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.