 We will be traveling out to Greece. I'm pleased to introduce the next session on inclusive and sustainable economic growth and human well-being. And pass the floor to the Network Manager of SDSN Greece, Lidia Papadakis. Lidia. Welcome to UNSDSN Greece session. I'm Lidia Papadakis, the Manager of UNSDSN Greece, which is chaired by Fifi Kunduri and Andreas Papandreou, who will take part in our panel. Our session focuses on an interdisciplinary understanding on how happiness connects with the aesthetic and how they can help the recovery of the crisis. So now I ask our audience, raise your hand if you've heard the aesthetic in the past. So if you can see on the right, on the right bottom, there is a small hand. So please click on this small orange hand if you've heard of the aesthetic in the past. Let's see. Let's see how many have heard. Okay, until I give you time to click on the hand. Great. Okay, as I say, not many have heard of the aesthetic so far. Well, who did you know? And now before introducing our panelists, I would like to run a poll, which will show up on your screen and where you can choose the continent, where you're coming from. So let me see. In the country. Yep, there we go. And here it is. So until you answer the poll, I let me introduce you to our panel. I give you great, great, great. So yeah, you have time. So chair of our session is Professor Fivi Kunduri, who's Professor of Economics at Athens University of Economics and Business. She's President of EAD, Co-Chair of UNSDSN Greece, Director of EAD Climate Kick Hub and Advisor to the European Commission for the Implementation of the European Green Deal. So when the poll is down, you will have the chance to see them again. Our panel is composed of Prof Andreas Pampandreou, who is a Professor of Economics at the National and Gabbard University of Athens and also Co-Chair of UNSDSN Greece. Prof Nikita Spittis, who is a full Professor in Financial Econometrics at the Department of Banking and Financial Management of the University of Bureaus and he's also partner in Asset-wise Asset Management Company. Also here with us today is Prof Nikos, Professor Nikos of the CU, who is Professor of the Division of Hydraulics and Environmental Engineering of the Department of Civil Engineering of the University of Thessaloniki in Greece and Director of Water Resources Engineering and Management Laboratory. Also his Chair of the SDSN Black Sea. With us is also Professor George Papoulatos, who is a Professor of European Politics and Economy at the Athens University of Economics and Business and General Director of the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy. Professor Stelios Vervidakis, who is a Professor of Philosophy at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science of the National and Gabbard Eastern University of Athens. He's also a member of many philosophical societies and of the Eastern Committee of the Federation International, the Société Philosophique, representing the Greek Philosophique Society. And last but not least, Professor Vasakindy, who is Professor of Philosophy of Science at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the National and Gabbard Eastern University of Athens. She's also a founding member of the Hellenic Society of University Women and has served on its board. So it's time to close the poll and see as we can see most of you are coming from Europe with some with the 20% coming from Asia and a 4% from Australia and a 4% from America and 1% only from Africa. So there we go. So don't forget, don't forget that there is a Q&A so at the end so please add any questions you have at the chat box on the on the right. Now let me first close my camera and call Professor Fivi Kunduri to open up the discussion. So I'm continuing by saying that according to the World Happiness Report, happiness is a better measure for a nation's progress that GDP and using social well-being as a goal drives better public policy. And this is a result that is coming up in each and every of the eight World Happiness Reports that have been concluded until today. I do hope that this will be an exciting session searching answers to questions like how is well-being to be understood and what are the main subjective and objective components of happiness? What are the weaknesses of GDP as a measure of well-being? If improvements in well-being and happiness are going to be achieved via this sustainability transition, via the implementation of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of Agenda 2030, how are we going to use this agenda which is currently the only goal? And what would be the role of public finance in this recovery? And in addition to public finance, what would be the role of political institutions, global multilateral institutions, European integration? And is it the case that we are on the verge of another crisis? And if this is the case, how can sustainable development and the STG allow us to identify a roadmap that will allow for me as an introduction to this session the current pandemic, the current health crisis, kind of clearly proven the ability of governments to take dramatic measures to mitigate the existential threats. And it's also shown that people have the ability to adapt to new restricted lifestyles. We've also seen that the timing of the enactment of measures is crucial for the effectiveness of saving lives and that more that the response to this health crisis came from national states, rather than international organizations. These are three main observations that will also guide our discussion today in terms of what is possible and what is not possible. So, Kinti, Vaso Kinti, and Professor Stelios Birvidakis to open their camera and start our discussion with regards to the conceptual analysis of well-being. Stelios, Vaso, very nice. So Stelios, I would like to ask you how is well-being to be understood and to what extent people in different societies and different cultures diverge in their understanding of happiness and also how is morality related to happiness? Well, this is a very complex discussion. As a philosopher, I have to express certain worries about how well we can deal with these conceptual issues in a few minutes. But let me just give it a try. I would begin by remarking that the very notion of well-being is part of a web of interrelated concepts and notions which one has to probe carefully in order to understand what we are dealing with. So let me just mention some of them. I mean, we've already mentioned happiness, but there are other concepts that have been used in this context, like quality of life, or welfare, or having a meaningful life or succeeding in life, a successful life, living well and having a good life. And this is quite complicated precisely because of the semantic depth of these concepts, which comes from history and different cultural traditions. As you said, there seem to be divergences in the understanding of these issues. Just to give you an idea, being Greek, we use this term eudaimonia, which comes from Aristotle, and we tend to think that this means the same as our contemporary notion of happiness. Now, happiness seems to refer to a mental state, some kind of inner state, but for Aristotle, eudaimonia was a kind of objective understanding of the flourishing of a human being, flourishing meaning here, the realization of one's potential. Now, well-being should be understood within this context. And I know that economists and politicians are impatient and they just try to just provide practical ideas and solutions and measurement. But again, being a philosopher, I have to think about the difficulty of measuring these things. And just to give you an idea of the differences and divergences due to cultural context, nowadays talking about the coronavirus crisis, we have noticed how different governments have implemented measures. Taking China and the kind of approach that the Chinese have implemented, which seems to be quite effective. Now, many Europeans and philosophers, but not only philosophers, express a worry that this approach, which is to some extent, we would say authoritarian or somehow interfering with people's everyday lives too much in order to protect them. In a way, it is being paternalistic to some extent. And I know I have Chinese friends who seem to be quite satisfied and accept these limitations, which are excessive by European standards. And they actually, they criticize us for not being strict enough in our measures. Now, this gives you an idea of what you do in a time of crisis. And this helps you understand how different people, how different an outlook people may have regarding their well-being and what it means to have well-being. Now, as you said, there are subjective and objective dimensions to these concepts and issues. They have to be interpreted in different ways. And I think Vaso will also talk about that to some extent. But the question is, can we find some objective indicators which would help us? We all agree that maybe the meaning of our lives and the quality of our lives is understood also subjectively through one's self-perception and self-awareness. But still, I think most people East and West would agree that there seem to be some basic needs. And if well-being is interpreted, is involving satisfaction not only of desires, but of needs that seem to be more or less basic, then we can take it from there. Let's say it is a minimum. Let's say that would be a minimal conception and move on. Now, psychologists, sociologists and economists have given such indicators. I would like to mention Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs, famous social psychologist, or Amartya Sands and Martha Nussbaum's capabilities approach, which stipulate that you have to satisfy some basic things regarding life, health, sustenance, minimal sustenance, and then take it from there and move on to social needs of affiliation and then self-actualization. But also, just not to forget what you pointed out, there is an ethical and political dimension to all this. Now, again, for us Europeans, there seems to be a sensitivity to democracy and somehow securing certain democratic, let's say a certain democratic understanding of rights and protection of rights. And this shouldn't be jeopardized. I mean, no matter what. Now, of course, I said no matter what, but life comes first and survival comes first. But morality and moral issues and political issues will come in at some point. And one of the big questions, of course, which you have hinted at, and which we cannot deal with properly within five minutes, is whether one can talk about well being and happiness if one doesn't pay any attention to moral norms, to respecting other people's rights, and somehow adopt, if one could adopt a very egoistic or egocentric understanding of one's satisfaction of needs and desires. So here again, I would urge us to just study the moral and normative aspect of well being. And that's a matter of interpretation. I would say interpretation involving philosophical reflection is to bring in my own interests. I don't know if you want you to just elaborate on that, but this would be just to begin with. Thank you very much, Stejo. It is quite important to know, and especially for us economists and sociologists, the difficulties and the complexities in identifying and defining well being. Although it is quite urgent that we elaborate or enlarge and enhance our measures of well being, because what we have now as the common as the norm in terms of GDP seems to be deficient. But let me continue with Vaso. Vaso, can you please turn on your camera and Stejo's? We will come back to you with questions and answers at the end of our session. Vaso, can you please open your camera? Thank you very much. I would like you to please elaborate further on how we distinguish between objective and subjective assessments of well being. What does this really mean? Is the distinction between life and views? It's a Greek word, meaning something similar to life, relevant to the assessment of well being. Can we promote well being from rights? Please, Vaso. Yes, thank you for having me in this webinar. As you said, I mean, we can distinguish between objective and subjective assessment of well being. And although well being, one might say, is a more basic concept in comparison to others, let's say, happiness more down to earth, it is still very difficult to define as we just saw. And this distinction between objective and subjective assessment adds a further complication. But let's see what it amounts to. A democratic government that gets, let's say, a mandate from its citizens to cater for their well being, either collectively or individually or both, may set certain standards to determine their well being. For instance, it may prohibit smoking because it's bad for them, or it may impose a lockdown because of an epidemic, like the one that we currently experience. In these cases, the government, which assesses our well being, consults scientific evidence and assesses our well being objectively, one might say, but also paternalistically. It knows better than we do what is best for us. And in that process, it may restrict some of our liberties and curb some of our rights. Now, on the other hand, if we are the ones who assess our well being, we may turn out to be wrong because we may lack information, lack knowledge, lack expertise. And in that case, we may think that our well being is not identical to what we think it is, or what satisfies our preferences and desires. So we see that in both cases, that is, in the case of objective assessment and subjective assessment, we have good and bad consequences. Also, if we opt for the objective assessment, we may think that we may be acting as a divided self on the one hand, feelings, emotions and impulses and on the other reason. Or we may be handing over the determination of our well being to others, to experts, to the government that consults experts, in which case we need to consider very seriously what kind of polity we would like to have, what kind of representatives we would like to have, what kind of a mandate we give to them. We need to trust that these people will make the right decisions, both right in the sense both of being epistemically right and morally right. Now, if on the other hand we choose the subjective assessment, as we said, we may go completely wrong and end up harming ourselves. Now, I want to add one more thing for the end. And that's actually another distinction that you already mentioned, the distinction between bare life or naked life and the quality of life or quality life. Now, this is a distinction that we find already in Arisotel and Arisotel distinguishes between the Greek word zoi as you mentioned, which signifies biological life or bare life, and then bios or veos, which signifies a certain way of conducting one's life. Now, this distinction has been picked up by contemporary philosophers who claim that we may not, we should not actually give prominence to this bare life in this regard of other concerns that make up quality life. Now, one might say that if we concentrate too much on biological life, we settle for a kind of animal life, a mere life, not a good life, not a meaningful life. My problem is that how could anyone think of other concerns and values if biological life is eliminated? And this is a concern now with the health crisis that we have. And in my view, these thinkers who show this content for this so-called bare life have a very presumptuous attitude, arrogant attitude and paternalistic. And they look down upon people who only have their bare life as a valuable thing. And so I think it is very disrespectful to look down on people who simply try to survive. And I think we should actually stand in awe at this subjective assessment of well-being and do whatever we can to help. Thank you very much, Basso. This is very interesting, especially given the fact that the world happiness reports are based on data from subjective evaluations of well-being. They are based on data from life evaluations coming from the Gallup world poll. And this is the basis of the annual rankings of the happiness report. And they find that individuals with higher levels of interpersonal and institutional trust fare significantly better than others when negative situations occur. And these negative situations, including ill health, like the one that we are facing now and your discussion on what is essential and what is respectful to be considered essential is very central in this discussion. We will come back to you, Basso, with questions and answers. Thank you very much. I would like now, Professor Andreas Papandreou, Professor of Political Economy, to open up his microphone and try to introduce us into the economics of well-being. And in particular, point out the weaknesses of gross domestic product of GDP as a measure of well-being. What are the weaknesses of GDP and what are the weaknesses of the preference-based approach to well-being that has dominated our work as economists? And words in general of the failings of methodological individuals and how all these can be connected to our way towards sustainability, to our efforts towards the sustainability transition and the implementation of the SDGs. Well, thank you, Phoebe. Quite a lot of questions there, but I think I'll manage within a short period of time to at least say a few things about all of those questions. Also, let me make a brief correction. I did interrupt the previous webinar, but I'm not a prime minister. I look very much like the ex-prime minister of Greece. He happens to be my brother, but that just so that people don't think that the ex-prime minister of Greece is speaking right now. Okay, well, let me try to address those issues. And of course, they tie in also, I think, nicely with some of the comments and deeper discussions provided by our philosopher colleagues. Governments often measure their success by GDP growth. So the pursuit of GDP growth strongly influences policy decisions. Now, to the extent that GDP measures an economy's capacity for generating material wealth, it does capture an important element of human well-being. But there's always been a debate about whether it is a good or adequate measure of human well-being. The father of GDP, Simon Kuznetz, was the first to highlight the dangers of treating GDP as a measure of welfare. And in fact, he said, and I'm quoting here, distinctions must be kept in mind between quantity and quality of growth and between the short and long run. Goals for more growth should specify more growth for what and for what. So one can offer actually a long list of important elements of well-being that are completely missed by the GDP index that I will mention for reasons of brevity, sustainability, even in purely material terms, in other words, the continual growth of material goods, is not ensured by a series of high GDP growth rates. It's not the quantity of growth, but the quality that matters too. Financial crises that are often preceded by high rates of growth are in fact a harsh reminder of how misleading and ephemeral these achievements can be. Of course, we in Greece did enjoy high rates of growth of GDP prior to the major crisis in 2010 for us, and that precisely shows how unsustainable growth can be. Now, a second point, an economy can grow fast for many years and still destroy its natural and environmental capital. Climate change is the most dramatic example of how wrong we could be with a narrow focus on GDP. Inequality in its many forms is not captured by GDP. Inequality can erode the political and institutional foundations of an economy, and we are certainly witnessing this with the rise of populism. Social capital in the form of well-functioning institutions and citizens trust that you mentioned Phoebe in terms of the Happiness Report, and I'll mention again soon, including the capacity of a society to protect its most vulnerable is not captured by GDP. The COVID epidemic has attested to fundamental failings even in our otherwise wealthy economies to adequately protect its citizens and especially its most vulnerable citizens. Now, SDG8 recognizes the importance of economic growth, but overcomes a narrow focus by adding the terms inclusive and sustainable in front of economic growth. Now, moving to some of the other questions in terms of the weaknesses of the preference-based approach of economics and also eventually on its focus on the individual, which I think is part of the problem. The weaknesses in GDP as a measure partly reflect problems in a traditional emphasis in economics on individual preference attainment as the overriding measure of welfare. Richard Easterlin, the father of happiness economics, noted in 1974 that data on subjective well-being happiness did not increase over time as income increased. Now, following that tradition, STSN has been publishing an annual World Happiness Report, and as Phoebe mentioned in its most recent report, it found that higher levels of social and institutional trust are essentially as important in raising happiness and reducing inequality. And also behavioral and experimental economics have suggested that people may fail to act in ways that advance their own roles. So two key points here are that income alone may not be an adequate measure of happiness and that even if individuals appear to be able to better attain their individual wants through higher incomes, they may not be happier. Now, again, another point raised earlier by I think both Stelios and Vassal, the Nobel laureate Amartya Sen has emphasized, so as I said, Amartya Sen emphasized other weaknesses in a single-minded focus on attaining individual wants or even happiness. He points out that people in poverty may adapt their preferences to make life bearable. The ease with which society can improve their sense of attainment or even happiness does not justify providing little. Ensuring many freedoms and capabilities for all are critical elements of our well-being. For instance, protection against epidemics and adequate health provision, protection against hunger and unemployment, participation in political decisions, protection of liberties. These aspects of well-being may enhance our subjective sense of well-being. So happiness indicators may help reveal many other dimensions of our well-being. Some of these are the objective accounts that both Vassal and Stelios mentioned. Now, there's another aspect of malleability of preference that can be positive and needs considering. Economics generally takes its starting point with individuals and sees societies as an aggregation of individuals. However, sociology and philosophy reverse the equation. Society comes first and the individual is a social construct. We are born into a society and we are raised, educated, molded by those around us in the language and norms of that society. Now, in this view, our preferences are malleable because finding a way to cooperate with others is more important than simply advancing a particular personal desire. Our characters and goals are shaped by our need to interact with others and gain their respect and become effective as part of a group. We identify with groups and even sacrifice for our team. In a sense, we form our character to solidify our reputation for social interactions. The individuals are fundamentally a social construct and that that they are doesn't mean that it diminishes the normative importance of individuals, but it does highlight a weakness in unduly emphasizing preference attainment as being the measure of well-being. It suggests a need to better understand how our institutions strengthen our capacity as citizens and allow us to attain goods that we could not as isolated individuals including friendship, support, respect, appreciation, participation in common endeavors and forming common goals and preferences. Now, perhaps it would help us better appreciate also the importance of many institutions like the United Nations, the World Health Organization or Democracy that are being attacked and potentially eroded by populists like Trump and Orban. These institutions are a reflection of what we've built together and a test to our capacity to cooperate. It is our capacity to cooperate that will give us the means to address many of our sustainability challenges like climate change and epidemics. I presume I see you Phoebe because I've gone on too long. It's just the time that I intervene and I I continue the discussion and then we're coming back to you with questions from the audience. Indeed, the dependence of people on social environment and institutions like you said it's a crucial result. It's one of the main results of these happiness reports and it is one failing of the current economic paradigm if it cannot incorporate that dependence in the economic analysis and speaking about economic analysis I would like now to proceed to more practical aspects of how our way of understanding the society and the economy will allow us to become sustainable and face even the current crisis in a sustainable way. It is well documented that the measures that can help solve the health crisis that we are now facing can make the economic crisis worse and vice versa. The aim of health related measures mainly strict social isolation is to spread the pandemic out over time and effectively flatten the care for the pandemic. Flattening the care for the pandemic by time for raising the capacity of our healthcare sector but this exact act, this flattening of the infection curve, inevitably, steepens the macroeconomic recession curve and puts in danger all supply change including those that are crucial for our survival food and medicine. So my question to Professor Betis who is working on financial analysis and financial markets and is also an analyst of public responses to crisis. My main question is what can we do to avoid this pandemic turning into a major economic and financial crisis that will long outlast the health crisis and should we now worry again about the level of public debt, Professor Betis? Yes, hello to everybody. I think the best way to to gain a perspective of the whole situation is to realize that we face a trade-off between health risk and economic risk which means that in order to reduce health risk by one unit we have to increase economic risk by x units and the question is how large this x is if it is prohibitively large then we have to choose between life itself and the quality of life. The problem is that we don't know much about the characteristics of the virus so it's very difficult to make any reliable forecast for the time being. So the big risk is that we are going to face multiple waves of this epidemic which means that once the lockdown measures are relaxed the virus will reemerge which in turn will require the policymakers to reintroduce the lockdown measures and so on and so forth. So we have just entered in the charter territory in the context of which we are going to face some tough choices. Speaking of the debt and the debt sustainability I am afraid that this is the number one problem of the world economy the the total debt both private and public debt and the bad thing the unlucky the unlucky thing is that the world economy faced the serious debt problem already before the coronavirus crisis and the current debt problem has its origins in the wake of the great financial crisis of 2008 what happened then due to the financial crisis of 2008 central banks around the world tried to fight the recession first by adopting standard expansionary monetary policies such as interest rate cuts however these policymakers the monetary authorities soon realized that these conventional measures were not sufficient to produce economic recovery so they had to invent the so-called non-standard monetary policy measures such as quantitative easing. Quantitative easing was also necessary in order to bail out the American banks which were severely hit by the crisis. Now what is quantitative easing and what are its effects what its effects are quantitative easing means that the central bank buys long-term sovereign bonds and other financial assets such as mortgage back securities in order to bring long-term interest rates down by doing so however they set the policy makers the monetary authorities set another mechanism in motion namely yield hunting what is yield hunting institutional investors international investors around the world such as insurance companies pension funds or private investors could not find adequate yield in risk-free investments now that the for example that the yield of 10-year government bond if it approached zero and I'm an insurance company or a pension fund I'm trying to find other sources of yield so I started to invest in assets like corporate bonds including risky corporate bonds which offered me some decent yield but the compensation for this yield is to undertake huge excessive financial risk so by buying these corporate bonds or other instruments I drive the yields of these financial assets further down so at the end of the day we end up in a world that the interest rates or the yields of most financial assets are in the vicinity of zero it's important to bear in mind that speaking of the sovereign debt most european northern european countries face negative yields negative nominal yields which is a phenomenal very difficult to explain in the past we faced we had witnessed the periods in which the real yields were negative meaning that the nominal yield minus the inflation rate is negative but a period of nominal negative yields is very hard to find in the history of the of the financial world so uh what so companies and the private sector found found out that they could borrow cheaply and not surprisingly they did so on a massive scale so at the end of the day both governments and the companies and households piled up a huge amount of debt and that was the situation before the financial before before the coronavirus crisis now we are entering another thing to to bear in mind that is that the the the central bank action in the form of the quantitative easing cultivated cultivated the bailout culture and the culture that is which may may be uh put in the terms of its too big to fail so uh but the the problem is that that most bailouts before they have the 2008 financial crisis tended to be less than 10 billion uh dollars in today's inflation adjusted term the great financial crisis moved us from 10 billion being the amount of the bailout package to a trillion being the new bailout currency now the new covid 19 crisis has moved us towards 10 10 trillion plus big being the bailout currency globally so these extremely low policy rates that uh was followed during the last decade has left us with ever higher and their higher debt requiring uh the bailout numbers to also go higher and higher on any outside shock so uh the intervention the the amount of money that the covid 19 shock will require is in the vicinity of multiple of trillion of dollars of intervention to protect the current system so the problem is that uh the debt uh generates new debt and we are entering a a vice a vicious circle a vicious cycle in the context of which in order to to sustain the current debt you need to create more debt and the problem is that uh when the debt servicing uh ratio is is relatively low which means that as long as the interest rates are low then the debt overhung is not it's not such a severe problem but uh if the interest rates go go up for example interest rates might go up because of arising the risk premium around the world then debt servicing ratios be the debt servicing becomes even more difficult and uh uh this is when the sustainability issues arise currently uh we don't expect the interest rates in the advanced economies to go up because the mismatch between savings and investment is is likely to persist we have the so-called global savings glut a lot of savings and very very very few uh demand for investments but the problem and the problem is going to to to show in the emerging markets debt uh emerging markets are now facing severe debt servicing problems uh because um because of the covid 19 crisis there is a huge outflow of capital from emerging markets which makes uh which makes the their life very difficult in terms of financing their deficits both budget deficits and current account deficits and the problem becomes even worse because uh because of the collapsing commodity prices uh the last two or three days we witnessed another uh paradox which is um a commodity uh having a negative price and not any commodity but oil yesterday and the day before yesterday the price of oil entered negative territory if you believe it so we live in a world full of paradoxes we we live in a world in which the nominal interest rates are negative we live in a world in which commodity prices become negative and the we the the only reason that we don't start screaming out what's going on here is because we are getting used to this paradoxes slow by slow uh and because we get used to them we don't we don't treat them like paradoxes anymore but they are so the world is not well well prepared the economic world is not well prepared is not fit enough to withstand the new crisis the new the looming crisis of covid 19 and uh I personally am quite pessimistic about the the degrees of freedom that the policy makers have to to to respond effectively to this to this crisis and also bear in mind that uh we are in a totally different the initial conditions that we now face are quite different than those or before the financial crisis of 2008 uh back then there were plenty of monetary space the interest rates were five five percent so the monetary authorities the who were had the facility of reducing the interest rates from five percent to zero percent nowadays the interest rates are zero or in the case of the of the of the euro rates are negative so the monetary policy space is severely limited and so is the fiscal the fiscal space with the exception of Germany and some other northern european countries uh the fiscal space in greece in italy in spain even in the united states is very limited so the dealing or fighting this crisis is going to prove a very difficult task and I think that's my question thank you very much negatas we will come back to you with questions you didn't sound very optimistic with regards to the ability of public finances to respond to our current crisis and you indicate the difficulties that have to do with the uh the uh fiscal space and the continuing uh new paradoxes that we need to face uh during um in our way towards uh facing this new crisis and it seems that we have a situation uh that um it will be uh really difficult to avoid another death crisis and it will not be easy to recover from this uh health and economic crisis in a way that it is sustainable in a way that makes sure that we direct finance towards those that are socially economically and environmentally sustainable with such those that have a profile of being able to support sustainable solutions both uh with regards to finances with regards to the economy to with regards to social cohesion and also environmental uh resilience and um it seems like uh institutions and politics will be uh crucial in this aspect and for this reason I would like to ask my colleague at the Athens University of Economics and Business Professor George Pagulatos to open his camera and discuss with us the politics of our way towards implementing Agenda 2030 and the and also whether such a sustainability transition can ease our way forward towards recovering from the current crisis. George uh as I mentioned before one of the uh messages that at least I took from the response to COVID-19 crisis uh is that the response the measures came from national states while international organizations seem to lack in terms of explicit imminent response. What is the relevance of state in handling um crisis what is the relevance of state in being able to tackle systemic change the one that we seem to be needing especially after what we heard from uh both Andreas and Nikitas on the mounting paradoxes that we are facing in the economic and financial world and what is the relevance uh in general of political factors in sustainable development what's the relevance of global multilateral institutions uh what's the relevance of European integration for both our sustainability transition but also our ability to respond to crisis existential crisis like the current crisis that we are facing and um what is effectively the importance of cultural and value factors such as trust these are questions that are also coming from our audience we are receiving many questions that have to do with the institutional capacity of nations and their ability and the ability of these institutions to contribute to um happiness and sustainability so George the floor is yours thank you that's a that's a big play um to start from trust your final point um and it also goes back to a lot of what has been said by the previous speakers uh trust is about allowing people to cooperate it's about allowing people to trust the main institutions with which their societies operate trust is important in that sense in delivering a broader cooperation both in the business sphere and in the voluntary sphere in the in the non-market sphere of society but it's also very important in allowing people to operate as citizens uh with the minimum and necessary minimum of trust vis-a-vis the government and vis-a-vis the public institutions and we see this kind of of need today much stronger even in the eyes of those who doubted it uh when it comes to the moment of citizens um taking the kind of um instructions uh that they are receiving by the governments and the health experts and following them in order to save lives and to save their life among others um you need a level of trust in society to be able to trust the government instead of a populist demagogue uh or to trust a health expert instead of a shard and of course the problem is when your government is run by a populist demagogue and we have this problem in in certain countries and we see how they are failing also in terms of government response we see that uh in in the trump administration we also see that um uh to a certain extent uh in the Boris Johnson administration um the this crisis has been the moment for nation states I think there's little doubt about that uh states are formidable machines of policy engineering and crisis response at moments of crisis citizens tend to turn to the state's businesses tend to turn to the states in normal times businesses want competition they especially competition the the the short that favors their own interest sometimes they also want protection but at moments of crisis everyone turns to the state for the kind of a minimal backstop or the kind of defense of last resort that the state can provide and and this is no um there's no different in this crisis which is much more acute compared to the to the great depression the the in fact no it's it's a comparable to the great depression it's more acute compared to the 2008 crisis because it's a crisis that is hitting both supply and demand in terms of economy and it's also a kind of a uh it's it's a life existential challenge for people uh and therefore the importance of governments as provider of this protection and security rises even more so now that said um it is also evident that governments alone cannot do it cannot do the job because this is a crisis that the pandemic that knows no borders and it requires cooperation between states between governments it requires the um mobilization of global multilateral institutions such as the world health organizations such as um un agencies um it requires uh collective responses uh for many reasons in order to share scientific results between government agencies and the epistemic communities scientific communities in order to protect supply chains global supply chains in order to make sure that medical equipment crosses borders and reaches the countries so the regions where it is most needed all this needs cooperation between states and i would i would say that it also needs thriving multilateral institutions um and the the most um formidable in that sense is the european union itself european union is um a unique historical example of a voluntary cooperation between governments between independent states to the extent of pooling significant degrees of the national sovereignty uh and transferring them to supranational bodies and institutions and functions it is the most complete and integrated version of a multilateral and intergovernmental organization it is not as complete and as deep as a real federation would be would not have a real united states of europe um as we have the united states of america but uh it was quite effective um taken into account these limitations it was very effective in coordinating actions between governments not at the first moment but it built up this effectiveness um and it is also i think quite um responsive to the needs of particular governments especially taking into account that the areas where collective action is needed are areas where governments have not given competences to the european union because health policy is primarily a national competence a competence of national governments and fiscal policy where a lot needs to be done is also primarily a competence of national governments and the european union is not a complete economic union and that is an unfortunate event because today uh we need the kind of micro economically important fiscal response at the european level that will be able to match the formidable initiatives that have been taken at the pan european level by the european central bank so um we are at a time where we need collective action by multilateral institutions where our european union um needs to strengthen this position in terms of policy autonomy and in terms of policy initiative and we also need to think outside the box in terms of traditional rules and ways of operating because this is a crisis that has turned the world upside down as some of the previous speakers have said uh priorities that we had policy objectives that we had over the previous decades uh today have been reversed um our concern is not inflation anymore it's a liquidity trap our concern is not to maintain a fiscal discipline target it's in fact to provide the fiscal ammunition that is needed in order to restart the economies and so forth and so on um in these times it is i think a vital challenge not to allow the importance of the state to degenerate into an ascendance of nationalism and populism because there is a national there's a natural tendency of citizens to seek protection in the national government and this can very easily transmute into a policy of scapegoating other countries blaming the chinese or the americans or the europeans or the germans or the italians uh and this is a very vicious and slippery path we do not need another slide of humanity in europe uh to the slippery and nasty road of nationalism and populism uh and especially we do not need to go back to the time where the global community did not have global multilateral institutions where we did not have the world health organization or the un agencies or the various agreements and treaties that bring countries and people together and allow them to react much more effectively to prices such as the one that we are now going through thank you very much george i am also a a deep believer in the abilities of of the european union and i also think that it comes in when the challenge is too big for national states to handle and another challenge that is is concurrently being faced simultaneously with the health crisis is the environmental crisis uh these um are two challenges very different from one another but uh connected in that there is serious scientific speculation that covid-19 might be uh connected to climate crisis uh due to uh its relation to the loss of biodiversity it's been speculated that deforestation drives wild animals closest to the human population and as a result it increases the likelihood that zoonotic viruses will make the cross species live and for this reason i bring into our discussion about happiness sustainability and our ability to face uh crisis uh existential crisis i bring into the picture the us the environmental aspects um it's been many years since the intergovernmental panel on climate change has worn the global warming will likely accelerate the emergence of new viruses and it is quite important to bring into the picture how we understand our environmental sustainability and how we integrate environmental sustainability into our into our socio-political and economic systems and for this reason i would like to call in my colleague from the Aristotelian University of Festaloniki uh a hydraulics engineer professor in hydrology engineering uh to introduce environmental and natural resource management into our discussion Nico um how do you think the protection of the environment is related to sustainable growth and human well-being and why is it important to ensure the resilience of our renewable and even non-renewable resources into our measurement of sustainable growth and well-being and also why is the resilience of infrastructure infrastructure related to the way we manage our interaction with nature society and nature important to sustaining or even improving human well-being well um thank you very much Fivi uh i i need to start by saying that i really enjoyed the previous discussion and all these issues that were raised by uh our colleagues are very very interesting and very to the point uh while regarding the environment and the aspects that you already raised um i think we need to start by emphasizing the importance of aligning with the environment in order to achieve and improve our way of life and our well-being you know throughout time humans always consider the environment as an exhaustive pool of supplies that were available just to support our way of living sometimes many times if i may say over exploiting limited resources in a constant demand for much more than we needed while our population was relatively small that was not actually a very severe problem but now that the population of the earth is increasing in an uh uncontrolled rate this has become in the last decades a very very significant problem uh the need for space the need for food for energy for water and for other environmental resources increasing in a range much higher than the rate of renewability of natural resources this of course leads to leads to a constant degradation of the environment and this is something we we actually realize well what we need to actually realize in this this stage is the fact that it is not only the environment that is degradating through this process but also our prospect for a better way of life we need to realize that an inclusive and sustainable economic growth is the only way to ensure human well-being as this is the title of our discussion right now we need to adjust our needs related to natural resources to the level of renewability of these resources uh this means that we need to establish a balance between what is naturally replenishing the environment and what is being withdrawn from it to cover our needs this is actually an either a win-win or a lose-lose situation I mean if we respect the environment then it will provide for us and help us improve our way of living if we don't then it will be the other way around it will further degrade and so will our well-being sometimes we think that it is already too late for the for the environment for the protection or the rehabilitation of the environment well this may be the case at some level I mean it may be late but I think it's not too late what we experienced during the past a few months with this global disaster the pandemic of COVID-19 was really something unspeakable so many people have died so many people have been seriously ill the economy as we already heard is threatened by a global recession I'm sure though that we have all noticed from our house windows since we are all in our houses these days that there was actually a positive change to some environmental factors at least those with immediate response like air quality or water quality or noise and several other factors this means that the degradation of the environment is still reversible and this is something very important to mark so as they say why waste a good crisis I mean we can keep the positive impacts to the environment that this disastrous pandemic had caused and try to pursue them in terms of peace of course after we deal with the virus so we can still pursue a rehabilitation of the environment and a better environmental status better environmental conditions it's not very very late still some things are reversible and I don't want to take too much time so I will make a small remark about the the last thing that you mentioned the importance of infrastructure I'm a civil engineer and as a civil engineer I'm very much involved in the design and construction of infrastructure sometimes as users of infrastructure we take for granted that when we need water we just turn the tap and we have water when we need energy we just turn the switch and we have energy and so on but we need to consider what does this come from in order to ensure that in order to ensure this this provision we need factories we need networks we need plans we need treatment plans we need several infrastructure all these infrastructures are interventions to the environment and we need to consider these interventions as part of the environment in order to ensure the environmental protection and all the aspects of the environment that we mentioned earlier we need to consider them with respect to the environment and in alignment with the environment and just to make an example just to close with an example we know that according to the Paris Agreement and the European agreed deal we need to change our energy sources from fossil from carbon to renewables in this way we will be significantly reduce greenhouse emissions and limit the extension and the development of climate change while one of these alternatives this renewable alternatives is harvesting with energy wind farms though are not without actually they have significant environmental impacts and their intervention to the environment often causes reactions from people living in these in these areas so what's our choice do we stick with fossil fuels and continue to to pollute the the environment or do we change to invoke to renewable sources taking into consideration that some of them also have environmental impacts the goal actually is to change the environmental energy sources but following a very detailed plan in order to to also reduce their environmental impacts is not easy but after all what is exactly Nicos is not easy and it is time I agree with you that we start investing in what makes our socio socioeconomic system resilience to various crises and to do that we need to lay the foundation for a green circular economy that is anchored in nature based solutions and geared towards public well-being I do agree that it is time for our economic system to change and the good news is like you said we have our blueprint we have agenda 2030 UN agenda 2030 and the 17 sustainable development goals together with the european commission uh green deal so we have a way forward and we can make the change I would like now to quickly um attend to questions that we received I also want to tell you that I've integrated the questions from the audience in the questions that I address to the different speakers I now have a question for professor bts which says can you elaborate a bit further on modern monetary theory and explain whether it is possible um to answer uh the to respond to the current economic emergency within the framework of that theory uh can you give a brief answer to this question uh yes I think we are already implementing the the doctrines of the recommendations of the modern monetary theory basically the question is uh uh that relates to what I said earlier about quantitative easing the question is whether quantitative easing is that monetization and what is that monetization monetization is something quite uh simple uh I am the government and I run a budget deficit my expense is greater than the tax revenues so how do I find I how do I finance my my deficit I issue bonds the government bonds and the the the healthy way is to to find international investors who are willing to buy these bonds uh they're not they're not so healthy ways to have my central bank to print money in order to buy these bonds so this this this this uh approach uh I mean having my central bank uh printing new money to buy government bonds is usually referred to as dead monetization and it's a bad thing it's usually perceived to be a bad thing because it will uh the orthodox economists believe that this procedure will inevitably produce inflation or hype inflation for that matter now uh it's worth emphasizing that Ben Bernanke uh when the global financial crisis of 2008 began uh assure the congress that uh the quantitative easing measures were not dead monetization and the difference between dead monetization and quantitative easing is that the latter is temporary whereas that monetization is permanent in other words the the increase in the Fed's balance sheet from quantitative easing was planned to be of a temporary nature and when the crisis is over the central bank would start selling the the sovereign bonds back in the secondary market now uh the quantitative easing uh actually the the money then the newly printed money from from the central bank during the the last 10 years basically did not reach the real economy they ended up in uh buying financial assets why is it is a complicated question we don't have the time to analyze but but the the money the the the new money that central banks printed found its way to to stocks and bonds not to the real economy the monetary modern monetary theory advocates say uh let's do quantitative easing for the people and uh what is that it's more or less what i said before that the the government can borrow uh infinite amount of money and having this central bank of the country to buy this uh this this debt instruments and with this newly printed money the the government will do uh will implement fiscal expansion of any scale that she likes that that's that that's the main element of the modern monetary theory and of course of course any government any government with the fiat money can do that provided that um somehow can control the inflation and pressure thank you very much uh Nikita there are so many questions popping up uh Andreas are you there uh the audience is asking can we expect the experts uh in economy social and environmental sciences to provide directions for modifications of jobs and creation of new jobs what do you think about that in order to respond to the current prices that that we are facing health economic but also environmental well um uh the short answer is yes i do i i do think that uh economists uh can think of ways in fact that's what they're already doing in many respects of finding ways uh and in a particularly challenging time because we're on the one hand actually shutting down the economy at the same time we're seeing unemployment rates go up because of that need to address the epidemic so we have this conflicting interest of trying to keep people employed but at the same time keeping them away from the job so that's that's kind of the the new challenge um one way of doing that of course for the short term is to focus on jobs that are needed right now to to address the the the recent crisis so that means uh support delivery of the goods when that's not possible by the market itself or not adequately fast support the production of services masks ventilators increase increase the the employment of people in the health care system increase the employment of people who are will be able to provide some kind of support and monitoring of people who are uh uh in threat of being infected so um that's a particular challenge because we can't simply say we're going to reopen the traditional elements of the economy to traditional sectors of the economy although part of the way we're going to respond now in opening part of the sectors it depend will depend on a good plan which economists have a role to play there on how we start partially opening up sectors uh making sure we can test adequately fast um to to to um make making sure we have the capacity in terms of testing units and and other protective gear for services um making adjustments even in airlines in terms of the seating so that people keep their distance so there's a lot of things that can be done and we have to kind of both capture the supply side and also support goes from the demand side in terms of people who are presently unemployed to have the the funding they need to get what what is important for them more broadly speaking of course you know we we can extend that more broadly and and coming back to the point that was made earlier we can also use the the new phase of fiscal support to get to shift the economy towards a more sustainable shift so not forgetting our more long-term objectives and in fact part of the problem with the with the with the epidemic is that we forgot that this is a long-term issue so we're gonna have to ensure in the future that we're prepared for these kinds of potential crises yeah I agree with you Andrea and I and if I may add I think that now is the time for financial institutions and governments to embrace EU taxonomy for sustainable investments that was out in 2019 and to face out fossil fuels by deploying renewable energy technologies to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies amounting to 5.2 trillion per annum and redirect these subsidies to green and smart climate mitigation and adaptation infrastructure projects invest in circular and low carbon economies shift from industrial to regenerative agriculture exploit the limits of digital revolution and reduce our transport needs so this crisis COVID crisis has shown that we can do it and it is quite important to understand that our generation has lived through a number of crisis financial refugee crisis climate crisis the COVID crisis if we continue attempting to face each new crisis with the same socio-economic model that gave rise to this crisis we are going to fail so what we need is big thinking systemic change and try to vision our future in in a way that is both financially economically environmentally and socially resilient inclusive that is leaving no one behind and I think this can be summarized this vision it has already been summarized in the UN agenda for 2030 the 17 SDGs and the European Green Deal and within this framework we need to structure our response to this huge health and economic crisis that we are facing thank you very much Lydia this is I'm turning back to you thank you thank you very much thank you very much our panelist thank you everyone for attending our session now for any more information you want just check our site UNSTS and Facebook on Twitter and on our site for any questions now let me pass the word of course thank you thank you so much Phoebe Lydia and all the panelists for this interesting and inspiring discussion