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.

Relation to UrbanA themes: Cities, sustainability, and justice

Urban: These approaches are not necessarily urban per se, but are highly relevant and applicable in urban / peri-urban ecosystems and functional domains.

Sustainability: This cluster strongly links together the three dimensions of sustainability. All approaches explicitly embrace the sustainability debate trying to combine the growing environmental concerns with socio-economic issues, while weighting the economic, social and environmental priorities differently.

Justice: The cluster contributes significantly to the three types of justice (distributional, interactional, and procedural). It raises big questions such as equitable distribution of material resources and services, especially when “nature” is considered a stakeholder itself. Spatial justice and interactional equity are tackled as well to some extent, although not explicitly. As most of the approaches of this cluster are of interest to technical agents primarily, only the WeValue project answers to procedural justice, including potentially all layers of society in the design of the indicator sets.

Narrative of change

Skepticism towards the economy-centered capitalist model is on the rise. GDP, the single dominant metric for the three past generations, has set growth as the highway to prosperity and wellbeing of a society, and shaped the management of our economy without taking into consideration resources stock concerns or assessing the level of fairness of its system. Indeed the limitation of GDP is that it measures economic flows only and is unable to differentiate between transactions which are sustainable and really societally beneficial to the majority, from those which are not. The frameworks and indicators in this cluster bring ethics, well-being, social and environmental questions to the fore.

Transformative potential

This cluster carries ground-breaking transformative potential, as it challenges one of the most established beliefs, i.e. the one that GDP growth is the indicator n°1 of a healthy economy and society. By providing more inclusive knowledge of sustainability and mainstreaming alternative indicators, these approaches can inform and transform the management of the socio-eco-environmental system we live in and depend on. Indicator sets as a products are in the core of societal transformation but the process of their definition can be as transformative. While the operationalisation of natural capital and ecosystemic services and the co-design of values-based indicators are innovative, the other approaches are not. Nevertheless, they all explicitly seek to overcome the current unsustainable and unfair patterns, by altering the societal progress narrative, its definition and its GDP-centered measurement framework, and by broadening the stakeholder groups for the benefit of the common good, and with that for the sake of environmental sustainability.

References

References...

Hashtags:

1. Societal sustainability #Sustainability assessment framework #Sustainability metrics #Societal impact evaluation #Social, environmental and governance metrics #Urban sustainability metrics #Liveability scores #Wellbeing/Prosperity/Thriving metrics / indicators #Green indicators

Complementary indicators sets/frameworks:

- City Prosperity Initiative of UN Habitat - First genereation of EU Common Indicators: Towards a Local Sustainable Profile - Indicators for EU cities - Urban Audit - Perception of Quality of Life - Urban Audit - Mapping and Assessment of Ecosystems and their Services (MAES) - EU Green Capital Award - EU Green City Tool - EEA Urban Metabolism Framework - EEA indicators - Urban vulnerability Map book - EEA indicators - Similarities and diversity of European cities - City Blueprint - Informed Cities - Urban Ecosystem Europe (ICLEI & Ambiente Italia) - POCACITO - Report on Key performance indicators - EU Green City Index (Economist Intelligence Unit / Siemens) - Urban Data Platform (JRC/DG Regio) - ESG integration in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa: Markets, Patractices, and Data (CFA Institute)