Economy with purpose: why we need systemic change towards regeneration.
Our century is turning into a sea of ambiguity. To promote economic, environmental, and social growth in the coming years and decades, we need a meaningful system of the common good.
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We will turn the challenges into opportunities. There is no other way. As everything is liable to change, and the world is more connected than ever, we must find a purpose.
Where this is all going, though, is the remaining question. Still, we can change the conversation and build new vocabularies. It makes sense that people nowadays long to do something meaningful with a clear purpose and a beneficial impact.
I have been thinking about the problems the world is currently facing. Global health, geopolitics, biotechnology, a lack of ethics in some digital spaces, and certain products and services are not changing in a way that meets the demands and complexities of our time, which urgently need solving.
To stop nations from damaging the environment, we world citizens must be self-reliant, enable the power of connectedness of the digital space, and counteract societies and organisations harming the planet. We must fight.
We must go against autocracies. They have had a fluctuating impact on the global and local economies, as well as on the environment, beings, the food supply system, and the most vulnerable populations.
There is a rising awareness of not wanting to become wealthy at the expense of the environment and the most vulnerable nations. What we can provide to the world is a question I see many people, at least in my social circle, asking.
Are we using the Metaverse to maximize positive impact on a systemic level? We must consider all aspects as professionals and consumers in the global economy.
The dynamics of change are driving, leaving no time to think about where we will end up. There is no time for us — individuals or as the society in general — to contemplate new and disruptive developments that burst into the world.
Rather than sustainability, I think regeneration is the key to working as a positive force that restores, renews or replenishes. The strategy for how we engage with the planet should be regeneration.
A regenerative future requires the ability to listen and learn from diverse fields. We need to develop our collective capacity to turn disagreement into common ground as we build power for disruptive innovation. We need to be resilient and self-sufficient.
We must have an economy with purpose. What would happen if we considered ethics while evaluating long-term profits? How to renew the environment should be our top priority, with technology serving only as a means of doing so.
We must value indigenous cultures’ potential, communities, and habitat. They pre-date agricultural and fossil fuel-based societies and demonstrate self-sustenance and how humans fostered diversity while actively restoring the health of local and regional ecosystems.
We could also include industry 4.0 as the enabler to improve the common good, the quality of our environment, and regenerate the planet towards the cycle of time while keeping ethics in mind.
We need more solutions such as Fairphone and Shift into the market. As a designer, I could give many more examples besides these two. I recently searched for goods and services in my life that support this philosophy and both companies’ strategies, and I will add more of them. Also, how to have a more independent lifestyle and be more like a regenizer.
Dieter Rams’ list of the top ten design principles served as inspiration, emphasizing not just functionality and technology but also social justice, durability, and repairability. These two products serve as examples.
The ideal materials would be those that combine biology and technology and could be broken down by bacteria or other living organisms. Preventing pollution and thriving for regeneration as a result.
The standard should not only be the human well-being. We might reconsider how we consume goods and services aligned with the challenges we have right now. We must achieve collective betterment.
