New Social Economies: A Social Economic Strategy for Lincolnshire
Globally, new economic arrangements are gaining traction. The OECD ‘Better Life Index’ based around well-being indicators, eschews GDP growth and GVA productivity measures. It has been adapted in India (the ‘Ease of Living’ index) and Bhutan (GNH – Gross National Happiness). The Well-being Economy Governments Initiative (WEGI), begun in 2018, too, has seen Scotland, New Zealand and Iceland working together to develop metrics to replace GDP, built around inclusiveness, the climate crisis (particularly green energy), public transport, tackling depression, universal childcare and shared parental leave.
By 2019 WEGI had grown into the larger Well-being Economy Alliance (WEA). At their most generic, WEA performance measures are built around: dignity, nature, connection, fairness and participation. The reasons for these new views on economic ‘performance’ are largely contained in the new measures themselves. They are structural and not cyclical: they are here to stay. They are most pressingly driven by climate change, and a growing realisation that economic growth cannot be forever.
Closer to home, the interest in new economic arrangements is burgeoning. Scotland’s (as well as many other European Regions) 2016 national Social Enterprise Strategy, the 2016 UK Inclusive Economy Unit and the 2017 Inclusive Economy Partnership (both DCMS) are all deploying a different language of economic performance. Carnegie UK Trust’s Gross Domestic Well-being report of 2020 also offers a holistic approach to alternative GDP. Sub-nationally, Leeds and Liverpool are vying to be the first ‘circular economy’ city region, Peterborough the first ‘circular’ city and York and North Yorkshire the first ‘circular economy’ Local Enterprise Partnership. Lincolnshire has its own Social Economy strategy.
The ‘new’ language of economic performance is developing to be about the social economy, the circular economy, the inclusive economy, the sharing economy, place-based development, systems development and social innovation.
Post Brexit, the loss of ESIF funding will have a profound impact on local places. What replaces it will, too. The Shared Prosperity Fund, the Community Renewal Fund, the Community Ownership Fund and for many of us, the Levelling-up fund, too, offer much potential for local social economies. Whilst many of these funds have the traditional ‘skills, business and employment’ look about them, they are all capable of interpretation within the new economic language – and they all pay some regard to the importance of ‘community’.
We have an emerging economic planning framework – through an increasing number of social economy strategies (with concomitant economic value shifts) and a potential set of funding streams, to begin to think seriously about new social economies. Local places now need orchestration and collaboration to make the most of these new economies and new funds. Further research into the social economy can only support this.
This work on new social economies has become an integral part of the research ‘Economic Performance in Rural Systems: Social Collision Theory and Its Application to Rural Food Hubs’, funded from the National Innovation Centre for Rural Enterprise’s call for research and Innovation.
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