António Guterres
Secretary-General of the United Nations
Gross domestic product (GDP) is the most widely used benchmark to measure a country’s economic progress and the value of the goods and services it produces.
GDP also reflects a harmful anachronism at the heart of global policymaking: our economic models and measurements overlook many aspects that sustain life and contribute to human well-being, while perversely placing disproportionate value on activities that deplete the planet.
Within this context, I have introduced a series of proposals, not to replace gross domestic product, but to outline a path to develop complementary metrics that more fully recognize what matters to people, the planet and our future.
Due to inherent limitations, GDP is failing to sufficiently address the environmental and social concerns of our world.
For example, GDP does not account for air pollution, natural resource depletion, environmental degradation and biodiversity loss. It also fails to capture the full extent of the informal economy, such as unpaid care work in households, or the social value of activities like health care.
GDP also continues to be used – or misused – as the benchmark for important national and international policy settings, particularly in development financing.
By using GDP as a proxy for development, we fail to recognize that sustainable development is affected by multiple factors, such as access to resources, inequalities, and the significant vulnerabilities that may exist in countries with high levels of GDP.
Moving beyond GDP is fundamental to building an economic system that gives value to what counts – human well-being – now and in the future, and for everyone. Effectively measuring what counts can have a transformative impact and help lead the world toward a more just, inclusive and sustainable development path.
To that end, today I present three proposals to help develop a universal and comprehensive measurement of progress and sustainable development to complement GDP.
A) A renewed political commitment from UN member countries to create a conceptual framework that can accurately “value what counts” for people, the planet and the future, anchored in the 2030 Agenda.
B) The elaboration of a robust technical and scientific process, informed by sound and disaggregated data, resulting in a UN value dashboard featuring a limited number of key indicators that go beyond GDP.
C) A major capacity-building and resourcing initiative to enable countries to use the new framework effectively.
We need a paradigm shift in what we measure as progress, so that we can capture data on the activities and outcomes that societies truly value, and then use the data to better inform our policy and financial decisions.
By moving beyond GDP, we can measure what we truly value, reconsider what we mean by progress and, on that basis, re-evaluate how we distribute resources and commit to real change
