The Unassuming Economist

From IISD:

“The recent UN Summit of the Future (SoF) stressed the need to address well-known shortcomings of gross domestic product (GDP) as an indicator of wealth by developing a framework for measuring sustainable development progress that can complement and go beyond GDP. The need for such measures is widely recognized. The UN Secretary-General has described overreliance on GDP as a “glaring blind spot in how we measure economic prosperity and progress.”  The Pact for the Future – the Summit’s outcome document – specifically identifies the need “to develop recommendations for a limited number of country-owned and universally applicable indicators of sustainable development that complement and go beyond GDP,” taking into account the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

In anticipation of growing global efforts to select indicators that move beyond GDP, the SDG Knowledge Hub is providing regular updates on publications on this topic. The authors use databases of agencies and peer-reviewed literature to collect such information.

The first issue of the ‘Beyond GDP’ update series comes in the aftermath of the September 2024 Summit of the Future and covers the period from October through December 2024.

Recommendations for specific indicators and indices to complement GDP performance

The fifth edition of the World Bank’s report on the Changing Wealth of Nations (CWON) themed,  ‘Revisiting the Measurement of Comprehensive Wealth,’ presents a methodology, global CWON estimates, and trends of the assets of the wealth portfolio, including trends on non-renewable natural capital, hydropower, forests and agricultural land, blue natural capital, and human capital. As the report’s authors suggest, the publication is intended for a technical audience, including policy advisors, statisticians, and researchers.”

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