Speakers

Keynote speakers

Jason Hickel

Dr. Jason Hickel is an anthropologist, author and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. His research focuses on global inequality, political economy, post-development, and ecological economics.  His most recent book is called The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions. 

Jason serves on the Labour Party task force on international development, works as Policy Director for /The Rules collective, and sits on the Executive Board of Academics Stand Against Poverty (ASAP). He has taught at the London School of Economics, the University of Virginia, and Goldsmiths, University of London, where he convenes the MA in Anthropology and Cultural Politics.  

In addition to his academic work, Jason contributes to The Guardian as well as to a number of other online outlets, with bylines in Al Jazeera, Foreign Policy, Fast Company, Prospect, Jacobin, Le Monde Diplomatique, Red Pepper, Truthout, and Monthly Review. 

Doreen Grove

Doreen leads Scottish Government’s involvement in the Open Government Partnership at both a National and International level. In Scotland, Open Government supports the reform of public services, the renewal of democracy, promotes openness, transparency and the use of innovative participative processes to help transform how people interact with public services. 

Doreen moved into the Scottish Government Strategy Unit during the extraordinary times building up to the Independence Referendum, which as an Archaeologist and Historian, seemed a really interesting way to observe history at first hand.  The change has provided her with a broad perspective on the world in which we live and the systems that affect us over time. 

Panelists: Beyond GDP Indicators – a way forward for EU

Mladen Domazet

Dr. Mladen Domazet is Research Director at the Institute for Political Ecology in Zagreb, Croatia. He holds degrees in Physics and Philosophy, with research interest in theories of scientific explanation, degrowth-compatible explanatory frameworks of social metabolism, and social attitudes relevant to sustainability.

His publications reflect a career of diverse interdisciplinary interests and collaborations, from analysis of Wikipedias as complex networks, through sustainability education in Europe to structural aspects of depth of explanation in contemporary sciences. Currently, his research team works on sustainability and degrowth dispositions of small semiperipheral societies, and ecological aspects of social stratification.

Elisabeth Freytag-Rigler

Elisabeth Freytag-Rigler is Director in the Austrian Ministry for Sustainability and Tourism. She is in charge of EU Coordination and Fisheries Policy.

Apart from EU coordination she always had a focus on sustainable development and gender issues. She was for many years in charge of gender in the ministry. She is a co-founder and co-chair of the European Sustainable Development Network (ESDN) and project leader for “Growth in Transition” – a stakeholder dialogue dealing with growth issues where around 30 national and international institutions are participating. She has published several books.

Elisabeth Freytag-Rigler has been the Austrian member of the Board of the EEA for many years and was chair of the Board from 2014-2017.

Raimo Luoma

Raimo Luoma has served as State Secretary to Prime Minister Antti Rinne at the Prime Minister’s Office since June 2019. In this capacity, he directs the functions of the Prime Minister’s Office, assists Prime Minister Rinne in the implementation of the Government Programme and is responsible for cooperation with the ministries.

Paul Okumu

Paul Okumu serves as head of secretariat for the Africa Platform – an Organization working on the social contract and state-society relations. Paul has over twenty years of experience on strategic dialogue, engagement and advocacy on rebuilding the social contract and state-society relations with politicians, governments, businesses, intergovernmental bodies and development actors in 27 Countries across Africa with the primary goal of creating space for society to drive their development governance and economic agenda.

Under the Africa Platform Paul works with national and global businesses to ensure responsible profitability that is non extractive from, and responsive to society and which creates wealth beyond shareholder value. Paul is a founder Africans Rising, a continental initiative of Africans working to present alternative options to governance and development in Africa, while providing a new pathway to Africa’s growth away from the GDP-only growth paradigm.

Fulvia Raffaelli

Fulvia Raffaelli, is the Head of GROW Unit ‘Clean Products and Technologies’. She joined the Commission in 2002 as responsible for Waste management and Recycling related issues in DGENTR. From March 2005, she worked on REACH first as policy advisor on the legislative process, then as responsible for the implementation of the Authorisation and Restriction processes and for the first REACH review.

In 2012, she became Deputy Head of GROW Strategic Policy Unit in particular in charge of Relations with the Council and implementation of COSME (SMEs supporting programme). Since 2015, she is leading the Commission’s unit in charge of the competitiveness aspects of Circular Economy, Energy efficiency and Climate related policies. The implementation of the Ecodesign Directive, the Construction Products Regulation and the Construction 2020 strategy are also part of her portfolio.

Seminar: Transformation to a climate-neutral society – The role of beyond GDP indicators

Brilé Anderson

Brilé Anderson is a Policy Analyst on the Climate Change Mitigation Team at the OECD in the Environmental Directorate. She is a key contributor to the project on Accelerating Climate Action: Refocusing Policies through a Well-being Lens that investigates the linkages between well-being and climate change mitigation across sectors.

Mohammed Chahim

Dr. Mohammed Chahimis a Member of the European Parliament for the S&D Group. He is a member on ENVI committee (Environment, Public health and Food safety) and a substitute member on the ITRE committee (Industry, Research and Energy)

Atte Harjanne

Atte Harjanne is a member of the Finnish Parliament (the Green Party, Helsinki). He is a member of the Economic Committee and the Defence Committee at the Parliament, as well as the City Council in Helsinki. Before his term at the parliament, Harjanne worked as a researcher studying socio-economic impacts of climate change.

Beata Jaczewska

Beata Jaczewska is a member of High-Level Panel of the European Decarbonisation Pathways Initiative. She is serving as ministerial advisor in the European Policy Department in the Poland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Recently, she was Executive Director at the International Visegrad Fund in Bratislava.

Ulla Rosenström

DrUlla Rosenström works as a chief senior specialist in the Finnish Prime Minister’s Office. She has a long experience of working in the proximity of policy making in Finland. Her current tasks include monitoring of the government programme implementation with a special emphasis on climate and biodiversity policies. She is also responsible for supervising the government programme indicator selection and presentation. 

Paavo Järvensivu

Paavo Järvensivu, D.Sc. (Econ.), is a reseacher in the independent, multidisciplinary BIOS Research Unit, based in Helsinki. The basic task of BIOS is to study the effects of environmental and resource factors on Finnish society and develop the anticipatory skills of citizens and decision-makers.

Adriaan Slob

Adriaan Slob is working as senior scientist at TNO Strategic Analysis and Policy. His work has been dealing for more than 35 years with environmental issues, sustainable development on the interface of science and policy. He looks at governance processes from a system perspective, in which many system actors should play a role. He is leading the DEEDS-project (on the research agenda for decarbonisation pathways in Europe), is involved in the smart city projects, and has a vast experience in EU-projects.

Speakers of thematic working groups

1. Inequality of Income, Wealth and Opportunities

Richard Layard

Richard Layard is Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics, where he founded and directed the Centre for Economic Performance – one of Europe’s leading research centres. He is now Co-Director of the Centre’s Wellbeing Programme and a member of the UK House of Lords where he focuses on education, employment, mental health, and of course, wellbeing policy.

Richard’s forthcoming book ”Can we be happier? The evidence and ethics for better lives” explores how teachers, managers, health professionals, couples, community leaders, economists, scientists, politicians, and we as individuals can create a happier world.

2. Resilience and Respecting the Ecosystem Boundaries

Jan-Erik Petersen

Helmut Scholz

Helmut Scholz is a German Politician for the German Die Linke party, member of the European United Left – Nordic Green Left of the European Parliament. He studied International Relations at MGIMO University in Moscow. He has been Member of the European Parliament since 2009. He holds a seat in the European Parliament Committee on International Trade, the Delegation for relations with the United States, and in the Euro-Latin American Parliamentary Assembly.

3. Fair Transition to Carbon Neutral Circular Economy

Kari Herlevi

Kari Herlevi is project director in Sitra’s Circular economy focus area and a multi-skilled circular economy expert. Previously, Kari led the Green Growth programme at Tekes. He also has experience of Silicon Valley, where he had the privilege of working with the best people in the field.

Anthony Nyong

Professor Anthony Nyong is Director of Climate Change and Green Growth at the African Development Bank. He has about 30 years of experience in environmental and natural resources management, renewable energy and green growth.

Before joining the Bank, he was a Senior Climate Change Specialist at the International Development Research Centre of Canada and a Professor of Climate Change at the University of Jos, Nigeria. He was a Coordinating Lead Author for the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report and a member of the IPCC Task Group on Data and Scenario Support for Impact and Climate Analysis

4. Policy Coherence for Sustainable Development – How European Policies Affect the Global South

Guillaume Lafortune

Guillaume Lafortune is Manager at the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) where he leads the work on data and statistics for the SDGs, including the production of the SDG Index and Dashboards Report. Previously, he served as an economist at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) working on public governance reforms and statistics.

Christine Mayer

Christine Mayer is working for the European Commission. She is team leader for sustainable development indicators in Eurostat. She has a broad experience of EU policies having worked in various services of the European Commission. In the Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs, she worked closely with the European Investment Bank.

5. Respecting Human Rights in Business

Matt Mayer

Matt Mayer helped start the Economy for the Common Good in the UK and had a substantial role in the founding of the ECG International Federation. Besides his roles as director of the UK association and member of the International ECG Members Council, Matt works as a freelance sustainability consultant specialising in sustainable finance and investments.

Daniel Neale

Heidi Hautala

Member of the European parliament (Greens/EFA)

Members of the Recommendation Task Force

The Recommendation Task Force of the conference will put together the recommendations of the conference as an outcome of the thematic working group discussions. The recommendations will be handed over to the State Secretary of the Prime Minister of Finland at the end of the conference. The members of the task force are:

Sally Nicholson (UK) has been promoting beyond GDP -policies in her former position as Head of Development Policy and Finance at WWF European Policy Office. She has also been a long-serving member of Genuine Measures of Progress group of CONCORD. 

Sauli Rouhinen (Finland) is a former Secretary General of the Finnish National Commission on Sustainable Development. Currently he act as a President of Pekka Kuusi Ecofoundation (Ekosäätiö), so called ”sustainability elder” there. 

Adriaan Slob (Netherlands) is senior researcher in Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research, TNO. Currently he is leading the DEEDS-project (on the research agenda for decarbonisation pathways in Europe). He is member of the Scientific Board of the Netherlands Energy Research Alliance and is also visiting associate professor at Erasmus University for one day per week on “governance of complex systems”.

Thijmen van Bree (Netherlands) is a researcher/consultant working at TNO Strategic Analysis & Policy. His work focuses on assessment of economic and wider societal impact, costs and benefits in projects related to grand societal challenges such as Circular economy, Energy transition, Resource Efficiency, Mobility, Health and mission-oriented innovation policy.

Rilli Lappalainen (Finland) is a director of advocacy work at FINGO and acts as a chair of the task force.

Senja Väätäinen-Chimpuku (Finland) from Fingo’s conference organizing team acts as secretary of the task force.