Prof. Stuart Carr

Affiliation:                 The UNESCO Chair on Sustainable Livelihoods and Professor of Psychology, Industrial and Organizational Psychology Program, Massey University, New Zealand.   Title:  What makes a livelihood sustainable?

Abstract:

​The concept of a job has served WOP well, but has delivered far less for workers at large in this 21st-century. Most of the world's workforce does not even have one, and those that do are mostly trapped in working poverty and precarity. It is time to move on by setting more expansive, inclusive goals for 'who' we serve, 'how' we serve, and 'what' we aspire to deliver. Sustainable Livelihoods is that goal.

Goaling sustainable livelihoods includes prioritising decent work and wellbeing. It includes for example (1) fair incomes; (2) work security; and (3) social protection. Livelihoods help protect people from stress and shocks, plus enhance their capabilities and assets. Sustainable means contributing to the livelihoods of others, both now and for future generations.

These ideals are instantiated in three extant WOP projects: (1) GLOW (Global Living Organisational Wage) is a 30-country network that asks, Is there a global living wage that enables people, organisations and communities to prosper and thrive? (2) Project SAFE (Security Assessment For Everyone) is an interdisciplinary network that includes linking work security to nine other forms of Human Security, from personal to global. (3) Clean SLATE (Sustainable Livelihoods And The Ecosystem) reconceptualises the value of work occupations according to their ecological footprints for life, land, sea and air.

Together, these projects walk the talk on Sustainable Livelihoods and allow us to see tangible ways to renew our professional commitment to Humanitarian Work Psychology.

Biography:

 Stuart C. Carr is​ the UNESCO Chair on Sustainable Livelihoods and Professor of Psychology, Industrial and Organizational (I/O) Psychology Program, Massey University, New Zealand. Stuart co-facilitates the End Poverty and Inequality Cluster (EPIC), which includes a focus on transitions from precarious labo​r to decent work and living wages. Intersecting with EPIC is Project G.L.O.W. (for Global Living Organizational Wage), a multi-country, multi-generational, interdisciplinary study of the links between decent wages (in purchasing power parity), and sustainable livelihoods for the eradication of poverty – the primary UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG1). Stuart’s professional focus is Humanitarian Work Psychology, which has included a Global Task Force for Humanitarian Work Psychology, promoting Decent Work aligned with local stakeholder needs, in partnership with global development agencies. He was a lead investigator on Project ADDUP, a multi-country DFID/ESRC-funded study of​ fair pay and remuneration diversity between national and international labor in ​lower-income economies. Stuart is a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand (RSNZ), the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP), and the New Zealand Psychological Society (NZPS). He ​was the coordinating Principal Investigator for a RSNZ Marsden Grant awarded to the New Zealand hubs in GLOW (2018). He is a previous Editor of the Journal of Pacific Rim Psychology, and ​of the International Perspectives in Psychology: Research, Practice, Consultation, which supports the SDGs​ with evidence-informed Policy Briefs.