September 7th, 2022

Dear Friends of the EEE Forum,

Greetings! Last December, the EEE Forum hit the “Pause” button after eight years of providing monthly forums during the academic year on timely and important public policy issues.

This fall, we will be co-facilitating an eight-week course on “Beyond GDP: The Ongoing Search to Measure ‘Wellbeing’.” This noncredit course will be offered through the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at the University of Denver. We will meet online for 2 hours each week on Wednesday afternoons (1-3pm, Mountain Time), beginning September 14th.

The detailed Course Description and Syllabus are available at https://eeeforum.org/beyond-gdp/.Engaging the notion of “wellbeing” will necessarily touch on many topics addressed in past EEE Forums, such as health, education, food and housing insecurity, climate change, income and wealth inequality, and voting rights. You might think of the course as a weekly succession of 8 EEE Forums around the unifying theme of measuring “wellbeing” and closely related concepts of sustainable development, quality of life, etc.

Participation requires registration through OLLI at DU and prepayment of a membership fee  ($400 per year, or $140 per term) for unlimited courses as long as space is available. An Introductory Membership is available for $50 which allows registering for one course of the member’s choice. For more information about OLLI at DU and to register, visit http://portfolio.du.edu/olli. Our course is listed on pp116-17 of the Course Catalog.

Course description and weekly details can be found in the subtab https://eeeforum.org/beyond-gdp/beyond-gdp-olli/ 

Best regards,

David Carlson, EEE Forum founder

Paul Belanger, EEE Forum webmaster

# # # #

Earlier posts: 10/31/2021

“Metric Conversations” to Help Align Community Indicators with UN SDGs: The Journey from April to November  [2021.10.29] (CLICK HERE)

 

# # #

1. Beyond GDP Colorado – An Overview (March 8, 2020)
Measuring Human and Ecological Wellbeing in Colorado

A pilot project affiliated with the University of Denver’s
Grand Challenges Initiative and Partially funded by DU IMPACT 2025

Project Co-leaders: Sarah Bexell, David Carlson, Sheila Davis,
Drew Mueller, Dale Rothman, Paul Sutton, and Jacob Tucker

Objectives: In collaboration with NGOs, government agencies, and other institutions of higher education in Colorado, Beyond GDP Colorado seeks to complement the annual assessment of business and economic trends and issues in Colorado by: (1) developing a consensus set of key statewide measurable indicators of human and ecological wellbeing (“HEW”); (2) preparing an annual/biennial report of trends and related issues; and (3) convening an annual/biennial forum to release these findings and provide an opportunity for discussing their significance. Specifically, we intend to develop a Beyond GDP Colorado report and convene a public Forum by spring 2021.

2. “An Introduction to the Colorado Doughnut” (October 10th, 2020)
a 19-page draft discussion paper by David Carlson

Summary:. The animating vision of the Beyond GDP Project is “to join other states—and projects at the national and international level–to promote greater awareness and impact of human and ecological wellbeing measures in personal and public consciousness and decision-making.” This paper proposes the development of a visually compelling conceptual framework of human and ecological wellbeing (HEW) for Colorado, along the lines of the “Doughnut of social and planetary boundaries” developed by ecological economist Kate Raworth. This paper is intended to foster discussion among interested parties toward developing a preliminary consensus framework of socio-economic and ecological domains and illustrative state-level indicators of wellbeing for Colorado by December 31st, 2020.