New development indices and their responsible use
In the Himalayan country of Bhutan a focus on Gross National Happiness (GNH) (as opposed to Gross National Product) has been promoted as a way of assessing the population’s well-being. This idea may sound unusual but the move away from development indicators that focus solely on economic growth has gained ground in recent years.
The UK-based New Economics Foundation has developed a Happy Planet Index (HPI) that combines three indicators – ecological footprint, life-satisfaction and life expectancy – to measure “the average years of happy life produced by a given society, nation or group of nations, per unit of planetary resources consumed.” The Genuine Progress Indicator and Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare are other examples of this trend which also includes “green” indices such as the Ecological Footprint (EF) and Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI). These new indices have built upon the pioneering work of the UN’s Human Development Index (HDI) in giving consideration to human, social and environmental factors that might adjust or replace Gross National Product (GDP) as the main indicator of development progress.
Challenging the dominance of economic development indicators, most specifically GDP, is not easy. In a recent article in Consilience – The Journal of Sustainable Development, Simon Bell and Stephen Morse note that, “GDP is a cultural artefact and a symptom of our mindset, not its creator.” As well as observing that “development” is conditioned by individual perceptions and values which may make it immeasurable, Bell and Morse also highlight concerns about indices and indicators that compress complexity into a single value or quantitative score. Such information, often presented in country league tables, may assist us in more easily making sense of the world, but numbers and rankings do not offer us a full picture of the variances and complexities of the world we live in. We should therefore exercise caution when using these forms of measurement and see them as tools for further exploration.
This point of view is reinforced by Amartya Sen who, in an interview celebrating the 20th anniversary of the first Human Development Report, stresses, “… that some of the things that we try to measure will not be measurable in numbers.” Sen recommends wider reading, writing and learning from one another in order to inform ourselves more profoundly about what cannot be captured numerically. As well as deepening our knowledge, learning from our peers and critically questioning, responding to, and reflecting on the information we receive can also encourage an appreciation of the many important nuances that development indices and indicators are unable to convey.
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23 Nov 2011
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ledastott
IMSD /
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