Wellbeing for people and the planet: how to value everyone and everything on a thriving planet beyond 2030

Abstract

Humanity is crossing multiple planetary boundaries while facing rising inequality, democratic fragility, and worsening mental health, exposing the incompatibility of unlimited gross domestic product-driven growth with a finite, socially interdependent planet. Only 17% of the Sustainable Development Goal targets are on track, indicating the need for a deeper transformation rather than faster implementation. Synthesising evidence across disciplines, we argue that human beings are evolutionarily wired for cooperation and relational wellbeing, and not perpetual consumption and status competition. This argument underpins a post-2030 shift in a global development paradigm that places multidimensional wellbeing, of people and the planet, at its core. We outline three mutually reinforcing systemic shifts: deliberative democracy that gives communities real power to shape collective futures; economic democracy that redirects finance, enterprise design, and fiscal policy towards equitable, regenerative outcomes; and transformed land and resource governance that recognises ecological limits and the rights of nature. By aligning institutions with the cooperative nature of humans and the Earth’s regenerative capacity, societies can achieve flourishing lives for all within planetary boundaries, offering a scientifically grounded agenda for the decades beyond 2030.