Dialogues for wellbeing in an ecological emergency: Wellbeing-led governance frameworks and transformative Indigenous tools

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Abstract
At a time of ecological emergency there are pressing reasons to develop more responsive wellbeing-led governance frameworks that engage with both human and more-than-human wellbeing. Attempts to incorporate wellbeing indices into wellbeing-led governance include the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations, the Gross National Happiness index of Bhutan, and a variety of emerging wellbeing-led governance frameworks in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Some of these frameworks have begun to include more-than-human wellbeing indices in their toolkit, but like many geographers and Indigenous scholars, we are wary of the dangers of universalising and abstractionist ‘indexology’ ( Ratuva, 2016 ). In this paper, we review wellbeing-led governance frameworks with a view to more-than-human wellbeing and Indigenous knowledge. We outline an emerging pluriversal and prefigurative project where Indigenous scholars engage with partners in co-creation methods in place, incorporating Indigenous-Māori cultural perspectives into more situated and holistic wellbeing tools. We argue that while critique is important, so too is engaging in Indigenous-led research interventions for transformative metrics and tools, particularly in these times of socio-ecological crisis. As we ‘stay with’ this trouble ( Haraway, 2018 ), we hope to contribute to a culturally specific place-based set of wellbeing indices and tools to inform wellbeing-led governance for more-than-human wellbeing.
Funding Information
  • National Science Challenge Building Better Homes, Towns and Cities

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