Miriam Kennet

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Miriam Kennet is an economist and founder of the Green Economics Institute [1] and the International Journal of Green Economics.[2]

Contents

[edit] Overview

Miriam Kennet has taught and researched at Mansfield College, Oxford, Oxford Brookes University and Keele University. Currently she is lecturing at London University's Birbeck College in environmental economics. Recently featured in Harvard Economics Review and on the BBC's "Wake up to Money" programme, she is the author of many publications. She also founded and runs the Green Economics Institute, one the fastest growing NGOs and campaigning bodies. The Institute aims to consider a company's overall environmental impact, not just aspects relating to corporate social responsibility (CSR).

Kennet is an expert in stakeholder theory as well as in greening supply chains and procurement. She is a full member of the Institute of Purchase and Supply. Her specialist areas are technical engineering, telecommunications and IT. She also runs a technical translation service and is fluent in French and German.

She is passionate about the position of women in the world economy. She believes that GDP should be altered to include an evaluation of women's work, and that equal pay should be awarded for equal work. She and her Institute work to alleviate poverty; Kennet has slept outside in a cardboard box in winter to raise awareness of homelessness and poverty.

Kennet is also concerned about the loss of biological species and biodiversity. She is working with a group of top ecologists and biologists to create new financial incentives for companies and governments to stop mass extinction.

She has published widely on green economics and runs one of the largest green networks, covering a range of subjects within green economics in its widest sense. Her Institute challenges mainstream economics orthodoxy, taking into account the needs of all people within the framework analysis of Maria Mies[3].

She is a parish councillor and is active in European green party politics. In 2007, she spoke at the Austrian Parliament on lower growth economics, and is currently working with the French Green Party on their election campaign. She has also been involved with the UK Green Party, serving on their executive for six years in various roles, including national campaigns co-ordinator. She has launched campaigns on GMOs, homelessness and quality of life and has stood as a candidate in various elections in the South East Region.

[edit] Green Economics

Green Economics special features include a long-term perspective of archaeological or palaeontological time, and a perspective which includes women[4] as half the population is women, especially women's economic well-being as men own 99% of assets on the planet and poverty is a gendered issue, in the UK the pay gap is actually increasing for example. The Institute argues that it is not possible to express concern about poverty without taking this into account,[5] and this is also influenced by lack of women's representation in politics - the UK is ranked 47th in a new survey, where both aspects seem to dovetail. Similarly with this -young people in the UK came out bottom in a survey about their happiness [6] but the UK is ranked 5th globally in terms of GDP. This is another piece of evidence that GDP and mainstream economics are predicated on the "rational self interest of homo economicus" who tends to be white western educated middle class male which is a small percentage of people and life on earth and has been highly over represented in economics.

Economics was initially based on household or estate management, according to Xenophon and Aristotle: the root of the word 'economics' is oikia, a Greek word meaning house. Today our perception is that no one understands economics except homo economicus: the Nobel Prizes for economics have almost entirely gone to men, and the book about famous economists which most students of economics are given when they begin economics, Robert Heilbroner's Worldly Philosophers, does not include a single woman. Is it any wonder that women feel they have no access to economics and that their needs and those of the planet are no longer considered at all?

The idea that those without an economic voice do not count has been misused in many ways- for example using child labour, in wars, abuse of other peoples resources and land, those with special needs not being considered. Similarly the idea that technology will "fix it" has been over-emphasised as people need meaningful jobs, and extensive rather than intensive economies. Machines have been a means of creating higher GDP, at the expense of well-being. Technology 'fixing' it has been an excuse to carry on business as usual, such as creating greener cars, greener aeroplanes, but fundamentally the march of climate chaos continues for example.

In considering Green Economics there has to be an emphasis on lower consumption, lower demand - a change to growth meaning growth in nature, and abundance, rather than destruction for production. Chopping down the rainforest increases economic growth and GDP as currently measured by mainstream economics, but actually destroys stocks of natural capital, and creates scarcity not abundance, and is actually the opposite of growth. [7]. Green Economics is an attempt to therefore rectify the situation and to provide economic access for all and to take a much wider, more inclusive and more diverse, long-term view of economics.

There is no one solution that fits everyone. Economics is no longer about the battle between giant men's ideas. It is about provisioning for the needs of all of us, and those of the planet and the biosphere. This is creating a new kind of robust economics which is in the process of rapid transformation of the way we do things.

[edit] Works

  • (with Scot Cato) Green Economics, Beyond Supply and Demand to meeting people's needs. 1997. Green Audit
  • Proceedings of the Oxford University Conference on Intergenerational Equity (2006)
  • (with Heinemann) 'Green Economics: Setting the Scene', International Journal of Green Economics, Vol 1, issue 1 (2006)
  • 'Editorial: the forgotten factor of reality in economics', International Journal of Green Economics, Vol 1, issue 2 (2007)
  • The Green Economist, Vol 2, issue 2, The Green Economics Institute
  • 'Transnational Corporations', International Journal of Green Economics, Vol 2 issue 1 (forthcoming, 2008)
  • (with M-L. Seeberg M-L) 'A History of Anthropology', International Journal of Green Economics, Vol 2, Issue 2 (forthcoming 2008)
  • 'Socio-ecological transformation- the learning from Green Economics', Rosa Luxembourg Stiftung, Dietz Germany (forthcoming, 2008)

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  1. ^ http://www.greeneconomics.org.uk/ <ref>)]http://www.greeneconomics.org.uk/</li> <li id="cite_note-1">'''[[#cite_ref-1|^]]''' Kennet and Heinemann (2006); Kennet (2007)</li> <li id="cite_note-2">'''[[#cite_ref-2|^]]''' Maria Mies, 'The Subsistence Perspective', in Scot Cato and Kennet (1999)</li> <li id="cite_note-3">'''[[#cite_ref-3|^]]''' Wilber (2005), Ghilligan (1982</li> <li id="cite_note-4">'''[[#cite_ref-4|^]]''' Fawcett Society Report, 2007</li> <li id="cite_note-5">'''[[#cite_ref-5|^]]''' UNEP 2006</li> <li id="cite_note-6">'''[[#cite_ref-6|^]]''' Daly, Garey 2005,Hoershele 2008 forthcoming</li></ol></ref>
  • Daly (2005) Ecological economics
  • Hoerschele, W. The economics of abundance. Zed Books (forthcoming, 2008)
  • Mies, M. The subsistence perspective. Zed Books. (1997)
  • Mies, M. (1999) 'Green Economics', in Scot Cato and Kennet.
  • Mies, M. (2006) 'The Iceberg Model of economics', International Journal of Green Economics Vol 2 issue 1 (2006)
  • Heinemann V.(2000) Oekonomie Der Zukunft. Books on Demand.