Friday, 14 February 2025

OECD High-Level Policy Forum "New Frontiers for Social Policy: Investing in the Future" attended; question asked in panel on Climate change and social policy

Yesterday I attended the OECD High-Level Policy Forum "New Frontiers for Social Policy: Investing in the Future" at the OECD headquarters in Paris. The Policy Forum is followed by a Ministerial Meeting on Friday February 14th.

At the Policy Forum, I got to ask a question towards the end of the fourth panel which had the theme "Climate change and social policy", which can be seen in recording here.

My question read like this: 

“I´m Morten Tønnessen, and I am professor of philosophy from the University of Stavanger in Norway. And research by Daniel O´Neill and colleagues has shown that no country at all currently meets the basic welfare needs for its citizens while simultaneously having a material resource use that is environmentally sustainable. So no country is a good enough role model currently. How do we achieve high welfare levels without having too high material resource use in terms of environmental impact?”

My question is heard at 43m35s-44m17s. You can listen to the replies of panelist Kumi Naidoo, former leader of Greenpeace International and Amnesty International at 44m22s-46m22s and Guðmundur Ingi Guðbrandsson, former Minister of Social Affairs and the Labour Market and former Minister of the Environment in Iceland, at 46m25s-46m58s.


This is the third OECD event I have attended - earlier I have attended the 2018 High-Level Policy Forum on Social Policy in Montreal, Canada, the second such Policy Forum (I have thus attended two of three of the OECD´s Policy Forums on social policy). The same year I also attended the 6th OECD World Forum on Statistics, Knowledge and Policy, held in Incheon, South Korea. 

This was the first time I visited the OECD headquarters.

No comments: