Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity - Transition Funding

What can prosperity possibly mean on a finite planet? Conventional models assume that being better off means a continual expansion of material wants and needs. That vision has defined the last one hundred and fifty years of human progress.

But it has also led to unsustainable impacts on the earth's biosphere: climate change, the loss of biodiversity, the degradation of soils, rivers and oceans. Further development is clearly essential in the poorest countries in the world, where basic needs still go unmet. But the idea that prosperity can only be achieved through continued expansion, even in the richest countries, is no longer credible.

As the damage becomes more and more obvious, it is clear that we need a better vision for a fairer, more inclusive, more sustainable prosperity. That is the challenge that the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity (CUSP) was set up in January 2016 to address.

During our first five years, we have explored how living within limits can offer people better and more fulfilling lives. But we have also discovered that the potential for this to happen depends crucially on how society is organised. We have examined the implications of these findings for households, for business, and for government and we have worked closely with each of these sectors to understand their needs.

We have developed our ideas in the form of academic papers and reports for government and we have also reached out to wider audiences through photographic exhibitions, essay writing competitions and professional theatre productions. Our Nature of Prosperity dialogue, hosted by the former Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams, has involved hundreds of people in rigorous debates about key challenges of our time.

Our website and social media platforms reach over 150,000 people every month across more than 150 countries.

As our first phase of funding comes to an end, this proposal sets out an ambitious and exciting programme of work for our next four years. During this 'transition phase', we want to pursue our ground-breaking research further and maximise our societal impact by delivering six related work-streams.

Three of these work-streams will expand our pioneering research portfolio. We will delve more deeply into the social and psychological dimensions of living within limits: we will explore how changes in our business models can facilitate this shift; and we will examine what these changes mean for the economy at the national and international level. What is that people need in order to achieve their full potential in the most sustainable way?

How can we meet the investment needs of green start-up companies and social enterprises? What is the best way to organise work, finance and the provision of welfare in this new, sustainable, wellbeing economy? These are some of the research questions that we will address.

At the same time, we want to consolidate the economic and social impacts that flow from our research. Three further work-streams will help us to communicate our findings to a wider audience and engage them actively in these vital debates. We will continue our vital work with policy-makers and parliamentarians, offering them radical and pragmatic proposals for achieving sustainable prosperity.

We will develop new partnerships with the arts, working closely with a theatrical production company, for example, to experiment with different ways in which creativity can help us find a path towards sustainable prosperity. Finally, we will expand our highly effective communications strategy to reach even wider and more diverse audiences, through our events, our publications, our website, our popular and vibrant blog series, and our social media platforms.

By January 2025, CUSP will either have moved on to another fully-funded phase of research or else consolidated its research outputs, established its legacy, and safely archived its outputs for the benefit of future generations.