By Hajra Atiq and Livia Bizikova, IISD

Along with broad acknowledgement of the limitations of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as the sole measure of growth, the push for contextualizing alternative metrics to include planetary boundaries, care systems, and societal well-being has accelerated. In response to this need, the UN Secretary-General appointed the High-Level Expert Group (HLEG) on Beyond GDP in May 2025. As called for in the Pact for the Future, the HLEG is tasked to develop recommendations that will help countries and institutions adopt more comprehensive measures of sustainable development progress that go beyond traditional GDP metrics.

This edition of the Beyond GDP Update explores recent policy and research developments that focus on alternative metrics in addressing the complex crises facing the world. It highlights solidarity economy, which seeks to rethink development by grounding it in the protection of human rights.

Building consensus on beyond GDP metrics through consultation and dialogue

In November 2025, almost seven months after its appointment, the HLEG released a survey to gather feedback from various stakeholders on its interim progress report. The HLEG’s proposed conceptual framework is built on several similar metrics and indicators. It includes seven domain areas of outcome indicators (still under consideration and consultation):

Material well-being: being materially secure and having livelihood opportunities;
Health: being healthy and having a long, fulfilling life;
Education: being knowledgeable, educated, and having skills to participate in many aspects of life;
Environmental sustainability: living in an ecologically safe and sustainable environment;
Subjective well-being: having more positive emotional states than negative ones and having purpose and agency to pursue life goals;
Social capital: being connected and participating in one’s community; and
Governance: being safe, respected, and empowered.

The consultative process being run by the HLEG has been recognized for bridging the gap in collaboration that was not present in the past. For example, an article in Nature titled, ‘BeyondGrowth – Why We Need to Agree on an Alternative to GDP Now,’ emphasizes the urgency to act, the need for dynamic beyond GDP models, and the need for collective commitment to counter societies “addiction” to the current growth-driven systems.

In conjunction with the HLEG’s online consultation, members of the group have held interactive dialogues such as a side event at the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific’s (ESCAP) Fifth Session of the Committee on Macroeconomic Policy, Poverty Reduction and Financing for Development. The side event focused on emerging pathways for beyond GDP and aimed to: ground the proposed beyond GDP framework in regional contexts and priorities; leverage Member States’ technical expertise and deep understanding of existing regional architectures to ensure the framework’s analytical rigor, coherence, and practical relevance; and secure critical input from Member States to align the recommendations with the diverse economic and development landscapes of the Asia-Pacific region to foster regional ownership. A video recording of the event and presentations, including that of the HLEG’s Nam Khanh Pham can be found here.

HLEG Co-Chairs Nora Lustig and Kaushik Basu engaged with the Youth Network on Beyond GDP at an event during the Second World Summit on Social Development. The event assessed the recommendations of the HLEG’s interim report against the Youth Network on Beyond GDP’s policy recommendations. The youth network’s framework consists of three guiding principles (human rights, intergenerational justice, and country-owned yet globally relevant) and five core domains (participatory and fair governance; equity, inclusion, and knowledge justice; resilient well-being; planetary boundaries and environmental justice; and spillover accountability). Open dialogue after the presentation of the proposed framework and recommendations by both groups identified trade-offs and complexity, the need for a human rights lens, and artificial intelligence (AI) and data innovation among the issues meriting close attention.

These consultations provide key information and feedback for the HLEG in finetuning the proposed beyond GDP framework and agreeing on a more comprehensive set of metrics that will be outlined in the Group’s final report to the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in spring of 2026.

Win-win scenario: Investments in planetary health lead to better economic and social outcomes

Having more inclusive metrics that account for and lead to planetary investments is known to lead to better economic outcomes. The seventh session of the UN Environment Assembly (UNEA-7) launched the seventh edition of the Global Environment Outlook (GEO-7). This flagship report by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) demonstrates that environmental degradation not only has a toll on people and the planet but also comes at a heavy cost. If we do not change course, the current path of resource extraction, environmental degradation, and climate change will account for a 4% reduction in annual global GDP by 2050 in addition to adversely affecting the lives of many people. A proposed alternative path is one that integrates beyond GDP frameworks to include indicators that measure economic progress along with human well-being and environmental sustainability. In her remarks on the launch of GEO-7, UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen emphasized the adoption of an alternative path that goes beyond GDP in measuring economic well-being and adopts inclusive indicators that track the health of human and natural capital.

Recent research links the adverse impacts of climate change to facets of well-being such as health, safety, work, freedom, and education. The climate change-well-being impact pathways are mainly missing from integrated environment-society-economy (ESE) models. However better understanding of these relationships, such as between climate change and temperature-related mortality, presents an opportunity for including environment-well-being interactions in ESE models and future modeling.

A study focused on SDG progress and well-being across the EU shows that climate change and economic losses resulting from it negatively impact happiness levels. The article presents evidence of a positive long-term link between environmental protection spending and happiness. This finding highlights the importance of integrating environmental investment into well-being policy strategies.

Making the invisible visible: Measuring care economy and women’s economic empowerment

Economies and societies have many diverse elements that make them function. One of the most important yet often overlooked forces that power households and communities is care work. Often provided by women and girls, informal and unpaid care is left out of conventional economic systems, national statistics, and budgets. UN Women estimates that if women’s unpaid care work was assigned a monetary value, it would amount to over 40% of GDP in some countries – more than the entirety of major economic sectors such as transport or manufacturing. Globally, it would represent an estimated 9% of GDP, if compensated.

A London School of Economics (LSE) blog captured this invisibility of care economy and highlighted gender inequality within the traditional market systems. The blog presented student reflections on a lecture by HLEG member Naila Kabeer, Diane Elson, and Ania Plomien and explored questions around why the international climate process needs to address care, why care should count in GDP, and how we can build “an economy that cares.” Traditional economic systems, the blog notes, do not account for the work of carers, even though care systems are a backbone of a functioning society. These reflections are critical for the inclusion of care economy infrastructure in the transition towards a well-being economy. A video recording of the lecture on ‘A Feminist Agenda for Social Change: From Deregulated Markets to the Well-being Economy,’ is available here .

The contribution of the Group of 20 (G20) gender advisory group Women20 (W20) to the 2025 G20 Summit also highlighted women’s economic empowerment. The W20’s 2025 communiqué shone the spotlight on several thematic issues that contribute directly to the beyond GDP discussion. The W20 strongly urged G20 leaders to act on care economy as a matter of priority. While care work is unequal, unaccounted for, undervalued, and gendered, for every dollar invested in care services, global GDP has the potential to increase by an average of USD 3.76, benefiting women, care recipients, and the economy overall.

The G20 Global South leadership across three consecutive Presidencies from 2023-2025 (India, Brazil, and South Africa) has driven the gender equality agenda by consistently recognizing the invisibility of care economy. In this context, the G20 has also acknowledged that technology access determines economic participation and that gender-based violence is both a grave concern for human rights and a barrier to economic empowerment.

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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).