Rosa Alegria

THE MUSE OF SUSTAINABILITY SAYS GOODBYE TO THE PLANET: TRIBUTE TO HAZEL HENDERSON

By Rosa Alegria

SHE used to say that when she died, she would go virtual. On May 22, 2022, Hazel Henderson, the futurist of economics and environmentalism, went virtual at age 89. She died in Saint Augustine, Florida, where she lived.

Hazel leaves a legacy for future generations for having revolutionized the prevailing paradigms in the economy. Her remarkable systems thinking and incomparable ability to understand economic reality in multiple disciplines, connecting the sensitive points of the world’s problems, made her a “global acupuncturist,” as some have come to define her.

She aroused the interest of leaders from different nations. She brought new insights not taught in economics and business schools. The idea of the “love economy” was the matrix of what is now known as the collaborative economy, guided by feminine values and proposing the monetization of women’s work, which corresponds to 50% of the world’s wealth. This is love in the economy: the caring that weave the threads of social development and sustains all the rest of what is said to be wealth—these whose activities are not accounted for by governments.

Alongside Senator Robert Kennedy, Hazel developed the Calvert-Henderson sustainability indicators, now managed by Morgan Stanley. Calvert-Henderson indicators integrated biomimicry into the management of financial assets and brought together hundreds of economists and investors around the world around nature conservation. To foster green investments, she created the ‘Green Transition Scoreboard.

To mobilize companies towards sustainability, she pioneered Ethical Markets, a multimedia platform I introduced in Brazil with Christina C. Pinto, an internationally-awarded communications leader.

She was also the one who went on to promote ethics in advertising with the Ethic Mark Award.

Icon of several global futures research groups such as the Millennium Project (of which she was an advisor and early sponsor), the WorldWatch Institute, Greenpeace, and the Citizens Alliance for Clean Air, the latter created by her. It was with the Citizens Alliance for Clean Air that Hazel started her environmental activism in New York in the 60s. The industrial soot of the great metropolis that affected the breathing conditions of her daughter, then a child, triggered all the rest of Hazel´s activism against the harm that the growth economy over the population wellness. An economy that did not work

for the people had to be confronted. That’s what she started to do. This personal experience has expanded into a relentless struggle for a more socially and environmentally balanced economy.

The education systems had no room for her limitless mind. Even without having a university degree, she was an Honoris Causa Doctor of several academic centers.

Among futurists like me, Hazel has always been a muse to whom everyone paid reverence, including Al Gore and Alvin Toffler. My relationship with Hazel began at the turn of the century (2000-2001), during my Masters classes at the University of Houston Clear Lake. I still didn’t know her in person at that time but had read her masterpiece “Life Beyond Economics’.

Hazel loved Brazil, my birth and residence country. On her second visit to São Paulo in 2002, I had the pleasure of hosting and assisting her in organizing meetings and talks with leaders. Since then, a sacred “master-disciple” alliance has been born. We had dozens of moments of sharing all over Brazil and in the world. Some unforgettable visits to her cozy house in Florida

From teaching classes at business schools to the social forum in Porto Alegre, ICONS 2003, the first world conference on sustainability indicators based in Curitiba, TV interviews I promoted, a dialogue with the Brazilian legendary feminist Rose Muraro which I edited in a book together with Oriana White. The book: Dialogues for the future. Keynote speeches, meetings with political and business leaders, and many other memorable moments.

Several books and publications remain as a legacy, including the prophetic “Politics of the Solar Age,” which in 1981 already anticipated the rise of solar energy and the unsustainability of oil, “Paradigms in Progress” translated into Portuguese with the title “Transcending the Economy”, “Beyond Globalization”, “Planetary Citizenship”, this one in a dialogue with the Japanese Buddhist master Daisaku Ikeda, among several other relevant works.

Periodically when we were not talking on the phone, we were holding wine glasses around the pool of her house in St Augustine, Florida. She loved hosting friends and her planetary friends.

Hazel´s laugh and shared wisdom with her British accent will never vanish from my life. Unfortunately, her physical presence is no longer possible, but she is now virtual, and her love for the planet will always inspire and strengthen us in the hope for a better world.

Video recorded during the 2021 WFSF Berlin Conference – Futures Sisters:

A Tribute to Hazel by Rosa Alegria - See the minute 22:00/1:59:19

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1OschfSIoswKRJcS_jZ_jqSDTFDPREBE1

My article about Hazel published in the main economics newspaper of Brazil (Valor Economico) https://valor.globo.com/brasil/esg/artigo/a-musa-da-sustentabilidade-se-despede-do-planeta.ghtml

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