"Addressing a sustainable economy is for me an economy which upholds a socially and ecologically just society, locally, which in turn has important ramifications globally. The dominant economic paradigm in which economic growth is seen as a panacea, continues to generate globally inequalities, as well as ecological havoc by its using up of natural resources.
Instead, it seems useful to be looking at alternative paradigms which put people and nature first, and which make people and not corporate profit interests, the producers of value. At the Peoples Summit of the Rio+20 Conference in June in Brasil, where I participated, such alternative paradigms were prominently present and debated, such as that of Solidarity Economy building and the Commons.
The idea of a Solidarity economy has been developed since the 1980’s, especially in Latin America, and has been taken forward in processes as the World Social Forum. In this approach, economy is about the whole of how “we as human beings collectively generate livelihoods in relation to each other and to the Earth” (Miller 2004), and we are being urged to look at the economies that we build with our everyday lives and relationships. “Maintaining social life” is the primary goal of these “people’s economies”."
Excerpt from "Sustainable Economy" By Ruby Van Der Wekken
http://www.sitra.fi/blogi/kestava-talous-foorumi/ruby-van-der-wekken-sustainable-economy
