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UCL Institute for Global Prosperity

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IGP Knowledge Networks

The UCL Institute for Global Prosperity oversees Knowledge Networks: collaborative research and outreach networks with academics and practitioners, focusing on themes related to prosperity.

Fast Forward 2030

In 2015, the United Nations launched the Sustainable Development Goals for the next 15 years. Achieving these towering ambitions will require the active involvement of everyone on the planet. Whilst governments, large organisations and big business inevitably have key roles to play in this, we believe that the mantle will fall to small, fast moving, innovative organisations that are springing up all over the world to make the most critical contribution.

Launched by Professor Dame Henrietta Moore, Director of University College London’s Institute for Global Prosperity, and Arthur Kay, Chief Executive of bio-bean, Fast Forward 2O3O promotes speculative models for enterprise and behaviours that will help deliver the the Sustainable Development Goals. Comprising a handful of young London-based innovators, Fast Forward 2O3O reaches out to the next generation of leaders who by 2030 will be the shapers of institutions, directors of businesses, producers of knowledge and inventors of technology.

Through our online platform and a curated programme of events, Fast Forward 2O3O will debate and promote positive proposals and provocative ideas for how a swarm of small actions can effect global change.

Visit the Fast Foward 2030 website.

If you are interested in contributing to Fast Forward 2030, contact Patrick Vickers.

Social Prosperity Network
The UCL Institute for Global Prosperity (IGP) has formed a multidisciplinary group, the Social Prosperity Network, which will produce a new framework for the delivery of social safety in a dynamic economy operating within present environmental constraints.

As societies around the world wrestle with the twin impacts of ageing and technological changes to the labour market, this framework will provide a new pole for political and social organisations to formulate new economic policy. It will be nothing less than a new third way alternative to the tired and failing orthodoxies of capitalism and socialism.

The Social Prosperity Network will explore the proposal that labour costs and labour supply are affected by the provision of basic social safety services (Universal Basic Services, or UBS). Our new framework will provide the social capital people need to regain control and security in their lives, and place them on a path of prosperity through UBS.

If you are interested in contributing to the Social Prosperity Network, or simply want to find out more, contact Patrick Vickers.

    Financing Prosperity Network

    The Financing Prosperity Network – established in collaboration with Dr Christopher Harker (Durham University) – will:

    • address existing alternatives to debt economies
    • imagine alternatives for a more inclusive and sustainable economy
    • consider and overcome the barriers to implementing these alternatives.

    The recent and rapid expansion of both private and public debt across the globe makes the task of developing alternatives to financial debt urgently necessary.

    Debt is intimately connected with work and wages, policy-making, social relationships, health and wellbeing, and economic futures. Reimagining it will involve looking at the role finance and growth economics play in shaping, sustaining and securing communities across the world.

    The network draws together multiple forms of expertise from within and beyond the academy to address these challenges, focusing primarily on the UK.

    Stay up to date with the Financing Prosperity Network’s events and news by joining the mailing list. To contribute to the Financing Prosperity Network, contact Patrick Vickers.

    The Social Science of Zoonotic Disease
    Zoonoses - which include Ebola, avian flu, SARS and bovine tuberculosis - are diseases that jump the species divide between animals and humans. Their global nature means that they represent a major challenge to achieving global prosperity.
    This knowledge network enables social scientists working in this area to share conceptual and methodological approaches, contributing to building cutting edge research projects that can comprehensively tackle the social, political, cultural and economic implications of zoonotic disease.
    Several of the members are a part of the Zoonotic and Emerging Livestock Systems programme, funded by DfID and UK research councils.
    Read more about the social science methods IGP is using to investigate bovine TB in Ethiopia. If you are interested in finding out more about The Social Science of Zoonotic Disease, email the Project Lead Dr Constance Smith.
    Intergenerational Justice

    The Foundations for Future Flourishing Network has been established in collaboration with Academics Stand Against Poverty UK (ASAP UK).

    The main aim of this network is to accelerate the emergence of intergenerational justice as a core concern for the global policymaking community.

    We live in a world beset by long-term, systemic crises that our political systems seem poorly equipped to cope with. Our understanding of poverty as an intergenerational issue is growing. Recent developments in cognitive science and epigenetics have enhanced our knowledge of how the impact of poverty spans generations. These developments challenge current paradigms of the nature of poverty, making it clear that a long-term approach is necessary.

    Yet electoral cycles of four or five years do not lend themselves to serious discussion of intergenerational tradeoffs in areas such as pensions policy or climate change. Moreover, as illustrated earlier this year by the UK’s vote to leave the European Union, our political culture seems chronically unable to seriously debate issues of intergenerational significance.

    The IGP and ASAP UK will run a programme of events to bring together experts from across these fields and produce a more rigorous understanding of what intergenerational justice entails, and how public policy needs to change now in order to create better outcomes in the future.

    If you would like to contribute to the Intergenerational Justice network, contact Patrick Vickers.