Beyond GDP indicators

Provide short introduction here

General introduction to approach

This cluster questions and proposes new ways in which to think and measure societal progress beyond GDP, providing alternative frameworks and indicators that are aligned with the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, as well as citizens’ concerns and with the latest technological and political evolutions. Several projects within the EU have helped evolve the “Beyond GDP” debate through various approaches which aim to address the pressing need of bridging the indicator gap, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Investors and business organizations are starting to pay more attention to sustainability and to use environmental, social and governance indicators in addition to purely economic ones. “Beyond GDP” approaches should be of particular interest to policymakers, statistical offices and planning agencies, as well as academia and other assessment & monitoring stakeholders, although designing indicators sets can be done also by any agents of society as they bring their own knowledge of the local challenges and priorities. The stakeholder groups can be broaden out to include the society at large. In this context, new evaluation frameworks and indicators have been generated to better assess, benchmark and monitor societal progress, within a broader definition of sustainability too. For example, the monetisation of natural capital and ecosystem services operationalises the environmental dimension merging it into the economics (OpenNESS). Most approaches go beyond the pure economic rationale, and weight the economic, social and environmental pillars of sustainability in various ways. Some of the new alternative frameworks (BRAINPOoL, WWW for Europe) prioritise more the social dimension, while others like IN-STREAM clearly underline the environmental one. The WeValue approach is of particular interest as it is a co-creative design process leading to a tailored product - the indicator set.

Shapes, sizes and applications

The BRAINPOoL project proposes - at the EU-level - shifting the primary focus onto other indicators than GDP. After brokering knowledge between policy-makers, statistical offices and planning agencies, this “priorities/needs assessment” has led to a joint action plan for the implementation of new indicators, providing new insights into the barriers and drivers of their use.

WWW (Welfare, Wealth & Work) for Europe have developed and intensively disseminated a “Wellbeing in a sustainable environment” benchmark system which balances out three dimensions: increasing incomes; social inclusiveness, gender equality and equitable distribution; and environmental sustainability. They have also made sectoral policy recommendations to support a people-centered growth path.

Also including citizen wellbeing and social justice, but focusing on the less represented indicators of biodiversity, green growth and resource efficiency, IN-STREAM proposes an integrated framework for sustainable prosperity to complement mainstream economic benchmarks, and explores the potential value of alternative composite indicators.

While keeping the economic dimension as the centre, the OpenNESS project gives the keys to operationalisation of natural capital (e.g. air, water, biodiversity) and ecosystem services (e.g. climate regulation, waste decomposition, pollination of crops, and other vital or wellbeing services to human societies). This innovative approach is based on the idea that giving nature a monetary value can help manage it more sustainably.

WeValue project proposes a co-creative design of ethical/values-based indicators by using a combination of indicators based on perceptions and observable outputs. The dynamic ‘inside-out’ process of indicator design is framed within clearly defined contexts of collective action. Multiple sets of values-based indicators can be created depending on what should be measured either within specific educational initiatives, projects or programmes (micro-level) or across a whole organisation or institution (meso-level).

All these six approaches have a good level of maturity and transferability, some being more adequate for implementation in certain scale, which is a positive sign of complementarity between national and local levels. Nevertheless, some approaches would probably require more resources to get implemented than others. For instance the WeValue values-based indicators as it is a participatory and educational process, where indicators definition process is as important as their final use.