A synthesis of models, metrics, and policies for a sustainable and inclusive wellbeing future

The world faces a convergence of social, environmental, and economic crises, which have a common cause: our addiction to an outdated development paradigm based on fossil-fuelled GDP growth at all costs. A different development approach is needed based on achieving the wellbeing of the entire integrated system of humans embedded in the rest of nature.

In this report, we synthesize and integrate the emerging metrics, models, and policies that are being developed and discussed as part of a range of Horizon Europe funded projects around the goal of sustainable and inclusive wellbeing (SIW). We then investigate what would be needed to transform the current system into one that is focused on and can achieve SIW. We argue that the current system is being held in place through the interaction of GDP-based metrics and models (i.e. the System of National Accounts and macroeconomic models) around the narrow goal of GDP growth and the policies, institutions, rules, and norms that support that system. To transform that system will require not just new metrics or new models or new policies independently. It will require a new integrated system of metrics, models, and policies all aimed at achieving the new goal of SIW rather than merely GDP growth.