the 6th Exit Strategy Workshop on “Post Covid Jobs and the Quest for Better Work” with Rebuilding Macroeconomics Director Professor Angus Armstrong. The event was co-chaired by Andrew Percy, Co-Director of IGP Social Prosperity Network, and Dr Geo...
Cameron Holleran
A poem by Cameron Holleran, poet-in-residence at the Institute for Global Prosperity (IGP)“The sooner we start, the sooner we can try and see these things and to secure the improvements we all want” Aneurin Bevan in The Lancet (1948)“You see, the old way wasn’t working so it’s on us to do what we gotta do, to survive” Changes, by 2Pac (1998)Canvas blind, my room made dullby sunlight. By this, I give time meaningI had thought was ...Professor Henrietta L. Moore
New polling finds the vast majority of Britons want to prioritise quality of life over economic growth, but what exactly is it that constitutes a good quality of life and how do we measure this? The online polling, conducted by YouGov on behalf of Positive Money, has found that more than 8 in 10 people think the UK should pr...Dr Nikolay Mintchev
The Covid-19 crisis is going to be a gamechanger for the UK’s ethnic and racial politics. Four years after the 2016 Referendum on EU membership, we find ourselves in the midst of yet another monumental conjuncture that will inevitably figure prominently in future histories of identity politics, racial injustice, and many other social and political issue in this country. Things will not be the same after this crisis, but at the moment it is still unclear what is to come.The politics of ...Andrew Percy
At the IGP we have always included food in our definition of Universal Basic Services (UBS) and for many it is the most difficult service to imagine.To help breakdown this imagination barrier we have sought out examples of organisations and policies which promote the provision of community food, like this video which we produced with the Battersea Canteen highlighting a great community effort ...Social Prosperity Public Services Europe
Hannah Collins
In a letter sent to every UK household Prime Minister Boris Johnson says, ‘The Government will do whatever it takes to help you make ends meet and put food on the table.’ The ‘whatever it takes’ sentiment was repeated by Rishi Sunak. Sunak announced a £350bn package ...
Bridget Storrie
Bringing Natural Resource-Related Peacebuilding Down to EarthIn 1937 the British travel writer Rebecca West visited the Stan Terg mine in Kosovo. At that time Stan Terg – now part of the huge Trepca mining complex - was owned and managed by a British mining company and West is enchanted by what she describes as the ‘civilizing’ influence of the mine on the local town. She’s particularly taken with the Cornish-style mine houses, built with their windows confidently facing the road and...RELIEF Mass Displacement Middle East
Dr Hanna Baumann & Hannah Sender
In Lebanon, which has experienced a series of political crises in recent years, refugees and citizens alike have been negatively affected by the dilapidated infrastructure which people rely on in their daily lives. Researchers at the IGP has been thinking about the relationship between infrastructure, displacement and vulnerability, while experimenting with locally-led participatory methodologies. Based on work carried out in the project ...London Prosperity Board Social Prosperity Prosperity Index
Dr Matthew Davies
Over the last year the climate crisis has inspired considerable public protest including civil disruption by Extinction Rebellion and the rejection of university courses by some students in order to dedicate themselves to climate action. These students challenged the lack of urgency to the climate crises in their courses and questioned universities’ ability to turn abstract curricul...Health Mass Displacement Middle East
Ghina Mohsen
On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a pandemic. “This is not just a public health crisis, it is a crisis that will touch every sector,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general, at a media briefing. “So every sector and every individual must be involved in the fights.”For the first time in a long time, everyone everywhere seems to be facing the same problem. For the first time in a long time, it doesn’t matter if you lived in a majority co...Climate Emergency Health Africa Europe
Dr Matthew Davies
Just like the climate crisis, environmental degradation and the persistence of poverty, the Covid-19 crisis exposes the worst failings of current global socio-economic structures in the most dramatic fashion. The crisis highlights the fragility of the market, the insecurity of livelihoods and massive under-investment in key workers and services. In a more positive vein, in many places the crisis also underscores the potential for nature to regenerate when emissions and other acts of degradati...Patrick Vickers
After crises, the boundaries of what is politically possible are redrawn. After the Second World War, the NHS was established and millions of homes built. After the 2008 crash an unthinkable amount of cash was spent to keep the business-as-usual economy limping onwards. This time, we are in for a century of crisis if our redrawing does not include a serious aim to redefine our relationship with nature.At the moment, economic growth is the main goal for our politicians and economists. E...Health Mass Displacement Africa
Marie Williams
Countries throughout the world agree that it is a human right for all children to play - as stated in Article 31, The United Nation’s Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC)You have a right to play!The benefits of play are not universally known or understood. The majority of literature that evidences the means in which outdoor play supports the development of social, physical and cognitive and emotional skills is presented ...Professor Jacqueline McGlade
Deep in Tinderet forest, a data revolution is taking shape. Community members from the Maasai Mara and across the Mau Forest are working together to see how the forest measures up. Equipped with the latest data from space missions plus tape measures and clinometers, they are deploying their collective ancient wisdom to map the size and health of the medicinal trees and the ecosystem services provided by the forest.Led by researchers at Strathmore University Business School, the Institu...Financing Prosperity PROCOL UK Social Prosperity Food Health Public Services Work
Juan Manuel Moreno responds to the UK Government Budget 2020 and COVID-19 rescue packages
“Unprecedented measures for unprecedented times.” This was the phrase used by Chancellor Rishi Sunak on Friday 20 March as he announced the UK government’s massive rescue package to protect jobs and provide a safety net to those affected by the COVID-19 crisis. The UK Government, he said, had never done such a thing. This is not an overstatement. To protect those at risk of losing their jobs, a new ...Climate Emergency Public Services Zoonoses
Charles Stott - 18 March 2020
"And the people stayed home. And read books, and listened, and rested, and exercised, and made art, and played games, and learned new ways of being, and were still. And listened more deeply. Some meditated, some prayed, some danced. Some met their shadows. And the people began to think differently.And the people healed. And, in the absence of people living in ignorant, dangerous, mindless, and heartless ways, the earth began to heal.And when the danger...David Bent
“Our goal is to foster transformative institutions that create marked changes in the habits of the wider world around us and pull us beyond the failing status quo.” Professor Henrietta MooreOn Mon 2 March, 12 people gathered in a room in Nairobi. On one level, it was a bunch of people talking. On another, an intention to form a new institution that plays a larger role in moving Africa from climate emergency to prosperity.Since Augu...Professor Henrietta L. Moore
Recent research shows that Lebanon could witness an increase of 1.2 to 3.2 degrees in temperatures in areas that are already very arid and suffer from water shortage. An increase in temperature and a decrease in precipitation will have particular impact on the electricity sector - a higher cooling demand in summer and increased consumption for electricity. Rising sea levels and water scarcity in Lebanon could lead to internal climate migration and mass displacement from rural to coastal regio...Social Prosperity Climate Emergency Public Services
Andrew Percy
The IGP is taking forward its pioneering work on UBS and creating a future for all in the UK. New experimental work will be at the core of co-produced solutions in the Prosperity Co-Lab (PROCOL) UK in 2020. Here Andrew Percy explains why UBS is green.Proposals for Green New Deals include some or all of Universal Basic Services, why?Green New Deal (GND) proposals and proponents are addressing the big, existential challenge for our time: how do we transition to an...
Professor Jacqueline McGlade
The more we learn about pollution and its impact on human health and nature, the more we must see stopping pollution as an ethical imperative for all.The great Kenyan athlete Eliud Kipchoge won the men’s London marathon in April 2019, giving a truly exceptional performance (2 hours, 2 minutes and 33 seconds). But Kipchoge had wanted to be even better.In 2017 he attempted to break the two-hour barrier in Italy; but narrowly missed it. In the documentary Breakin...Social Prosperity Food Public Services Work
Andrew Percy
There is now not a single party in the UK that is not proposing a dramatic expansion of public services. The ship of state has turned, after decades heading towards the outer bounds of individualism, and begun a journey back towards the goal of common prosperity. The preeminent role of Universal Basic Services in the ...Financing Prosperity Social Prosperity
Tianzi Li
How can we deal with a broken financial system that enriches the few at the expense of the many? How can we ensure people have the necessary resources to finance the lives they want to live, and achieve more inclusive and sustainable forms of prosperous living? The Institute for Global Prosperity’s (IGP) Financing Prosperity Network was created to explore these questions. In this article, IGP PhD student Tianzi Li examines how network members provide solutions of the UK’s debt crisis. ...RELIEF Prosperity Index Middle East
Soheila Shourbaji
Maps, Anxieties and Reconceptions: An Ethnography of Citizen Social Science in Hamra’s Prosperity Index Projec“What’s this street called?”“Bliss.”“What?”“Bliss. Bliss.”“What does that mean?”“It’s where university students eat.”Bliss street is the American University of Beirut’s frontier with Hamra. It is named after the institution’s founder, Daniel Bliss, and, indeed, it is where students eat. I heard t...PROCOL Kenya Prosperity Index Africa
Can Kenya lead the way to a new kind of prosperity in Africa? And can Maasai warriors teach western tycoons leadership the world needs for the 21st century?Jacqueline McGlade, Professor of Resilience and Sustainable Development at the Institute for Global Prosperity (IGP) speaks about PROCOL Kenya, a new programme launched by the IGP to develop innovative pathways to prosperity, autonomy and resilience in Africa.PROCOL Kenya works on the premise that economic growth has failed t...Find recommendations for your Christmas reading list from staff at the Institute for Global Prosperity...
David Bent
David Bent imagines a future where prosperity has been changed dramatically because of the effects of climate change and AI. The piece asks questions on what is going to happen to socio-ecological systems that we need to live our version of the good life. We are used to the nation-state providing us with the safety we need, but will that institution last forever? Will the notion of ‘work’ still exist in a world with fully-diffuse...London Prosperity Board Prosperity Index Public Services Europe
Sarah Nisi
Local organisations incorporate IGP’s findings from the London Prosperity Index work into their policies to better reflect the views of the communities they serve.Prosperity means different things to different people and a good life can be lived in many ways. Understanding this diversity is critical to develop policies and strategies for enhancing prosperity that resonate with local conditions and experience. The Institute for Global Prosperity (IGP) translated its community-l...London Prosperity Board Prosperity Index Public Services Europe
Juan Manuel Moreno
On Tuesday 19th November, IGP Founder and Director, Professor Henrietta L. Moore, attended the Social Macroeconomics Hub workshop hosted by the Rebuilding Macroeconomics (RM) research initiative at the Blavatnik School of Government in Oxford.The event was attended by a diverse group of economists and social scientists and was concerned with the social foundations of economic decision-making and macroeconomic activity.One of the RM Social Macroeconomic Hub’s cen...PROCOL Kenya Prosperity Index Africa
“PROCOL Kenya has an ambitious agenda: we want to determine and then re-shape global understandings of ‘what matters’ to peoples’ prosperity. Based on our deep history of existing research in Kenya and Kenya’s pivotal role as a leading hub of technology and innovation, we see Kenya as crucial to the achievement of this new paradigm. In launching PROCOL Kenya we are calling for partnerships from government, international organisations, businesses and citizens to join us to make Kenya ...PROCOL Kenya Prosperity Index Africa
“Sustainable prosperity is a global challenge: the world needs alternative social, economic and ecological paradigms and this is nowhere more acute than in Africa. So often marginalised as the recipient rather than provider of knowledge and ideas, Africa and Kenya have the potential to leap-frog old technological dependencies and to tap into the innovation and endeavour apparent across the country, to develop ho...Johnny Stormonth-Darling
The Teach-OutIn October, thousands of dedicated individuals, concerned for the fate of the planet, staged one of the most adventurous protests in recent memory under the collective action of activist organisation Extinction Rebellion (XR). Although only one year old, XR has raised substantial awareness (and a few hackles) of the arguably unappreciated dangers of climate change. They have achieved this through a multitude of disruptive yet peaceful actions around ...Prosperity Index Public Services
Juan Manuel Moreno
On Tuesday 15 October, I was in Cardiff attending the event Re-thinking Prosperity for Wales: A multi-stakeholder dialogue about new approaches to delivering shared prosperity.Co-hosted by the Institute for Global Prosperity (IGP) at University College of London and the Development Bank of Wales (DBW), the event attracted a wide range of representatives from the Welsh government, public, private, academic and charity sectors. This was an opportunity to develop fut...RELIEF Mass Displacement Middle East
Earlier this year, the RELIEF Centre collaborated with the Migration Leadership team and the Arab Council for Social Sciences to convene a 1.5 day Global Migration Conversation workshop. This is part of an ESRC and AHRC-funded project to develop a shared strategy for supporting migration and displacement related research by the UK's Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). The report based on the workshop has now been published ...RELIEF Mass Displacement Public Services Middle East
Dr Ala'a Shehabi
Against the backdrop of MACAM's 2nd Biennale of Contemporary Art on the theme of Universal Data, which inspires visitors to interrogate our digital lives, the RELIEF Centre's Data Manager, Ala'a Shehabi, convened members of the small but growing Beirut data community in a safe space to discuss growing ethical anxieties around the increasing emphasis on Open Data. This included artists, media practition...Climate Emergency Public Services Work
Charlie Stott
Our newest addition to the IGP team shares his experiences with Extinction Rebellion and how he feels that society could shift in a prosocial and ecological direction through innovative proposals like Universal Basic Services. In April this year I first went to the protests organised across central London by Extinction Rebellion. I had never attended a demonstration before. To my sur...KNOW London Prosperity Board PROCOL Kenya PROCOL UK RELIEF Prosperity Index Africa America Asia Europe Pacific
Sarah Nisi
Nineteen Londoners collect research data for the Institute for Global Prosperity (IGP) from hundreds of households in their neighbourhoods - and now their work serves as a model for a global mission: measuring what matters to the prosperity of local communities around the world and transforming the way decision-makers think.When Tony from Newham heard about the opportunity to work with IGP's academic researchers as a citizen scientist, designing research that captures lo...RELIEF Mass Displacement Africa America Asia Europe Pacific
Dr Nikolay Mintchev
Migration and displacement are taking place on an unprecedented scale. The movement of people throughout the world is diversifying the demography of cities and challenging established norms of identity, community, and belonging. In many countries, it is also putting pressures on social cohesion, public services, and political stability.Why is it that in times of unprecedented global wealth so many people are so disillusioned with their circumstances?Learni...Social Prosperity Food Public Services Work
Over the past 30 decades, prosperity – understood as material wealth, social wellbeing, equality, justice, inclusion and environmental sustainability – has become central to public policy in the context of rising inequality and poverty, the advance of automation and the increasing precariousness work conditions, the socio-economic effects of globalisation and climate emergency. Yet gaps remain between locally situated experiences of prosperity and its operationalisation in policy frameworks. ...Social Prosperity Food Health Public Services Work
Idea for Universal Basic Services developed by the Institute for Global Prosperity to form a “central pillar” of Labour’s policy programme, new report saysDemocratically accountable extension of key public services free at the point of need to imitate shared values embodied by NHSEnhanced safety net would reduce inequality and allow for greater participation in society for millionsThe Labour Party’s adoptio...
Professor Henrietta L. Moore
Smart cities are built upon a foundation of sustainable prosperity that actually improves the quality of life for all and their experience of urban living. There are 7.7 billion people on the planet today, and every year our global population grows by around 1.08% – or around 82 million people. It is estimated that by 2050, 70% of the world’s population will be living in cities. The cities we know now will have changed and adapted to accommodate for this. How will we ens...Social Prosperity Food Public Services Work
A state service provision could help our society cope with a changing job market. And best of all: it could be fiscally neutralBy Professor Henrietta L. Moore, Founder & Director of the Institute for Global ProsperityNearly 90 years ago, John Maynard Keynes made a much-quoted prediction. In his 1930 essay, Economic Prospects for our Grandchildren, he set out the view that, by 2030, technological progress ...Annelise Andersen
‘Cities occupy just 3% of the Earth’s land but account for 60 to 80% of energy consumption and at least 70% of carbon emissions’, Professor Henrietta Moore (Founder and Director of the Institute for Global Prosperity) tells us at the Global Grand Challenges Summit 2019 (GGCS2019), Southbank Centre, London.Though startling to read back, I received this statement as mor...Hannah Sender
PhD student, Hannah Sender, reflects on her fieldwork on adolescent mental health in Bar Elias, Lebanon.In Spring 2019, I conducted fieldwork with a team from UCL Global Health, American University of Beirut and design studio CatalyticAction in Bar Elias, Lebanon. We wanted to find out how young people’s wellbeing has been impacted by their personal experiences ...Tim Ndezi, Festo Makoba and Dr Saffron Woodcraft
How research methods and ethics produce pathways to prosperityWhat does it mean to be prosperous and live well in an informal settlement in Dar es Salaam? What can community-led research bring to knowledge, action and policymaking on urban prosperity? These are some of the questions addressed in a workshop in July co-hosted by the Institute for Global Prosperity (IGP) and the Centre for Community Initiatives(CCI) in Da...Dr Hanna Baumann
It is not every day that academics plant trees, paint pavements, or install park benches. But that is exactly what I, and other researchers from the Institute for Global Prosperity (IGP) and other parts of UCL, did when we recently completed a project in Bar Elias, a refugee-hosting town in Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley.Our project was a long-term collaborative engagement with local residents that resulted in tangible changes to the local urban fabric. Along the main road at th...
Dr Nikolay Mintchev
…things aren’t what they used to be before; there is no sense of community anymore; people only care about personal gain, not about one anotherThere is something uncanny about the way in which people the world over talk about the decline of community. Whether one goes to the boroughs of East London that are undergoing ‘regeneration’, to the shrinking villages of ‘post-socialist’ Eastern Europe, or to Beirut’s vibrant streets buzzing with nightlife, one can encounter a...Find recommendations for your summer reading list from staff at the Institute for Global Prosperity - including books, films, music, podcasts and playsView the IGP Summer Reading List 2019This year, we expanded our recommendations to include plays, podcasts, music and poetry. Click the link to see works from George the Poet, Joseph E. Stiglitz, Shoshana Zuboff, Invisibilia, Jon Bloomfield and ...
Hannah Sender
PhD student, Hannah Sender, reflects on Professor Saskia Sassen's public lecture, 'A Third Emergent Migrant Subject Unrecognised in Law'The last time I was in Lebanon, I was well into the first year of my PhD. I had familiarised myself with the literature, written 20,000 words, and was pretty confident in the path I thought I had ahead of me. So, when my friends asked me what my PhD was about, I eloquently (I thought) explained my PhD project. I was going to be researching y...Monica Basbous, Nadine Bekdache and Camillo Boano
This blog post was originally written for the UCL Bartlett Development Planning Unit website and can be found here.By Monica Basbous, Nadine Bekdache and Camillo BoanoThe current habitability crisis, the failure of progressive policies to consid...London Prosperity Board Prosperity Index Public Services Work
Maria Paz Levy
Maria Paz Levy, volunteer at the IGP, reports from the launch of the IGP's first Prosperity Index for LondonOn 22nd May 2019, the Institute for Global Prosperity (IGP) and the London Prosperity Board welcomed around 100 attendees to launch the UK's first, citizen-le...Social Prosperity Public Services
Two thinktank reports (here and here) out in the last week have proposed using increases in taxes to fund cash distributions in the UK. Both of the economists who wrote those reports and did the number crunching have ...
David Bent
In mid-February I chaired an all-day conference on the "SDGeneration - A Citizen Science Movement". My main reflection is how taking part in knowledge creation is a vital part of having agency in an overwhelming world, and a route to mobilising young people. (c) Ellie PinneyDavid Bent, Senior Visiting...