Linked with The Politics of Money, and with Good Governance and Participatory Development.
She is Author, Independent Futurist, Worldwide syndicated columnist, she advocates for and consults on equitable ecologically sustainable human development and socially responsible business and investment. She act in over thirty countries. In 1996 she co-created the Country Futures Indicators as an alternative to Gross Domestic Product. She is born 1933 in Bristol, England.
Read: The Nobel Prize that isn’t.
She says: ”Women know how much time, love and effort goes into raising a child. When war arises, all that is reduced to nothing … this is why women’s active participation in conflict resolution is of great importance … We have the power to alter our destiny … If we can recognize that change and uncertainty are basic principles, we can greet the future and the transformation we are undergoing with the understanding that we do not know enough to be pessimistic ».
Read: Iraq, the Dollar and the Euro.
Hazel Henderson – England & USA
She says also: « It doesn’t take a genius to pump up the GNP [of a developing country] by burning down rainforests, using slave labor and social repression to keep things in place. GNP values, for example bombs and bullets, since they are things that are produced for money (It) does not value the environment. It values salaries paid to teachers, but it does not value what people know – how educated they are. It places no value on `human capital,’ meaning people. It does not even place a value on the public infrastructure ».
Read many of her interviesw on this page of her own website.
Hazel Henderson says that Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is a crude way of measuring a nation’s progress and believes that new indicators are needed. Equally misguided has been the misinterpretation of Darwin’s « survival of the fittest » as promoting unbridled competition. Darwin gave at least as much importance to co-operation and this, in Henderson’s view, is the way forward in an increasingly globalized world. There is now a new super-power emerging, which she calls global public opinion. A better informed public in pursuit of truth is a force for good – and one our politicians will have to respect. Listen to her two short videos on Big-Picture, recorded in November 2005.
And she says: « The problem is, of course, that not only is economics bankrupt but it has always been nothing more than politics in disguise … economics is a form of brain damage … Sustainability is especially ripe for political controversy and opposition because fundamentally it is a new paradigm that represents significant challenges to the status quo. The paradigm of sustainability, with its notions of limitations and carrying capacities confronts dominant paradigms of progress which do not recognize limits to unchecked growth ».
Go to the Hazel Henderson dot com; also to the Hazel Henderson Homepage; and find some of her articles on macronet.
Although she started out as an environmentally-concerned housewife who learned economic theory on her own to better argue her cause, Hazel Henderson’s revolutionary economic ideas have successfully challenged traditional economic views, convincing governments to adopt more sustainable environmental and people-friendly economic policies … Hazel Henderson’s work centers around the idea that traditional economic theory is not really a neutral science but is actually politically motivated. Now she is one of the Better-World Heroes.
Hazel Henderson is ‘anti-economist’ activist. Her pioneering work to take social and ecological costs into account when calculating the GNP has been instituted internationally. The first version of her Country Futures Indicators (CFI), quality of life indicators which are alternatives to the GNP, will be launched in 1995. A self-taught economist, she is a syndicated columnist and consultant on sustainable development worldwide. (On UTNE Reader).
Henderson has been in good part concerned with finding the unexplored areas in standard economics and the « blind spots » of conventional economists. Most of her work relates to the creation of an interdisciplinary economic and political theory with a focus on environmental and social concerns. For instance, she has delved into the area of the « value » of such unquantifiables as clean air and clean water, needed in tremendous abundance by humans and other living organisms.
What defines the « realities » that scientists study?
Henderson has been one of the critics to point out that the definitions of « realities » devised by natural and social scientists often pertain to the « realities » they are paid to study — begging the questions as to who has funded these investigators and theoreticians, and why? Who deems certain research grants to be worthy of funding?
Which questions crop up in the first place? Henderson believes that the various threats to peace, community security, and good environment have led us into a new era in which we are obliged to look for values, information, and know-how that we seemed to be able to do without until recent decades.
Calvert-Henderson is a co-venture which has produced Quality of Life Indicators in association with the Calvert Group. These are a contribution to the worldwide effort to develop comprehensive statistics of national well-being that go beyond traditional macroeconomic indicators.
(Read much more on wikipedia).
Read: Discovering What Works.
She founded Ethical Markets Media in 2003 and is Co-Executive Producer of this television series that looks at economic growth and prosperity in a new and compelling way. It features news, interviews, roundtables and expert commentary – all of which probe issues that affect every consumer and investor globally.
She has authored several books, the most recent being ‘Building a Win-Win World’ (1996).
Her books: on wikipedia; on amazon; on all bookstores.com; on price grabber.com; on best web buys; on library think-quest.
links:
Sustainability Principles Online Dialogue;
Soka Gakkai International Women;
Her participation at the Philadephia Earth Summit 2003;