Strategic partnership for people and the planet

👉🏽 This story is developed as part of the Doughnut Economics for Policymakers guide.

Many governments worldwide nurture strategic partnerships with mission-aligned enterprises as part of their long-term national strategy. This is done through interlinked measures including delivering large-scale projects, boosting green sectors, co-designing approaches, and providing targeted support. Fertile ground is created for regenerative businesses to emerge and thrive within an embedded economy where governments, businesses, and civil society collaborate in the delivery of social and ecological outcomes alongside financial sustainability.

Overview

Some governments have adopted long-term national visions that centre people and the planet, such as China's Eco-Civilisation and Bhutan's Gross National Happiness (GNH). Guided by these visions, strategic partnerships are nurtured with mission-aligned enterprises through interlinked measures such as:

• Delivering large-scale projects: Bhutan’s Gelephu Mindfulness City project, based on GNH principles, builds a city where 'traditional Bhutanese values of spirituality and harmony with nature, blends with innovation, technology and economic vibrancy’. The project has attracted like-minded investors and businesses to co-create the city. The government offers long-term leases, visa support, and coordination for selected businesses whose vision and approaches align with GNH. 
• Boosting green sectors:  Bhutan's government has established strategic partnerships with social enterprises such as Mountain Hazelnut to improve rural livelihoods while ensuring ecological integrity, allowing risk-sharing and diversified financial access for social enterprises that embody GNH principles. Meanwhile, Finland’s cross-departmental Circular Economy strategy aims to realise a circular society by 2035 through measures such as reforming public procurement to favour sustainable businesses, supporting business transformation through targeted funding, and promoting service sectors with smaller ecological footprints. Local governments in China, guided by their national eco-civilisation strategy, have experimented with diverse policies to support green businesses, including research funding, low-interest loans, access to land and infrastructure, awarding public procurement contracts to companies that are leading green transition, and establishing joint ventures or strategic partnerships to experiment with and scale ecological approaches and green innovations . 
• Co-designing approaches: Barbados has operated the “Social Partnership” since 1993, a unique institution comprising government, trade unions, and employers that sets economic vision and decides how mission-orientation is incorporated into the economy. These stakeholders co-defined the guiding principles for the “Mission Barbados” strategy to solve pressing societal challenges, ensuring economic and ecological alignment.
• Providing targeted support: Guided by their Wellbeing Economy visions, Wales’ Future Generation Commissioner provides toolkit and support for Welsh businesses, while the Scottish government facilitates dialogue and provides guidance to businesses to jointly deliver a wellbeing economy. 

Implementation

These strategies work best at a national level to achieve scale. However, local governments often play a critical role in leading implementation of large-scale projects and carrying out the experimentation and adaptation needed to turn vision into practice. 

A consistent and long-term unifying vision encourages business engagement and enables learning through experimentation. Under national strategies, diverse complementary policies often support and nurture regenerative businesses such as Green Credit Guidance, preferential public procurement, and a dedicated business support strategy.

Impacts

Guided by long-term national visions that centre people and the planet, governments can play a proactive role in enabling embedded economies where governments, businesses, and the civil society collaborate to deliver against shared visions. This strategic long-term approach creates fertile ground for regenerative businesses to emerge and thrive, as public finance and policies under such visions are designed to support enterprises prioritising social and ecological outcomes alongside financial sustainability.

Empirical studies on impacts of these strategic approaches are limited. By design, they encompass diverse complementary long-term policies, making impacts difficult to isolate and measure. However, at macro level, Bhutan is one of the world’s few carbon negative countries and many of its businesses align with GNH; Finland's circular economy roadmap has positioned it as a European leader in integrated sustainability approaches; and China has become the world's leading provider of green technologies, with many large purpose-driven businesses.

Challenges

• Strategic design:  National strategies must incorporate diverse stakeholders and allow for local adaptation. However, large-scale participatory processes demand time and resources that many governments struggle to fund and facilitate. Equally, too much built-in flexibility risks greenwashing and uneven implementation. 
• Political continuity:  Consistency of implementation and support can be difficult to maintain during government changes or shifts in political direction. 
• Vested interests:  Reforms may face backlash from powerful stakeholders seeking to preserve the status quo, particularly where they challenge established economic interests. 
• Ideological barriers:  In some countries, the prevailing view is that governments should not give preferential treatment to specific types of enterprise. 

Reference and further reading

• Policy Report: Implementing Mission Barbados: UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose; authors: Mariana Mazzucato, Mi Amor Mottley (2025).
• China’s Ecological Civilization Explained: Doug Rooney (2025).
• The New China Playbook: Keju Jin (2023; paid access only). 
• Bhutan’s public private partnership policy, 2016 policy document.
• An analysis of Finland’s circular economy strategy: Lazarevic et al. (2022).

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