Global Systems Accounting: Beyond Economics

Dr. Arthur Dahl is a coral reef biologist and systems scientist with over 50 years' international experience since the 1972 Stockholm Conference, including as the Regional Ecological Adviser to all the Pacific Island countries, a Deputy Assistant Executive Director of UNEP and Coordinator of the UN System-wide Earthwatch, and now working on UN system reform. He coordinated UN and scientific community efforts to develop indicators of sustainable development and global observing systems after serving in the secretariat for the 1992 Earth Summit. He recently initiated the Global Systems Accounting project after reflecting on the failure of global environmental action often blocked by the narrow short-term economic view of development represented by GDP.

Rebecca’s passion is to explore how spirituality, scientific knowledge and creativity can combine to help develop and experience building sustainable and plentiful human societies. With roots in Africa and Europe, she says she is committed to fostering communication with a diversity of voices vital to this process. Dr. Mesbah is a neuroscientist, educator, social scientist and artist with extensive experience in scientific research and teaching art and sciences to all ages from toddlers to adults. She was born in Ethiopia where she spent her childhood years and later lived in Kenya, France, the Netherlands and now Bosnia and Herzegovina where, with her husband, they raised their two children who are now adults.

Sara DeHoff is a writer and author of Collaboration through Consultation. Drawing on 30 years of working in groups of various kinds, Sara writes about community building, working together and developing a learning mindset. She earned an M.Ed from Harvard and has lived, worked and studied in China, Japan, Taiwan and the Czech Republic.

Nan Chen is a world citizen and impact innovator born and raised in Shanghai, China, and living in Germany since 2016. She has years of cross-continental working experience for sustainable value creation in technology business strategy consulting and implementation for global mobility, energy management and information technology firms. She is now using agile principles to solve problems in her professional field, leading interdisciplinary digital industry projects as well as product creation. In addition, she is enthusiastic about various social actions and systematic community building activities which generate long term society-building power via universal education.

Laurent Mesbah was born and grew up in France in a multicultural background. He did research and teaching in plant genetics at the free university in Amsterdam, the Netherlands where he completed his PhD. In addition Dr. Mesbah completed a certificate of advanced studies in Environmental Diplomacy at the University of Geneva and has been a member of the International Environment Forum (IEF) since its foundation in 1997. He has served on the governing board of IEF since 2017. Laurent has been living in Bosnia and Herzegovina since 2000 with his family. He is involved in education and youth empowerment and is managing, implementing and evaluating projects related to sustainable development with international organizations. Laurent develops and leads school and community educational gardens and environments. In addition he teaches environmental sciences, value based leadership, botany, plant physiology, and climate change and has been faculty at the Wilmette Institute since 2017.  Dr. Mesbah is active in Bahá’í institutions since his youth in France, Netherlands, but also in local spiritual assemblies and as auxiliary board member in the Balkans.See Faculty Bio