Hazel Henderson

Hazel Henderson (born 27 March 1933 in Bristol, England) is a futurist and an economic iconoclast. In recent years she has worked in television. She is the author of several books including Building A Win-Win World, Beyond Globalization, Planetary Citizenship (with Daisaku Ikeda), and Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy.

Career

Henderson is now a television producer for the public television series Ethical Markets. She has been Regent's Lecturer at the University of California (Santa Barbara) and held the Horace Albright Chair in Conservation at the University of California (Berkeley). She has also been a traveling lecturer and panelist. Recently, she has served on the boards of such publications as Futures Research Quarterly, The State of the Future Report, and E/The Environmental Magazine (US), Resurgence, Foresight and Futures (UK). She advised the US Office of Technology Assessment and the National Science Foundation from 1974 to 1980. Listed in Who's Who in the World, Who's Who in Science and Technology, and in Who's Who in Business and Finance.

Henderson has been in good part concerned with finding the unexplored areas in standard economics and the "blind spots" of conventional economists. Most of her work relates to the creation of an interdisciplinary economic and political theory with a focus on environmental and social concerns. For instance, she has delved into the area of the "value" of such unquantifiables as clean air and clean water, needed in tremendous abundance by humans and other living organisms. This work led to the development, with Calvert Group, of the Calvert-Henderson Quality of Life Indicators.

Author Fritjof Capra credits Henderson with being a major influence on his thinking on ecological issues.

In 2005, Henderson started Ethical Markets Media, LLC, to disseminate information on green investing, socially responsible investing, green business, green energy, business ethics news, environmentally friendly technology, good corporate citizenship and sustainable development by making available reports, articles, newsletters and video gathered from around the world.

In 2007, Henderson started EthicalMarkets.TV to showcase video of people and organizations around the world with socially responsible endeavors. Practicing what she preaches, Henderson sought out highly efficient technology to stream the video, MIPBSCast which uses significantly less energy than most other video platforms.

Ontology

Henderson has been one of the critics to point out that the definitions of reality devised by natural and social scientists often pertain to the realities they are paid to study — raising questions as to who has funded these investigators and theoreticians, and why? Who deems certain research grants to be worthy of funding? Which questions crop up in the first place?

Henderson believes that the various threats to peace, community security, and good environment have led us into a new era in which we are obliged to look for values, information, and know-how that we seemed to be able to do without until recent decades.

One of her famous aphorisms compares the occidental economic model to a cake with four levels, with glass on the top: the first level is nature, the second level is the subsistence economy, the third level is the public and private economy, and the last level is finance.

Books

• Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2006, ISBN 978-1-933392-23-3
• Daisaku Ikeda coauthor, Planetary Citizenship, Middleway Press, 2004, ISBN 978-0-9723267-2-8, 256 pgs
• Hazel Henderson et al., Calvert-Henderson Quality of Life Indicators, Calvert Group, 2000, ISBN 978-0-9676891-0-4, 392 pgs
• Beyond Globalization. Kumarian Press, 1999, ISBN 978-1-56549-107-6, 88 pgs
• Building a Win-Win World. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 1995, ISBN 978-1-57675-027-8, 320 pgs
• Creating Alternative Futures. Kumarian Press, 1996, ISBN 978-1-56549-060-4, 430 pgs (original edition, Berkley Books, NY, 1978)
• Hazel Henderson et al., The United Nations: Policy and Financing Alternatives. Global Commission to Fund the United Nations, 1995, ISBN 978-0-9650589-0-2, 269 pgs
• Paradigms in Progress. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 1995, ISBN 978-1-881052-74-6, 293 pgs (original edition, Knowledge Systems, 1991)
• Redefining Wealth and Progress: New Ways to Measure Economic, Social, and Environmental Change : The Caracas Report on Alternative Development Indicators. Knowledge Systems Inc., 1990, ISBN 978-0-942850-24-6, 99 pgs
• The Politics of the Solar Age. Knowledge Systems Inc., 1988, ISBN 978-0-941705-06-6, 433 pgs (original edition, Doubleday, NY, 1981

See also

• Noosphere
• Solidarity economy
• Technology assessment

External links

• HazelHenderson.com
• EthicalMarkets.com
• Calvert-Henderson.com
• EthicalMarkets.tv
• 2007 Interview with Hazel Henderson talking on economics on YouTube (video, 10min)