{"id":527938,"date":"2010-04-14T10:39:44","date_gmt":"2010-04-14T14:39:44","guid":{"rendered":"11567 at http:\/\/www.wri.org"},"modified":"2010-04-14T10:39:44","modified_gmt":"2010-04-14T14:39:44","slug":"measuring-what-matters-gdp-ecosystems-and-the-environment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/527938","title":{"rendered":"Measuring What Matters: GDP, Ecosystems and the Environment"},"content":{"rendered":"

GDP is no longer the gold standard for measuring a country\u2019s progress.<\/strong><\/p>\n

On March 30th an historic gathering of thought leaders, non-governmental organizations, philanthropists and representatives from federal and international agencies met in New York City with an ambitious yet long-overdue goal: to replace GDP as the nation\u2019s most common measure of economic progress.<\/p>\n

The \u201cDethroning GDP\u201d strategy session, hosted by Demos<\/a>, WRI<\/a>, and the Institute for Policy Studies<\/a>, in partnership with the Rockefeller Brothers Fund<\/a>, featured Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, WRI Founder Gus Speth, former WRI economist Robert Repetto, Gund Institute\u2019s Robert Costanza and former Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Katharine Abraham, and RealNetworks founder and chairman Rob Glaser.<\/p>\n

The Shortcomings of GDP<\/h3>\n

As an overall barometer of progress, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has long been criticized because it simply measures economic activity and not genuine improvements in the quality of our lives. As noted long ago by Robert Kennedy, \u201cit measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.\u201d GDP lumps together costs with benefits, so that activities that enhance welfare (e.g., education expenditures) have equal weight as expenditures that represent the externalized costs of growth (e.g., oil spill remediation).<\/p>\n

GDP also tells us nothing about sustainability. It fails to track the depletion or degradation of natural, human, built, and social capital on which all economic activity ultimately depends. It fails as well to capture the inherent unsustainability of economic activity financed by debt.<\/p>\n

Finally, GDP fails to recognize the costs of inequality. It counts growth concentrated in the upper-most income brackets as \u201cprogress,\u201d even if incomes and quality of life are falling for most.<\/p>\n

Recent Efforts to Replace GDP<\/h3>\n

The movement to \u201cgreen\u201d or replace GDP has proceeded in fits and starts for decades. While dozens of new approaches have been developed<\/a> such as the Genuine Progress Indicator, Green Savings, and Green GDP the traditional GDP-based framework of progress only became more ingrained in our economic thinking and policy structure in recent decades.<\/p>\n

However, the political landscape has changed dramatically in the wake of the economic crisis and opportunities for fundamental changes in how we measure economic performance and social progress are now significantly more promising than they have ever been. Consider the following:<\/p>\n