Wellbeing should be part of G20 priorities – major new report

A new report from the Global Solutions Initiative strongly urges G20 countries to assess wellbeing and environmental metrics alongside GDP.

The organisation is a key advisor to the G20, and it has also developed a new Recoupling Dashboard which is intended to offer a new measurement of wellbeing beyond GDP.

The report state that there is an urgent need for all nations to use the dashboard to dramatically increase their focus on social prosperity, as a key tool in the fightback against growing political extremism across advanced economies.

In an exclusive interview with the Guardian to mark the launch of the report, Dennis Snower (President of Global Solutions Initiative) said: “The financial crisis of 2008 made all these issues much more salient. Lots of people are now saying ‘I’m sorry but this system sucks’.

“In addition to being materially prosperous, we need empowerment and agency – that is the ability to shape our destiny through our own efforts – and we need solidarity – that is we need to be embedded within our social circles.”

The new dashboard finds that Wellbeing Economy Government (WEGo) countries Iceland and New Zealand perform well, as does Finland. India, China and Mexico are among the worst performers, but the USA “dramatically underperforms its levels of GDP per capita”, according to the Guardian.

Its creators say that the dashboard “sheds light on the decoupling of societies and provides an empirical basis for mobilizing action in government, business and civil society to promote a recoupling of economic and social progress.”

Please see exclusive Guardian coverage of the report launch here

Find out more about the dashboard and report here