my new film about Herman Daly

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JOHN DE GRAAF,* JOHN DE GRAAF

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Nov 13, 2025, 5:17:56 PM (9 days ago) Nov 13
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SCORAI friends:  here's a sample video for my new film, to be produced with Herman Daly biographer Peter Victor.  With any luck it should be finished in a year.  Econoclast Sampler on Vimeo
it's the story of Herman Daly's crusade for a steady state economy and the creation of the discipline of ecological economics.  It's only six minutes long.  let me know what you think.
 
all best,
John

John de Graaf

www.johndegraaf.com

On 11/13/2025 1:25 PM PST balaton-di...@balatongroup.org wrote:
 
 
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Today's Topics:
 
1. Re: Interested in your thoughts and examples - Transforming
economies as nature-centred? (Mark McCaffrey)
2. Re: Interested in your thoughts and examples - Transforming
economies as nature-centred? (Laszlo Pinter)
 
 
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Message: 1
Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2025 20:48:48 +0100
From: Mark McCaffrey <mark.s.m...@gmail.com>
To: Justine Braby <justin...@gmail.com>
Cc: Balaton Group <Balato...@balatongroup.org>
Subject: Re: [Balaton-disc] Interested in your thoughts and examples -
Transforming economies as nature-centred?
Message-ID:
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Hi Justine: Thanks for raising this as it?s something I?ve also been
thinking about as ?nature-positive? language continues to percolate through
policy, finance, and now economic-transformation spaces.
 
I appreciated the UNEP colleague?s point that much of our work today is
still about preventing harm rather than enabling genuine regeneration. But
I tend to agree less with the idea that restoration must always precede
economic activity. To me, that framing still assumes that the economy is an
autonomous machine whose impacts must be counterbalanced, rather than a
subsystem nested within the larger living system.
 
If we take seriously the old systems insight ? which Dennis, Dana and so
many of you have articulated so clearly ? that we are in overshoot because
the economic system has been running on a set of reinforcing loops (growth,
extraction, throughput) decoupled from biophysical limits and the
imperatives of our own paradigms, then the question becomes less ?when do
we restore?? and more ?what kinds of economic relations regenerate by
design??
 
This is where I think both older political-economy critiques like Marx and
fresh communitarian/panarchic thinking converge. Economies are not neutral.
Their underlying relations?how value is defined, how surplus is
distributed, how communities govern the commons?ultimately determine
whether activity is extractive or regenerative. If those relations remain
unchanged, the bioeconomy (and every other ?green? initiative) will
inevitably be pulled back into the same linear logics of
extract?produce?consume?waste.
 
So I share your concern that many ?economic transformation? efforts still
feel like attempts to integrate nature into the existing economy, rather
than re-embedding economic life within ecological and social systems. An
economy aligned with reciprocal relationships, mutual aid, commons
governance, and cyclical flows ? restoration wouldn?t be a compensatory
step. It would be a continuous feature of how value is created and how we
think of ? all our relations ? .
 
I?d be curious to hear how others in this group are thinking about these
underlying system dynamics as the rhetoric of ? nature-positive economy ?
goes more mainstream.
 
Onward,
 
Mark S. McCaffrey
 
 
[image: Colorful Swirling Circles Vortex]
*the L O N G G A M E*
 
 
 
 
On Thu, Nov 13, 2025 at 9:14?AM Justine Braby <justin...@gmail.com>
wrote:
 
My dear friends,
I was in a meeting yesterday with some UNEP colleagues who work in the
niche of Wildlife Economy and one person was explaining how they felt that
so many are trying to always push for "positive impact on nature" but that
actually much work on transitioning economies and their current impact is
about prevention of a negative outcome - i.e. reduce destruction.
Basically, they inferred that one has to do restoration first and then one
could do economic activities. I would tend to disagree in that if the
economy was shaped in the "right way", it would be nature positive, and
could even be restorative - it depends on how you create incentives and
where you place value.
I would be interested to hear your thoughts on this matter, especially
those working in economic transformation spaces. I fear that a lot of
"economic transformation" work has been about integrating the economy into
nature, versus integrating nature into the economy - which is why we are
having all these economic initiatives, e.g. bioeconomy is a perfect
example, being hijacked and pretty much ending up in the same extractive
economic framing as the BAU scenarios of neo-classical economics
(extract-produce-consume-waste - linear).
What do you think?
Warmth,
J
--
Justine Braby (PhD, PGDipLaw, PGCE, BSc)
>
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Message: 2
Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2025 21:25:02 +0000
From: Laszlo Pinter <Pin...@ceu.edu>
To: Justine Braby <justin...@gmail.com>, Balaton Group
Subject: Re: [Balaton-disc] Interested in your thoughts and examples -
Transforming economies as nature-centred?
Message-ID:
 
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"
 
Hi Justine,
 
Very timely question - I just got home from a 2-day conference put on by DG Regio?s Cohesion for Transition initiative, where the ?do no significant harm? (DNSH<https://engage4esg.eurodw.eu/simply-sustainable-finance-understanding-the-do-no-significant-harm-dnsh-principle/>) concept was quite extensively discussed. It?s relatively recent idea and part of the EU?s Taxonomy Regulations.
 
I have two views on this. On the one hand, there is nothing in these that would encourage or require restorative action if baseline conditions of nature are already degraded. There is in fact nothing that would even expect a diagnosis of the baseline conditions, and at a deeper level, what led to them. Like many similar ideas, it?s also very vague, with terms like ?significant? subject to interpretation. It?s easy to think of activities with small incremental impacts that may not cross the ?significant? threshold yet leading to the degradation of ecosystems over time. Of course, in theory one can also think of strongly restorative projects where a DNSH screen might help prevent the likelihood of negative tradeoffs, but that doesn?t sound like a sufficiently ambitious objective; certainly not ambitious enough for multisolving as Beth would rightly point out.
 
On this latter point though, some argued that at a tactical level, getting people and institutions on board is important as part of a transition. I have some sympathy for this, though one can be excused for skepticism, given the rise and demise of many similar ideas over the decades.
 
I?m also wondering if you thought about the impacts of the metrics of ?progress? that you also work on. I know we keep coming back to this, but can we really expect a nature-positive (and people-positive) economy based on current accounting systems where regeneration often still shows up only on the cost side of the ledger?
 
Warmest,
 
Laszlo
 
 
 
From: Balaton-disc <balaton-di...@balatongroup.org> on behalf of Justine Braby <justin...@gmail.com>
Date: Thursday, 2025. November 13. at 9:14
To: Balaton Group <Balato...@balatongroup.org>
Subject: [Balaton-disc] Interested in your thoughts and examples - Transforming economies as nature-centred?
 
My dear friends,
 
I was in a meeting yesterday with some UNEP colleagues who work in the niche of Wildlife Economy and one person was explaining how they felt that so many are trying to always push for "positive impact on nature" but that actually much work on transitioning economies and their current impact is about prevention of a negative outcome - i.e. reduce destruction. Basically, they inferred that one has to do restoration first and then one could do economic activities. I would tend to disagree in that if the economy was shaped in the "right way", it would be nature positive, and could even be restorative - it depends on how you create incentives and where you place value.
 
I would be interested to hear your thoughts on this matter, especially those working in economic transformation spaces. I fear that a lot of "economic transformation" work has been about integrating the economy into nature, versus integrating nature into the economy - which is why we are having all these economic initiatives, e.g. bioeconomy is a perfect example, being hijacked and pretty much ending up in the same extractive economic framing as the BAU scenarios of neo-classical economics (extract-produce-consume-waste - linear).
 
What do you think?
Warmth,
J
--
Justine Braby (PhD, PGDipLaw, PGCE, BSc)
 
 
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dvskasper

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Nov 14, 2025, 7:53:30 AM (8 days ago) Nov 14
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Love it, John! Well done!!

I'm sharing this with my intro students today (our last day of class) along with a handful of other bonus resources for them to take as they go.
We recently finished our section on ecological economics, where we heard a few audio clips from Daly, and I think they'll be very interested to see this.

Thank you for sharing your good work with us,
Debbie

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Cohen, Maurie

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Nov 14, 2025, 12:18:24 PM (8 days ago) Nov 14
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This is brilliant, John! Kudos to you and the other colleagues who worked on this documentary. And your timing is impeccable. Like Debbie, we just covered steady state economics in my course this week so being able to distribute the link to the trailer is wonderful icing on the cake!

Is there a target date for the release of the full film?

Maurie

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Department of Humanities and Social Sciences
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Vanessa Timmer

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Nov 14, 2025, 2:35:50 PM (8 days ago) Nov 14
to jo...@comcast.net, Peter Victor, maurie...@njit.edu, dvsk...@gmail.com, sco...@googlegroups.com
I agree! Wonderful John and Peter! 

Profiling Herman Daly is so welcome and I look forward to seeing the full documentary.

Warm regards,
Vanessa

Vanessa Timmer | she/her | PhD | LinkedIn

Executive Director, OneEarth Living

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JOHN DE GRAAF,* JOHN DE GRAAF

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Nov 14, 2025, 5:53:17 PM (8 days ago) Nov 14
to maurie...@njit.edu, Cohen, Maurie' via SCORAI, dvsk...@gmail.com
thanks Maurie!  I hope to finish it about this time next year.  Depends on how the fundraising goes.  best, John

John de Graaf

www.johndegraaf.com

JOHN DE GRAAF,* JOHN DE GRAAF

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Nov 14, 2025, 6:41:04 PM (8 days ago) Nov 14
to Martin Hensher, van...@oneearthliving.org, Peter Victor, maurie...@njit.edu, dvsk...@gmail.com, sco...@googlegroups.com
thank you Martin, and all...  best, John

John de Graaf

www.johndegraaf.com

On 11/14/2025 2:45 PM PST Martin Hensher <m.c.h...@utas.edu.au> wrote:
 
 
This looks amazing, I will be looking forward to the whole thing!  Thank you for sharing such a great taster!
 
From: sco...@googlegroups.com <sco...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Vanessa Timmer <van...@oneearthliving.org>
Sent: Saturday, November 15, 2025 6:35:30 AM
To: jo...@comcast.net <jo...@comcast.net>; Peter Victor <pe...@pvictor.com>
Cc: maurie...@njit.edu <maurie...@njit.edu>; dvsk...@gmail.com <dvsk...@gmail.com>; sco...@googlegroups.com <sco...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [SCORAI] my new film about Herman Daly
 



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Jessica Sherwood

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Nov 19, 2025, 11:47:22 AM (3 days ago) Nov 19
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Thanks so much for all of the threads here – it really resonates with what I’m working on in my PhD on sustainable well-being. I’m looking at how dominant well-being and sustainability frameworks still treat nature as a backdrop or “input” to human flourishing, even when they adopt nature-positive language. Like so many of you, I’m interested in what it means to start instead from an economy genuinely nested within ecological and relational systems, where regeneration is a property of everyday social and value relations rather than a compensatory add-on.

My current work is trying to develop an “objective list” account of well-being that explicitly includes relational, ecological, and more-than-human dimensions, and then use a Delphi process to explore how experts understand these dimensions once we stop assuming the human economy is primary. In that sense, I see well-being language as one of the levers for shifting economic imaginaries—from integrating nature into existing growth logics to re-embedding economic life in reciprocal, commons-governed, more-than-human relations.

I’d be really curious to hear from others in this group:
Are there conceptual frameworks, indicators, or concrete case studies you’ve found helpful that do manage to link well-being, economic relations, and ecological regeneration “by design,” rather than as offset or compensation

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