Wellbeing for people and the planet

A recent paper published in the Lancet was entitled “Wellbeing for people and the planet: how to value everyone and everything on a thriving planet beyond 2030“. Here is its abstract:

Humanity is crossing multiple planetary boundaries while facing rising inequality, democratic fragility, and worsening mental health, exposing the incompatibility of unlimited gross domestic product-driven growth with a finite, socially interdependent planet. Only 17% of the Sustainable Development Goal targets are on track, indicating the need for a deeper transformation rather than faster implementation. Synthesising evidence across disciplines, we argue that human beings are evolutionarily wired for cooperation and relational wellbeing, and not perpetual consumption and status competition. This argument underpins a post-2030 shift in a global development paradigm that places multidimensional wellbeing, of people and the planet, at its core. We outline three mutually reinforcing systemic shifts: deliberative democracy that gives communities real power to shape collective futures; economic democracy that redirects finance, enterprise design, and fiscal policy towards equitable, regenerative outcomes; and transformed land and resource governance that recognises ecological limits and the rights of nature. By aligning institutions with the cooperative nature of humans and the Earth’s regenerative capacity, societies can achieve flourishing lives for all within planetary boundaries, offering a scientifically grounded agenda for the decades beyond 2030.

While reading the article, I asked myself: will our current leaders and governments accept shared limits, long time horizons, and fair trade-offs? In practice, men like Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin would probably view this framework through the lens of power, national and personal advantage, as well as political control, rather than collective wellbeing. In addition, sizable sections of the public might simply be too ignorant to comprehend the need for such a strategy. In other words, the proposal may sound morally strong but could be politically unrealistic.

If Trump or Putin were asked to follow the strategy, I fear that several objections would appear immediately.

• First, they would reject the idea that planetary limits should constrain national ambition, especially as they seem to think that economic or military strength or even personal advantage matter more than global cooperation.
• Second, they would treat wellbeing metrics as soft or ideological compared with jobs, growth, security, or sovereignty.
• Third, they would use the language of wellbeing selectively, supporting parts that could further their agendas, while ignoring parts that require sacrifice, redistribution, or international restraint.

Of course, such caveats do not make the paper and its arguments wrong, but they suggest a significant gap between theory and practice. The altruistic strategy is strongest when actors are willing to cooperate and are able to think long term. I am afraid that it is weak in a world where leaders like Trump or Putin can gain by rejecting climate obligations, weakening institutions, or prioritising short-term national interest. In other words, the paper offers a vision for a better governing ethic, but it does not solve the problem of how to make uncooperative or authoritarian leaders comply.

So, my concern is not that the strategy is useless, but that it is unrealistic and far too dependent on political goodwill. A system that works only when leaders are already committed to fairness and restraint cannot be a robust system. What we also need, therefore, is a strategy by which we are able to get such leaders … improving the education of the general public might be a start.