Economy for the Common Good: A holistic model for sustainable development
The German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ) put together an explorative reader featuring 8 theoretical and practical case studies that model a market and a society that seek mutual benefit in cooperation with all living forms, instead of focusing on boundless, therefore harmful, growth. Chapter six of this document is dedicated to the Economy for the Common Good (ECG).
“In chapter 6, Christian Felber (Initiator, Economy for the Common Good movement) outlines a comprehensive alternative vision of an “Economy for the Common Good”. Some of the core elements of this include reorienting profit, using cooperation rather than competition as an organizing principle, allowing for a plurality of property types, focusing on income and wealth equality, treating money as a public good and practicing sovereign democracy. A Common Good Product Sheet and Common Good Balance Sheet adapted to the local context could then serve as alternative measures of progress at country and company levels respectively. Felber proposes that development cooperation facilitates exchanges among stakeholders from various countries and enables processes to autonomously define alternative goals of the economy and corresponding measurements of progress.”
This compilation is born form current context, in which the aftermath of a pandemic, the already noticeable signs of a climate crisis, rising social inequality and political instability prove beyond the shadow of a doubt how urgent and necessary it is to reframe economic development beyond economic growth.
The solution already exists.
Read Economy for the Common Good: A holistic model for sustainable development cooperation and aid
Read full “Beyond Growth? Alternative Models for Economic Development”.
