Video: Beyond Growth: How do we create an economy that doesn't cost the Earth?

This event was hosted by Royal Society Te Apārangi with support of the British Council New Zealand and the Pacific and held at the Memorial Lecture Theatre, Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington on 6 July 2023.

Speaker biographies

Professor Tim Jackson

Tim Jackson is an ecological economist and writer. Since 2016 he has been Director of the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity (CUSP) at the University of Surrey in the UK.

From 2004 to 2011 he was Economics Commissioner for the UK Sustainable Development Commission where his work culminated in the publication of Prosperity without Growth (2009/2017) which was subsequently translated into 18 foreign languages worldwide. It was named as a Financial Times ‘book of the year’ in 2010 and was UnHerd’s economics book of the decade in 2019.

His latest book Post Growth – Life After Capitalism was published by Polity Press in 2021 and won the 2022 Eric Zencey Prize for Economics. In 2016, Tim was awarded the Hillary Laureate for exceptional international leadership in sustainability. In addition to his academic work, Tim is an award-winning dramatist with numerous radio-writing credits for the BBC.

Professor Christine Kenney

Christine Kenney (Te Āti Awa ki Kāpiti, Ngāti Toarangatira, Ngāi Tahu) is a disaster sociologist with a background in the health sector, whose research and policy work centres on disaster risk reduction and humanitarian issues. She has global research expertise, having implemented projects in Canada, Australia, China and New Zealand, and her work with Indigenous communities is internationally recognised as best practice.

She is Director of Te Toi Whakaruruhau o Aotearoa, the EQC Mātauranga Māori Disaster Risk Reduction Research Centre, and Director of External Relations within the School of Psychology, Massey University. Christine regularly works with WHO and UN agencies, notably UNDRR (UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction), UNESCO, and UNOCHA (UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs). She is the inaugural Chair of the UNDRR/ISC (International Science Council) Indigenous Disaster Science caucus, an invited author of the United Nation’s 2022 GAR Global Assessment Report and New Zealand’s nominee on the non-economic losses committee of the UNFCCC’s (UN Framework Convention on Climate Change) Warsaw Mechanism for Loss and Damages. She is also a cabinet appointee to the Ministerial Advisory Committee on Emergency Management and appointed to MBIE's Special Extreme Weather Advisory Panel.

Professor Jonathan Boston ONZM

Jonathan Boston is Emeritus Professor of Public Policy in the School of Government at Victoria University of Wellington. He has published widely on a range of matters including public management, social policy, climate change policy, and comparative government.

His current projects include designing institutions to manage the challenge of climate change adaptation. In 2021, he was seconded to the Ministry for the Environment to contribute on environmental policy and its Expert Working Group on Managed Retreat. He is assisting the Environmental Defence Society on climate change adaptation.

Among his many roles and service, he was Co-Chair of the Expert Advisory Group on Solutions to Child Poverty established by the Children’s Commissioner, and a board member of Oxfam Aotearoa (2013-22). Jonathan was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship in 2014 for research on ‘Governing for the Future: Bringing Long-Term Policy Issues into Short-Term Political Focus’.

Lynn Freeman

Lynn Freeman joined Forest and Bird in January this year as its Media and Communications Manager, after a 35+ year broadcasting career with RNZ. Twenty one of those years were spent hosting Standing Room Only (and its predecessors) as RNZ’s arts specialist, and for the past decade, also filling in for Kathryn Ryan on Nine to Noon. Conservation has always been dear to Lynn’s heart, as a long-time volunteer at the Zealandia ecosanctuary in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington. Moving to Forest and Bird to help with its mahi, in this, its centennial year, was, says Lynn “a very easy decision”.