Debate: Well-being is elitist
Session Partner
Has well-being been wrongly dismissed as elitist—or does it threaten systems built on extraction, inequality, and GDP as a proxy for human progress?
Curated by DEBATABLE.
Framed through a materialist lens, well-being can seem out of touch with working lives as income disparity, war, and climate change heighten the challenge of meeting basic needs. But is well-being inherently elitist, or has consumer culture—and a deeper crisis of coherence—simply made it so? As the world gets hotter, and resources become scarcer, can placing well-being at the centre of economic and societal design expand access to human flourishing across all social strata?
Debaters:
• Andrew Mitchell, Founder and CEO, Equilibrium Futures and Founder and Senior Advisor, Global Canopy Programme
• Leah Seligmann, Chief Change Catalyst and CEO, The B Team
• Sam Warach, Founder, NextStep Health and Angel Investor
• Ralph Chami, Co-Founder and CEO, Blue Green Future, Planetary Guardian and Co-Founder, Rebalance Earth
• Sandrine Dixson-Declève, Honorary President, The Club of Rome and Executive Chair, Earth4All
• Hareesh Nair, Chief Investment Officer, Tsao Pao Chee (TPC) Group
Jury members:
• Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, Editor, World Happiness Report and Professor of Economics and Director, Wellbeing Research Centre, University of Oxford
• Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, President of the Association of Indigenous Women and Peoples of Chad (AFPAT), SDG Advocate and Member of the IP Commission for COP30
• Professor Dr. Jemilah Mahmood, Executive Director, Sunway Centre for Planetary Health, Sunway University, Malaysia
• Carlos Nobre, Earth System Scientist
Moderator: Sophie Lambin, Founder and CEO, Kite Insights