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Toward sustainable wellbeing: Advances in contemporary concepts

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 Futures Conference 2022
PLANETARY FUTURES OF HEALTH AND WELLBEING
University of Turku
Thursday 16th June 2022 09:00-10:45

Planetary Futures: Philosophy, Methodology and Ethical Considerations

Toward sustainable wellbeing:

Advances in contemporary concepts

Dr. Tadhg O’Mahony (Finland Futures Research Centre, University of Turku)

Climate Breakdown
Wildfires in
Northern Morocco

Photo: Photograph: Fadel

Senna/AFP/Getty Images
(The Guardian, 2022)
Ecological Breakdown
Destruction of
Peruvian Amazon

Photo:
Alert Conservation 2015
Consumption is fundamental to breakdown

Krausmann et
al.(2009)

Global CO2 emissions by CDIAC (Boden et al., 2015), global GHG’s show similar trend.
 Background
• The great challenge:
-Globally consumption is increasing, driving ecological and climate breakdown and
damage to both individual wellbeing and social equality
• The inadequate solutions:
-Reductionist policy and empirical focus pushes economic growth and consumption (only
partial means to wellbeing, often damaging) and eco efficiency and technological change
(only partial solutions for sustainability)
-Policy is not fit for purpose, and conceptualisation is key barrier
• The state of knowledge:
-Technological change, tax, circular and sharing economy, production efficiency, green
consumerism, while all potentially useful, all accepted as insufficient (IPCC, 2022;
IPCC, 2014)
-Accepted in foremost global literature that overconsumption of affluent must
reduce (IPCC, 2022; IPCC, 2018; IPBES, 2019), changing how we seek wellbeing
-prompting question, how else can we conceive human wellbeing?
 Background
• The state of knowledge (continued):
-However, also recognised that integrating sustainability and wellbeing has
many potential benefits (synergies), for both wellbeing and sustainability, and less
trade-offs (IPCC, 2018)
-Securing wellbeing into future requires sustainable development, and sustainable
development requires attention to wellbeing
-However, this requires a transformative holistic approach that addresses
wellbeing and sustainability together
-It requires a new concept of ‘sustainable wellbeing’ to underpin public policy and
market
• Current status in policy, and science that supports it:
-Wellbeing and sustainability are key global policy priorities
-Despite rising in research and policy agendas, conceptualisation remains poor and
links not understood
 Background
• Current status in policy, and science that supports it:
-Wellbeing poorly conceptualised in sustainability, and sustainability, nature and
environment are usually excluded from wellbeing
-Fundamental lack of clarity on conceptualisation of human “needs” and
“wellbeing” (Kjell, 2011; Helne and Hirvilammi, 2015; O’Mahony, 2022)
-Yet, shift has occurred widely in SD literature, from articulating human “needs,” to
placeholders “wellbeing,” and “flourishing.” (Sathaye et al., 2007; Fleurbaey et al., 2014;
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2018) and in comprehensive
reviews (Atkinson et al., 2014; McGregor, 2014)
-Gaps in knowledge, urgent need to better conceive wellbeing in sustainability and vice
versa
 Existing Literature Seeking Integration
• Conceptual literature, seeking integration of
sustainability and wellbeing, dominated by
economic welfare, needs, capabilities, quality of
life, and happiness studies
• Show vastly different levels of integration,
from shallow to deep
• Raworth's doughnut economics (Raworth, 2017)
criticised for shallow integration, artificially
separating environment as ecological ceiling -
resource for consumption in development- and
also arbitrarily selecting factors in “social
foundation” (Krauss, 2018)
• Also important to question is conceiving
wellbeing, based on needs, sufficient?

Raworth (2017)
Existing Literature Seeking Integration:
IPBES conceptual framework
• The Intergovernmental
Science-Policy Platform on
Biodiversity and Ecosystem
Services (IPBES)
groundbreaking conceptual
framework of “nature and
people,” (Díaz et al., 2015)
• Good quality of life based
Narayan et al. (1999) “voices
of the poor”
• Could the wellbeing
conception be enriched?

(Diaz et al., 2015)

 Bringing clarity to ‘wellbeing’
• Wellbeing concepts span thousands of years, across cultures and traditions
• Within study, efforts to bring consistency include Parfit's “tripartite
model” (Parfit, 1984), three broad philosophical theories:
-hedonism; desire fulfillment or satisfaction; and objective lists
• Further efforts found in MacKerron's “five standard approaches to
wellbeing” (MacKerron, 2011), originally in Dolan et al. (2006)
- preference satisfaction; objective lists; eudaimonic/flourishing; hedonic;
and evaluative approaches
• This review considered standard approaches (Parfit and Mackerron),
but supplemented with recent advances in psychology, physical
health and in wellbeing philosophy
 Bringing clarity to ‘wellbeing’
• Contemporary accounts of wellbeing:
-Preference Satisfaction and Desire, Human Needs (basic and fundamental), Capabilities,
Happiness Studies, Psychological Wellbeing and Flourishing, Physical Health and Wellness
• Wellbeing major theme throughout history of moral philosophy, and recently, subject of
increasing empirical investigation, particularly in social sciences of psychology and economics
• Theoretical and applied fields typically focussed reductively on individual, or aggregate sum,
facilitating discipline and context-specific knowledge, often to enable quantitative analysis
• Preference satisfaction, basic needs, capabilities, and happiness studies all contribute useful
insights, yet do not provide holistic theories of wellbeing in themselves, and usually do not
purport to
• Preference satisfaction and desire theories aid understanding of contribution of economic
welfare, but subject to criticism for being indirect, with too many prudential goods and
fetishising resources and money
• Basic needs encourage normative focus on poverty and inequality, and critique of
consumption, but criticised for being hierarchical and narrow in fetishising resources
 Bringing clarity to ‘wellbeing’
• Capability theory influential in prioritising functioning, but criticised for being under-
specified, fetishising freedom, and for incompleteness relative to justice and
sustainability
• Happiness studies lauded for promoting self-evaluated outcomes, but criticised for having
too few good makers, as limited to hedonia, and also for biases and blindspots
• In wellbeing philosophy Fletcher (2016) and Grix and McKibbin (2016) point to
advantages of beginning with objective list approaches
• Objective lists enable descriptive holism, flexibility, and integration, necessary
to bridge social and natural sciences, in transdisciplinary sustainability
science
• Objective lists can combine holism with flexibility for different values, across individuals
and cultures
• Can avoid problems of too many or too few good makers, can be supported by theory and
evidence and can be subjected to public deliberation
Key objective
lists accounts
of human
wellbeing

O’Mahony (2022)
 Integrating ‘sustainable wellbeing’
• Objective lists provide appropriate approach to conceptualise wellbeing, but require
definition in context, in applied setting, and co-creation by citizens
• Among life domains on list, social and relational feature prominently, and relatively
overlooked dimension of harmony/balance, constitutes important aspect of citizens people’s
conceptions of happiness (Delle Fave et al., 2011)
• Flexibility is key strength in sustainability, and necessary in wellbeing, but also critical
weakness
• In practice in applied settings, must journey from vague value-based general concept, to
context-based implementation
• Process of bringing conceptual clarity alluded to in philosophy of wellbeing as moving from
“thin” generalised description, to “thick” description in specific contexts (Grix and McKibbin,
2016)
• Focus wellbeing on flourishing, flow, hedonia-eudaimonia, balance and harmony
and interrelationships with society and nature
• Deepening Integration, requires moving from Wellbeing Holism (objective list) to a
Systems Lens
• Requires integration, from the individual locus dominant in wellbeing, to interrelated
environmental (nature-ecosystems) and human systems (society-economy)
 Integrating ‘sustainable wellbeing’
• Nature-ecosystems encompasses direct relationship of wellbeing to nature, the
indirect relationship by consumption, and ethical categories of
anthropocentrism-ecocentrism
• Society-economy encompasses the relational wellbeing to others, the importance
of stable state, avoiding corruption, supportive institutions and public policy
for win-wins, priority on public services such as health and education and
systems of provision
• From synthesis of two branches of literature, four key lenses fundamental to
sustainable wellbeing are surfaced:
-framing of growth and change (for flourishing wellbeing and natural world);
-social justice (in poverty and equity);
-the ethics of freedom (and how it is balanced); and,
-and the value of nature (intrinsic and instrumental)
 Integrating ‘sustainable wellbeing’
• Ambiguity in concept of SD has had procedural advantages, particularly at
global level, allowing freedom of definition across diverse circumstances, and
facilitated a unified political commitment
• However, continuing to reproduce lack of clarity at applied level is at odds
with providing wellbeing and sustainability in practice
• Despite imperatives, this receives little attention, creating major policy blind
spots and missed opportunities
• Deepening integration assisted by:
-enumerating contribution of nature in wellbeing;
-enriching the conception of flourishing wellbeing in sustainability;
-recognising central role of society as interconnected system;
-surfacing both intrinsic value as well as function of nature;
-and by further analysing links between wellbeing and sustainability,
including synergies and tradeoffs
 To reconceptualise development
• Economic growth and consumption only means
to an end -partial goals
• IPCC (2014) offered process, as yet little explored,
to reconceptualise development, a frontier
high priority topic in sustainability science and
mitigation
• Towards values of wellbeing, equity and
sustainability
• Through related goals to embrace synergies and
manage tradeoffs
• From conceptualisation to implementation
• Profound change in approach for
transformation consistent with today’s challenges
• To deliver sustainable wellbeing -fundamental
goal- for Planetary Futures of Health and
IPCC (2014) Chapter 4 Figure 4.3
Wellbeing
Published Open Access in Frontiers in Sustainability:

O’Mahony, T. (2022). Toward Sustainable Wellbeing:

Advances in Contemporary Concepts. Front. Sustain.
3:807984. https://doi.org/10.3389/frsus.2022.807984
 View publication stats

The MAXWELL project has

received funding from the
European Union's Horizon

Thank you!
2020 research and
innovation programme
under the Marie
Sklodowska-Curie grant
agreement No 657865.

Dr. Tadhg O’Mahony Ph.D. B.Sc. Dip.

tadhg.omahony@utu.fi

O’Mahony, T. (2022). Toward Sustainable Wellbeing: Advances in Contemporary Concepts.

Front. Sustain. 3:807984.