Abbreviation | NEF |
---|---|
Formation | 1986 |
Type | ecological economics public policy think tank |
Headquarters | 10 Salamanca Place, London, United Kingdom |
Chief Executive | Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah |
Website | www.neweconomics.org |
The New Economics Foundation (NEF) is a British think-tank that promotes "social, economic and environmental justice". [1]
NEF was founded in 1986 by the leaders of The Other Economic Summit (TOES) with the aim of working for a "new model of wealth creation, based on equality, diversity and economic stability". [2]
The foundation has 50 staff in London and is active at a range of different levels. Its programmes include work on well-being, its own kinds of measurement and evaluation, sustainable local regeneration, its own forms of finance and business models, sustainable public services, and the economics of climate change.
NEF supported the National Programme for Third Sector Commissioning with research and reporting on "how best the Third Sector could evidence its wider impact on public services and their delivery", which underpinned the Office of the Third Sector's work programme on third sector commissioning from 2009. [3]
The Jubilee 2000 campaign, strategised for and run by NEF, [4] collected 24 million signatures for its worldwide petition on development and poverty. [5]
In July 2006, the Foundation launched the Happy Planet Index, intended to challenge existing indices of a state's success, such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and Human Development Index (HDI).
NEF was awarded the International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies' Award for the Betterment of the Human Condition in 2007, in recognition of its work on the Happy Planet Index. [6] [7]
In February 2010 the New Economics Foundation called for gradual transition to a working week of 21 hours. [8]
Ed Mayo was chief executive from 1992 until 2003. [9] Previous chief executives include Marc Stears who served between January 2016 and November 2017, [10] and Miatta Fahnbulleh who held the office between November 2017 and January 2024. [11] The current chief executive is Dr Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah. [12]
The organisation has launched a range of new organisations to promote its ideas, including the Ethical Trading Initiative, AccountAbility, Time Banking UK, London Rebuilding Society, the Community Development Finance Association, and others.
The organisation's current projects include work on community-based housing, worker organising in the digital economy, restoring local banking and challenging xenophobia and racism in the Brexit debate. It is also active in community economic regeneration. The Foundation's BizFizz programme, an entrepreneurship development programme, has created more than 900 new businesses in deprived areas. The organisation has now taken this and Local Alchemy to six other countries through its international programme.
The Foundation's public events attract well-known speakers. Its clone town campaign in favour of local economic diversity was covered two years running by every major national newspaper and TV news station and it was taken up in the Save Our Small Shops Campaign in the Evening Standard .
The New Economics Foundation has been rated as 'broadly transparent' in its funding by Transparify [13] and has been given an A grade for funding transparency by Who Funds You? [14]
A think tank, or policy institute, is a research institute that performs research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, technology, and culture. Most think tanks are non-governmental organizations, but some are semi-autonomous agencies within government, and some are associated with particular political parties, businesses or the military. Think tanks are often funded by individual donations, with many also accepting government grants.
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Ed Mayo, is the CEO of the London-based charity Pilotlight. He is the former Secretary General of Co-operatives UK, the UK trade association for co-operatives and former chief executive of the British National Consumer Council (NCC) and CEO of the NCC's successor, Consumer Focus.
The Satisfaction with Life Index was created in 2007 by Adrian G. White, an analytic social psychologist at the University of Leicester, using data from a metastudy. It is an attempt to show life satisfaction in different nations.
The Happy Planet Index (HPI) is an index of human well-being and environmental impact that was introduced by the New Economics Foundation in 2006. Each country's HPI value is a function of its average subjective life satisfaction, life expectancy at birth, and ecological footprint per capita. The exact function is a little more complex, but conceptually it approximates multiplying life satisfaction and life expectancy and dividing that by the ecological footprint. The index is weighted to give progressively higher scores to nations with lower ecological footprints.
David Woodward is a British economist and economic advisor.
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Dhananjayan Sivaguru "Danny" Sriskandarajah is a Sri Lankan-born British-Australian activist who currently serves as the Chief Executive of the New Economics Foundation.
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The New Economy Coalition (NEC) is an American nonprofit organization based in Boston, Massachusetts, formerly known as the New Economics Institute. It is a network of over 200 organizations based in the US and Canada working for "a future where people, communities, and ecosystems thrive...where capital is a tool of the people, not the other way around" as part of what it describes as the New Economy movement.
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Nic Marks is an independent policy adviser, speaker, statistician and author. He is best known for his work on the Happy Planet Index, as a fellow of the New Economics Foundation (NEF) in London. The Happy Planet Index is the first global measure of sustainable well-being which envisions a future where good lives don't have to cost the earth.
Miatta Nema Fahnbulleh is a Liberian-born British economist who is the Labour Party's prospective parliamentary candidate for Camberwell and Peckham.