Heliocene was established by Jennifer Wilkins, a scholar and consultant whose interests converge at the nexus of business, sustainability and degrowth. Jennifer works internationally and in New Zealand developing material toward degrowth policy and business strategy, growing her own and others’ understanding of the degrowth paradigm and how it compares to ideas about sustainable growth. Holocene came about because, despite the inundation of literature on business sustainability, there is a lack of holistically curated, custom written, locally-biased content on emerging best practices. Heliocene strives to fill this gap on a non commercial, creative commons basis.

Since the retreat of the last Ice Age, humans have lived in a geological period known as the Holocene epoch. In its relatively gentle climate, we developed agriculture, enabling us to settle, grow in number and create civilisations. More than 100 years ago, scientists first noticed that Earth’s temperature was warming, correlating with an increase in atmospheric carbon, which was traced to the combustion of fossil fuels. Projections suggest that if we continue to extract, combust, manufacture, till and spray as we have been, by 2050 there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish, we will have run out of fertile topsoil and we will be on the path to global warming of 3C by 2100. This would cause human progress to decline precipitously from the mid century, bringing greater poverty, hunger, sickness and inequality than we’ve seen in our lifetimes. Our sustainability cannot be anthropocentric, it must be heliocentric. Our future is a new epoch, the Heliocene.

Since scientists warned us about global warming, people have been transforming how we produce food, recycle resources, generate and use energy, distribute wealth and protect nature. Heliocene is facilitating these sustainable options by curating and sharing accessible information on best practices in areas like this.

Goal:

To succinctly explain the ideas emerging from high sustainability-performing multinational businesses around the world in ways that are shaped to Aotearoan points of view.

Jennifer Wilkins communicates her work via Heliocene, through reports, presentations and interviews on a creative commons and pro bono basis, which is not funded. However, as a paid consultant, Jennifer supports organisations with their operations and strategies.