Ecological-Collective-Flourishing: A radical proposal for research and policy to develop and sustain human and environmental flourishing

A growing body of research is connecting global environmental degradation to negative impacts on mental health and human flourishing. Meanwhile, international research and policy agendas are targeting the sustainable development of human health and flourishing. Here we argue that these research and policy approaches are too narrow, because they largely position the health and welfare of non-human species and ecosystems as instrumental to human flourishing. In contrast, we propose a novel approach, ‘ecological-collective-flourishing’ (e-co-flourishing), to inspire research and policy that situates human flourishing within the flourishing of non-human species and more-than-human ecosystems. We begin by clarifying what flourishing is, and how it is distinguished from other common concepts in global policy agendas, such as ‘wellbeing’, ‘health’ and ‘mental health.’ We next argue that e-co-flourishing research will require a paradigm shift in research design, to include dynamic, multi-scale and multi-dimensional metrics as well as interdisciplinary hypotheses that bridge the human and non-human sciences. Finally, we motivate and illustrate the incorporation of e-co-flourishing into research and policy through a case study, The Flourish School. Our proposal offers a disruptive research and policy agenda that will require intellectual humility and interdisciplinarity, as well as cross-fertilisation of policy, publication and funding structures to succeed. We invite others to join us in progressing e-co-flourishing for the good of all living things and systems on Earth.