By Hajra Atiq and Livia Bizikova, IISD

Mandated in the outcome from the Summit of the Future (SoF), the High-Level Expert Group on Beyond GDP appointed by the UN Secretary-General is focusing on a consultative process to develop recommendations that will help countries and institutions adopt more comprehensive measures of sustainable development progress beyond traditional Gross Domestic Product (GDP) metrics. The High-Level Expert Group has just released its interim progress report outlining seven domains with examples of outcome indicators that are under discussion by the Expert Group.

This edition of the Beyond GDP Update explores recent publications and developments in the Beyond GDP space. Against the backdrop of the 80th session of the UN General Assembly (UNGA 80) and the consultations of the High-Level Expert Group, a growing interest is emerging in a human rights economy for sustainable development. Researchers and experts are also proposing indicator-based frameworks that integrate social and ecological metrics with GDP and offer guidelines on how to measure well-being, potentially feeding into the framework proposed by the Expert Group.

Human rights and beyond GDP

The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and other UN agencies convened a meeting, co-sponsored by Chile, Honduras, Mexico, and Spain, to ensure that human rights are embedded in new economic metrics. The UN Human Rights Expert Roundtable on Beyond GDP and Human Rights met in Geneva, Switzerland, and included Member States, prominent academics, civil society, statisticians, economists, and members of the High-Level Expert Group on Beyond GDP. Participants explored how human rights indicators can shape metrics beyond GDP. The roundtable’s main takeaways include:

• New beyond GDP and well-being indicators need to be based on internationally recognized human rights standards;
• These frameworks are not about improving measurements but rather rethinking what economy is, so everyday decisions help maximize resources for public health, education, and economic, social, and cultural rights; and
• Data, statistics, and indicators in robust measurement frameworks need to reflect human rights, sustainability, and equality and avoid any exclusions that exacerbate inequalities.

The beginnings of an intergovernmental process on beyond GDP

At UNGA 80, a side event explored the road to an intergovernmental process on beyond GDP. The virtual discussion on Beyond GDP brought together members of the High-Level Expert Group and leading voices in the beyond GDP space to further the push to reorient how societies measure success by placing well-being, sustainability, and resilience at the core of decision making. Panelists reflected on the most encouraging and challenging aspects of moving Beyond GDP and stressed the importance of:

• Developing algorithms to identify danger zones and tipping points;
• Building integrated social, economic, and environmental models to simulate impacts of different policies on well-being;
• Connecting methodology and data to inform programmatic decision making;
• Capitalizing on digitalization and artificial intelligence (AI) and addressing inequality in access to technology; and
• Managing expectations so that countries use the suggested indicators to complement GDP for their intended purpose in policy design and investments.

A recording of the event can be viewed here.

In the context of recent major international events such as Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4) and the 2025 session of the UN High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF), where topics related to beyond GDP were also center stage, the Executive Director of Nigeria Network of NGOs emphasized a whole-of-sector approach in a news article. This whole-of-sector strategy calls for organized and coordinated action between private and public sectors as well as civil society to tackle poverty through fair governance, responsible practices, and accountability and for creating an enabling environment for civil society participation in inclusive development and policymaking. The whole-of-sector approach at various levels will create and build up forward movement for the High-Level Expert Group as it leads the momentum toward an intergovernmental process.

Approaches to defining and tracking indicators

A group of researchers have recently renewed the famous doughnut economics framework in a paper titled, ‘Doughnut of Social and Planetary Boundaries Monitors a World Out of Balance.’

The UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) published guidelines on how to measure well-being beyond traditional economic metrics such as GDP. Such proposed frameworks or guidelines attempt to answer the complex questions of what metrics or indicators to track and how directly complement the consultations being led by the High-Level Expert Group with the current survey period running from 5-30 November 2025.

These guidelines make recommendations on how to define well-being dimensions, select and compile statistical indicators, identify relevant data sources, and disseminate and communicate results effectively to the public. The guidelines outline ten key dimensions of well-being: subjective well-being; material living conditions; work and leisure; housing; health; knowledge and skills; physical safety; social connections; civic engagement; and environmental conditions. They outline indicators for each of these dimensions that are adaptable to a given country’s national context. The guidelines also acknowledge the well-being of the present generation (“here and now”) and broader dimensions, such as well-being “elsewhere” (the well-being of people living in other countries) and “later” (the well-being of future generations). The UNECE press release suggests this approach accounts for possible transboundary impacts of development “by highlighting how a country’s pursuit of well-being for its citizens may affect the well-being of people in other countries.”

The adoption of a broad set of alternative indicators that would integrate seamlessly with the conventional GDP metrics is no easy feat. The complexity of this integration has been explored in a renewed doughnut framework with a revised set of 35 indicators that monitor trends in social deprivation and ecological overshoot over the 2000-2022 period. The researchers found that while global GDP more than doubled, “the increase in ecological overshoot would have to halt immediately” to safeguard Earth system stability by 2050.

A feature story focusing on Africa illustrates the importance of alternative approaches such as natural capital accounting and how African nations are redefining economic value for resilient development. While nature is an invisible driver of economic growth and a provider of invaluable ecosystem services, there services are rarely present in national accounts. Ethiopia, Rwanda, Uganda, and Zambia, in collaboration with the World Bank’s Global Program on Sustainability (GPS), are striving to mainstream natural capital into national planning, national statistics, macroeconomic frameworks, and policies and decision-making processes.

These publications, guidelines, and country examples are an important contribution to the topic in general but also to the work of the UN High-Level Expert Group on Beyond GDP, which presents an opportunity for researchers, academics, experts, and practitioners to contribute towards development and progress that creates positive outcomes for people and the planet.

Beyond GDP: A new learning resource

As the push intensifies for countries to go beyond GDP when measuring progress and building more sustainable public policies, the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) and partners have launched an e-course to explore GDP alternatives. The Beyond GDP Learning Tool offers practical guidance on using non-GDP indicators to gauge progress. The free, self-paced e-course (available in English, French, and Spanish) delivers four modules that introduce the limitations of GDP, provide overviews of alternative and complementary measures to GDP, and take a deep dive into the Comprehensive Wealth Index (CWI) components – produced, natural, human, financial, and social – and their policy implications.

The aims of the learning tool, outlined during the launch event, are to:

• Critically analyze GDP in terms of how it is calculated, its historical significance, and its key limitations; and
• Describe alternative approaches to measuring progress that go beyond GDP, such as gross national happiness index (GHI), genuine progress indicator (GPI), and human development index (HDI), among others.

The event also featured panelists from various sectors who highlighted complementary issues including:

• Reprioritization in university curricula to integrate approaches on moving beyond GDP;
• Technical issues with data collection, processing, and analysis;
• The importance of considering trade-offs when looking at different investments to improve well-being and nature;
• Using existing measures to complement GDP, such as indicators related to labor market, nutrition and per capita food consumption, and time use; and
• The need for a complementary indicator to measure unpaid care work.

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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).