Building a 4D Economy by using all of our assets

The way our economy works and its colonialist roots lie at the heart of many of today’s biggest challenges and creates many of the problems that the State and philanthropy spend resources trying to fix.

Our economic system produces and reproduces inequality, environmental degradation and undermines responsible business behaviours and positive social interactions. It shouldn’t be this way.

As we write this, the UK faces a growing cost of living crisis. Energy prices are moving beyond affordability for many people and yet energy companies are reporting record profits. Those same energy systems are not making the necessary transition away from fossil fuels. This is the outcome of an economic system that services neither people nor planet.

Over the past ten years the gap between the richest in society and the rest of the population has widened both in terms of income and wealth. In 2022 ONS data shows the wealthiest 10% of households own 43% of Britain’s wealth. The bottom half own only 9%. And these wealth inequalities are directly correlated with other marginalised characteristics – such as race, disability and gender.

The climate emergency is the biggest challenge we currently face, yet normal practices in our economic system are based on the extraction of natural resources without consideration of their renewal, carbon intensive and unsustainable (dig-make-use-discard). Investment markets remain dominated by the fossil fuel sector and where companies extract, refine, distribute, ecologically damaging resources and products.

This new strategy builds on the work we have been doing on economic systems change since 2012 and there is a great deal of continuity. There are also some key differences:

Democratising the economy

Power within the economy lies focused within formal institutions and large corporations, with few opportunities for others to take part in economic decision-making. A fair economy would contain a range of ways for people to have more of a say in economic decision making, either by breaking power structures from the top down or creating channels for participation for the everyday person to get involved. By creating these opportunities we can foster a sense of ownership and accountability for all.

Decarbonising the economy

We need to decarbonise our entire economy, and quickly. Individuals or businesses operating alone, or offsetting their carbon, is not enough. There needs to be a strong challenge to big economic systems and interests to remove fossil fuels from investment portfolios. Governments need to incentivise and support the changes and we need to find other ways to power our energy and transport systems in particular. All of these changes need to happen in a way that doesn’t put workers and communities as most at risk from the transition to a low carbon dependent economy.

Decentralising the economy

We need to break up the concentrations of economic power in our country. Systems such as banking and energy are hugely centralised, the value of what is being produced is not distributed evenly and mostly flows away from local communities. We need to build wealth at a local level and retain that value locally

Diversifying the economy

We want the people making decisions within our economic system to have a diversity of thought and experience that fairly reflects our society. We feel this is how we will create an economy that is better and fairer. Voices that are often not heard need to be given an equal say in order to create a fair system where no one is left on the margins.

The 4D’s (above) represent what we believe to be the key characteristics of a fair and sustainable economy and our strategy is focused on financing activities and creating an environment that grows institutions and practices with these attributes.