Research conducted by Professor Lorenzo Fioramonti, Director of UP’s Centre for the Study of Governance Innovation in the Faculty of Humanities, has been published in a leading editorial for the global edition of The Guardian newspaper on 2 September 2015.

In the editorial, entitled ‘Say goodbye to capitalism: welcome to the Republic of Wellbeing’, Prof Fioramonti and his co-authors state that governments and companies need to ditch their bad habits, if they are serious about meeting the Sustainable Development Goals.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are set to be agreed on by the international community later this month and would place emphasis on human and ecosystem wellbeing as the ultimate objective of progress. For the SDGs to drive policy, a country would have to incorporate sustainability into its constitution. Government functions would also have to change.

“The separation of offices, portfolios and tasks may have made decision-making in companies and governments more efficient in terms of sectoral outputs, but it has reduced their capacity to approach problems holistically,” the article states.

The article further discusses topics and challenges such as short-termism, total-cost accounting, and natural capital reporting. It adds that policy inspired by the SDGs will demand a restructuring of the global economy to focus on reducing ecological footprints and inequalities, cancelling debt for poor nations, as well as incentivising the transfer of innovative technologies.

Prof Fioramonti explains in the editorial that the SDGs have the potential to provide a new vision for global progress.

“In connecting human and ecosystem wellbeing, they should help the international community question its narrow pursuit of economic growth to focus on equity, health, food, poverty, education and climate change. To achieve that, a list of general objectives is not enough. We need a profound reorganisation of governance systems to turn the SDGs into a transformative plan of action.”

To read the full article, click here.

Prof Fioramonti is the first and only Jean Monnet Chair in Africa, a prestigious recognition awarded by the European Commission to distinguished academics in the field of regional integration studies. His research interests range from alternative economic paradigms to the governance of the commons, global political innovations and new forms of supranational regionalism.