ON SOURCE: SDG KNOWLEDGE HUB
Beyond GDP: An Opportunity for Economic Reset
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
This edition of the Beyond GDP Update explores recent policy and research developments that focus on alternative metrics to define and measure progress.
It outlines the development of various frameworks in the quest to move beyond GDP and rethink development by grounding it in an economic systems reset.
By Hajra Atiq and Livia Bizikova, IISD
A recent conversation with Sato Ichiro, Executive Senior Research Fellow at the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) Ogata Research Institute, and Csaba Kőrösi, a Hungarian diplomat who served as President of the 77th session of the UN General Assembly (UNGA), captured the origins, challenges, and future of the Beyond GDP agenda. Ichiro and Kőrösi highlighted the need to reshape economics to redefine progress for the benefit of people and the planet.
This edition of the Beyond GDP Update explores recent policy and research developments that focus on alternative metrics to define and measure progress. It outlines the development of various frameworks in the quest to move beyond gross domestic product (GDP) and rethink development by grounding it in an economic systems reset.
High-Level Expert Group on Beyond GDP meets
In January, the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Expert Group (HLEG) on Beyond held its second in-person meeting, organized by UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in partnership with the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), the UN Development Programme (UNDP), and the Executive Office of the Secretary-General.
Following the release of its interim progress report in November 2025, the HLEG has focused on delivering its final report, which will inform an intergovernmental process. Members focused on identifying clearer metrics on well-being and sustainability. Their tasks included developing an initial list of country-owned and universally applicable indicators of sustainable development to form a dashboard that equips governments with the information they need to meet the 17 SDGs. The expert group has also aimed to provide guidance on how to maximize uptake of the dashboard and how to prioritize data collection to operationalize the dashboard and SDG indicators.
A group of academics and specialists in economics, sustainability, national accounting, and related fields, penned an open letter to the HLEG in support of expanded wealth accounting and the HLEG’s work toward a new framework, reflecting the urgent need for additional high-level metrics to deliver on the Pact for the Future.
Speaking to the Guardian after the HLEG’s January meeting, UN Secretary-General António Guterres stressed the need for an urgent overhaul of the world’s “existing accounting systems,” which are driving the planet to the brink of disaster.
Also in January, a special high-level event titled, ‘Beyond GDP: Measuring Progress – Dialogue with experts from the Secretary-General’s High-level Expert Group on Beyond GDP,’ was organized as part of a series in the weeks leading up to the 57th session of the UN Statistical Commission (UNSC) in March 2026. This event provided an opportunity for Member States’ chief statisticians, the broader statistical community, and relevant stakeholders to get abreast with and validate the HLEG’s latest state of thinking in developing a beyond GDP framework.
Aligning economic practice with ecological reality
In February, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) launched its business and biodiversity assessment. This report highlights how failure to integrate nature’s value into economic and financial systems is accelerating degradation and increasing systemic risk – as nature continues to support economic activity.
The Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB) analysis of the 12th session of the IPBES Plenary notes the Summary for Policymakers (SPM) “highlights alternative models and measures of economic welfare, such as bioeconomy, circular economy, degrowth, postgrowth, inclusive wealth, and de-coupling.” This, some hoped, “could help legitimize these ideas and bridge the growing gap between business-as-usual and scientific evidence on the alarming rate at which conventional economic paradigms erode the conditions for life on the planet.”
Experts at a recent workshop on integrating nature into macroeconomic models, hosted by the London School of Economics and Political Science, agreed that unless nature is integrated into macroeconomic models, economic decision making will continue to be incomplete. While these models inform national budgets, International Monetary Fund (IMF) surveillance, World Bank country diagnostics, debt sustainability analyses, monetary policy, investment planning, and sovereign risk assessments, they do not reflect the reality of an increasingly nature-depleted world. Participants emphasized that:
- Nature is economically foundational;
- Nature-related risks can be “macro-critical”;
- GDP alone insufficient;
- No single model can do everything; and
- The challenge is integration, not measurement.
The full workshop report can be accessed here.
Frameworks for a deeper systems reset
Some degrowth experts back Guterres’s call to move beyond GDP. Others, like political economist Jason Hickel, suggest that by themselves, such initiatives are not enough and a deeper system change is required. They call for democratizing control over production, which can enable a change in what we produce and for whom.
This system reset has been elaborated in a new international study that calls for a fundamental reset in how humanity understands and pursues sustainable development. The authors propose a new systems model where nature forms the foundational layer, integrating related approaches such as doughnut economics combining considerations of planetary boundaries with social foundations, to support economies that deliver benefits for society. By integrating bottom-up dependence and top-down influence, this model replaces isolated pillars with interconnected layers that enable development within the planetary limits and more equitable outcomes for all.
In an era of artificial intelligence (AI)-driven growth, where rising output may not translate into improved human well-being, the incompleteness of GDP is even more pronounced. Recent publications highlight other framework approaches, including the Gross Domestic Human Progress (GDHP) and the framework for sustainable and inclusive well-being (SIWB).
GDHP is a complementary approach, which adjusts GDP by a Development Resilience Factor (DRF), reflecting human, institutional, and psychological conditions. GDHP helps distinguish automation-driven output growth from growth that improves human development, and aims to provide policymakers with a more holistic tool for measuring progress in the age of AI.
The European Commission’s related initiative aims to develop sustainable and inclusive well-being metrics to improve EU policymaking by complementing GDP with well-being indicators. Broadly speaking, this structure builds on the multidimensional approach of the first Stiglitz report and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) well-being framework and many other existing country frameworks that incorporate key dimensions of current and future well-being, inclusion, and sustainability.
Both frameworks signal a shift towards the adoption of more holistic measures of progress, especially in the context of AI advances and regional policymaking.
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This Update is part of a series that seeks to raise awareness of efforts to advance metrics that go beyond GDP, focusing primarily on publications produced by international agencies, peer-reviewed journals, and news stories. By highlighting topics of theoretical and conceptual significance, including suggestions and applications of specific indicators and indices to complement GDP, the series aims to inform and support sustainable development decision makers in their efforts to go beyond GDP. This project was made possible through financial support provided by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC).
ON SOURCE: SDG KNOWLEDGE HUB