Social Economy and Social Business Supporting Policies for Sustainable Human Development in a Post-COVID-19 World

This paper explores the role that the social economy, and the social business within it, have in terms of the strategies deployed to tackle Sustainable Development challenges. This paper proposes a New Sustainable Recovery Approach (NSRA) leveraging the strengths of the social economy and social business to guide policymakers to rethink socio-economic actions for a post-COVID-19 world aimed at sustainable human development. The NSRA is based on three, self-reinforcing, components: the promotion of Sustainable Human Development (SHD) for everyone; a transformative approach to Education and Research for individual and collective learning processes; and a strong emphasis on a recovery driven by an “enhanced social and environmental consciousness and behavior”. The paper analyzes the role of the social economy and social business in the implementation of the NSRA. At the end of the paper, policy implications and final remarks are provided to policy makers.