Beyond GDP: Moving from Analysis | Goals Lounge

Welcome to Goals Lounge. It's great to be with you for this important conversation on Beyond GDP: From Analysis to Impact. The adoption of the Pact for the Future in 2024 reflected a growing recognition that GDP alone cannot tell the full story of progress. GDP does not fully capture well-being, inequality, resilience, environmental sustainability, or the realities of daily life. As we work to achieve the SDGs, we need a broader understanding of progress, one that reflects what matters most. This requires a shift in our metrics and in our mindset. The challenge before us now is turning that vision into action. At the UN Office for Partnerships, we believe that by convening governments, the private sector, civil society, academia, and innovators, we can support progress through co-creation and collaboration. Today's discussion offers an opportunity to explore pathways forward from country-level innovation and national planning to strengthen international cooperation. I hope this conversation helps advance practical solutions that keeps the hope and the promise of Agenda 2030 and moves it into action and impact. It is now my great pleasure to invite our moderator, Lydia de Pilis of The New York Times, to come guide us in this important conversation. Lydia, welcome.

Thank you, Emily. Hello, everyone. Thank you so much for being here today. It's a really amazing group and we have an excellent panel. My name is Lydia. I cover the domestic economy in the US and my introduction to this work was through writing about the Beyond GDP process, which I decided was worthwhile even for a pretty US-focused person because it's a huge global question and one that the US has taken on but not even as seriously as many of the countries that we have represented today and in this room. For those who don't know, the Beyond GDP process was formally convened about a year ago, run by a high-level expert group composed of professors and academics and practitioners and representatives of countries that are trying to figure out a way forward that is cohesive, that we all understand and can measure ourselves against, not unlike GDP itself, which has been in some ways a very successful system of measurement. But there's so many questions about how to do that well and in a way that people can trust and that is actually comparable and judiciable in sort of a legal sense. So this, I think, was a fascinating question. And how now the international community moves forward is something that we're going to be talking about today. Because it's not a new problem. And actually coming to agreement is one of the biggest challenges that I think you all face. So I am going to introduce a really fascinating panel. First of all, should I have everyone come up and then introduce to you while we're sitting? Okay, great. I should say along with my domestic economy reporting work, I'm also working on a book about how societies can adapt to declining populations for which this is a really relevant topic. And so maybe I'll speak with some of you later. Okay, let's all sit. So on my left, We're excited to have Rodolfo Reta Haddad, Coordinator of Social and Economic Affairs at the Permanent Mission of Mexico to the United Nations. Welcome.

Thank you.

And then Grace Wood, who's the Development Counselor for the Permanent Mission of the UK to the UN. And we have George Gray Molina, Head of Inclusive Growth and Chief Economic Advisor to the UNDP. So first of all, I was just hoping to get an introduction to what your countries are working on in this regard. Rodolfo, tell me how Mexico has adopted alternative metrics and how they are used.

Thank you very much, Lydia, and good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for listening to me in this very important side event on Beyond GDP. As you know, Mexico as a country that wears many hats. We are a G20 economy, we are a middle-income country, we are part of the OECD, and we have been a country that since '94 has embraced globalization and has moved forward. We're trying to drive our economic growth, linking it to the social dimension that represents and reflects the needs and priorities of our people. Under President Sheinbaum in our previous term, our presidencies both shifted the thinking into a— what is called the Mexican humanism, which comes into the principle of understanding the well-being and the welfare of our citizens, and therefore ensuring that that welfare and well-being transforms into deliverables and impact for economic growth. So our government, alongside our Institute for Statistics, INEGI, have been working on developing measures that reflect this reality. We have the Self-Reported Assessment on Well-Being that was published since 2013 but has been adapted in the previous year so that it can actually do a self-survey that citizens can report back to this institute and so we can get a better sense of how they feel, not only when they are at work, not only when they are about contributing to the economy, but also in their day-to-day lives. You know, we talk about Beyond GDP and we say that we want to have the best possibilities for people to contribute to the economy, but what are we as a society contributing to that environment. And I think this is where our citizens are reporting how they feel when they are not in the streets, when they are interacting with institutions, you know, how they feel with the health systems or how they actually go about their daily lives. And that impact is what is driving our statistical office to also look at the report that came out from the high-level panel on Beyond GDP, on Counting What Counts. Out of the 31 indicators There was an assessment made with institutions and dependencies that also deal with environmental, social issues, and we actually have managed to link 21 of those 31 to our national institution. So that means that when the high-level panel and the intergovernmental process finally come to a conclusion and we hopefully have some sense of where this process is going, Mexico will be able to adapt and translates the information and data necessary to contribute to the indicators and therefore inform whether or not we require additional access to development finance, to technical capacity, or to whatever other mechanism that international financial institutions or other agencies that use the Beyond GDP metrics or dashboards can help Mexico achieve this development.

So you're 2/3 of the way there?

2/3 of the way there, exactly, yes.

That's excellent. All right, Grace, tell me what the UK has been up to in this regard.

Yeah, thank you. So, you know, the UK since I think the end of the World Wars and the founding of the UN has always had a really strong focus on social services and well-being and welfare. And I think that's something that we are known for, revered for. About 15 years ago, under the then Prime Minister, we started producing measures of national well-being with a national consultation at that time. We now have about 59 indicators that we report against on a regular basis. So as Rodolfo was saying, that covers things from sort of environmental concerns. So how much are we contributing towards greenhouse gases or what's the usage of renewable energy? Through to kind of personal well-being questions like, how satisfied are you in your life today? Or how happy were you yesterday? Which, you know, you don't have to answer that now. You know, other things like voter turnout or safety, you know, on the streets. How safe do you feel where you live? How satisfied people are with where they live? You know, all these different factors that obviously, you know, GDP itself can't give you. A sense of, and that is kind of directly relevant to people's productivity, people's engagement with the labor market. So I guess for us it's been, um, you know, thinking about how the well-being indicators are part and parcel of how we understand what contributes to growth. So we don't see them as different elements. I think that's often maybe a criticism of the Beyond GDP conversation, is that that's different from a focus on GDP. I think we'd see it as providing the sort of quality assessment and quality qualitative understanding sort of behind what drives sustainable and inclusive growth. And we've also— we've had a UK expert from our statistical office as part of the high-level expert group for Beyond GDP, so we're really happy to have been contributing to that work that's now come here from our own experiences.

So of the 31, how many of the metrics that do you guys measure? Do you take into account yet?

Well, I think that's what we're going to look at next is basically how we can take the recommendations from the high-level expert group and see what we might need to align or, or simplify from our own 59. That's bigger. So that's kind of part of our next stage.

Right. Okay. George, welcome. We're so lucky to have you because you've been part of this conversation for a long time now at the UN. Tell us about the iterations of Beyond GDP and the sort of stops and starts that you've seen and how this time is different from past iterations.

All right. No, thank you so much. I think for us at the UN and the agencies that have been supporting the high-level expert group, we've seen this coming for many, many years and it's coming even from the 1970s through discussions on the limits of growth and Club of Rome and then we see some big landmarks, the Human Development Report in the 1990s, the idea of human security the idea of the SDGs in the 2015s, and then that report by Stiglitz, Fitoussi, and Amartya Sen that really says this is an explosion, we need to get on board with thinking through what this means. I think what the High-Level Expert Group has done is created a generational challenge for all of us. It's opened a door. So I would see this report, unlike many other reports at the UN, this is not a final product. This is an opening of the door. Saying to the world there is an agenda that we need to move on. It's going to take years. We need to discuss. There's going to be many stakeholders, but it's a fantastic agenda and it excites people around the world. I think there's 2 things that I see from more of the analytical and the policy point of view that are exciting. One is the policy uptake discussion. And I think that the Beyond GDP discussion is like a Rorschach test. So depending on what country you are, what stakeholder you are, you see different things. For some of us, I'm an economist, I'm a statistician, I'm a nerd, I like the metrics and so on. So what we were discussing is fantastic, you know, the well-being, how do we measure things. But for other people, it's about policy, about getting things done on the ground at, you know, at the city level, at the country level. For others, it's about access to concessional finance, about the transition to capital markets. It's a real discussion at the UN and in other places. And for others, it's even more deep. It's about what is progress, what is development. You know, the idea of low income, middle income, high income, even of developing, maybe it's time to retire those concepts. So I see the whole spectrum. There's a policy discussion about the whole spectrum on Beyond GDP. Just to end on the analytical side, I think that the HLEG, the High Level Expert Group, is creating a provocation. It's saying we've been listening to a radio with a single frequency. It's the frequency of GDP. The GDP cycles of 7 years, the business cycles, the boom and bust. And that's where macroeconomics comes from. That's where John Maynard Keynes came from. That's where all of our discussion about growth is about 7-year cycles, booms and busts. And what they're saying is people live on different frequencies. Some of these frequencies are day-to-day. The safety of people walking on the street is day-to-day. Whereas some of the frequencies take 50 or 100 years. It's natural capital. It's climate. It's the health of the planet. So I think what the panel is saying, get your act together, think about how to think at the same time about multiple frequencies and get that into your policy agenda. And that's important for the world. We haven't cracked it yet. There's very nice messaging about this, but we haven't cracked it as a policy agenda and as an analytic agenda. So I think this is an invitation to do that over the next 5, 10 years. Yeah.

Well, Grace and Rodolfo, how have Mexico and the UK standardized these frequencies, as we might call them— I like that concept— and integrated them into policy? How would they— how have they given the government cues for what might need to change that you could not have gotten from traditional GDP measurement?

Yeah, I can, I can go ahead. So our Treasury, our budget people, have a thing called the Green Book. Which is basically kind of guidance to civil servants, policymakers about what they should be considering when doing cost-benefit analysis for, for policies, when developing spending decisions, when thinking through how are we going to monitor and evaluate how effective this policy intervention might be, all of the sort of business planning, business case planning and that. That technical work that then goes into now coming out with a public announcement about a policy and then seeing if it works. So we actually have these kind of well-being measures and guidance integrated into that whole policymaking and budget planning process. So I think that's, that's something that has worked really well from our side. And You know, I think we can often think that these measures are very kind of high-level, system-level, top-down, but this is trying to make it part and parcel of everyday government work.

Is there an example of that that you would think that comes to mind as being successful?

So, I mean, we, we kind of changed and we iterate these measures and how we use these things sort of continually. But 2023, post-COVID, we looked again at how we were, how we were, how we, how, what wellbeing measures we, we had. And we, we decided actually we do need to increase the focus on inequalities. We need to focus, increase the focus on things like the gender pay gap and unpaid care, things that we had observed that during the pandemic actually we hadn't been measuring for so much. So that was kind of a point where we went back, reflected on you know, what we had been measuring and the policies, though, what those were directing and thought, OK, we need to expand on those and adapt those because we now have a whole, a whole load of new, new observations from how the pandemic affected families and affected productivity that we needed to incorporate.

Yeah.

How about you, Rodolfo?

Yeah, I think for us, and I think George alluded to it in his intervention, For us, the Beyond GDP agenda has a lot to do also with what we have been hearing from our citizens, what they really want to get from the government. And I think that this previous 2 presidencies have done a really good job in listening to the public, the civil society consultations, to try to see where the government can be more effective and more efficient. And you can see that translated in some of the policies that we've made, whether it's the recent announcement that there's going to be an investment on, I think, say, around 20,000 football development centers, because the World Cup kind of, again, demonstrated how much this sport has value to the people of Mexico, and also how much the economy thrives around sports, sport events like that. So that speaks to youth, that speaks to education, that speaks to innovation, to try to get a group of people, like children in Mexico, that maybe are marginalized because they don't have access to different activities, something to look forward to. We also have a lot of relationships with multilateral development banks or international finance institutions. The agenda itself is about how do you unlock resources or access to other technical and capacity development skills for your own citizens. So the president recently announced that we're going to explore leveraging more multilateral development banks and regional development banks to be more of a player, because as we all know, this conversation is not happening in a vacuum. There's a shift in the architecture of the International Development Corporation, Beyond GDP is not only going to be an agenda that serves middle-income countries. This is also important for countries that are least developing countries who want to graduate. And in that sense, if you look into your own mix of citizens or your economic classes, it speaks to the same. You want social— their social classes to also, with the economic growth, get to another point, get to another level of income, to be more financially independent. And so those policies have been put in place favor women, rural workers in farming. We leverage our SDG bonds that we actually emitted with UNDP, and it's the most successful social development linked to the, to the SDG bonds. And we now also have a green— not a green book per se, but we have taxonomy that has been developed by our finance ministry, and that also leverages that agenda into very specific clusters of spaces in which people have been kind of consulted on that we require to be more supported with different resources. And that's where the Beyond GDP agenda is.

Well, I want to come back to the finance conversation, but first of all, just to be clear, like when we're talking about subjective measures, is this a polling regime? Is it a consult? Is it a focus group? Like how actually do the UK and Mexico gather this input from citizens?

We do it through national consultations. INEGI does it, our National Statistics Institute. They gather experts from other dependencies, federal ministries, civil society, any agency that actually has and provides information and has the data and statistics. And then it's an open kind of research to see where those metrics fall and how they can be consolidated into one deliverable, which is how they actually got to the 21 out of 31 indicators from the report are actually something that we can work with. But it's an overall effort of all systems across different levels, but led by our statistics.

How does it work in the UK?

Yeah, ours is quite similar. And obviously it's a whole range of datasets. So, you know, I think kind of voter turnout, that will be measured in a certain way. You know, life satisfaction, you know, that's measured in a certain way. I remember, you know, our sort of annual civil servant— we have a people survey. In that, we're asked, how satisfied are you with your life, and how happy were you yesterday? So it's really sort of integrated even into the government's own questions about its own employees.

Yeah. No, it's interesting, because I don't think the US has an equivalent. We don't, actually. The government doesn't go out and poll and say, how are you feeling today? Except for a little bit— there's some census products. Okay, so we're going to come back to this, but we are lucky to have a couple of plants in the audience who are going to ask questions and make some comments themselves. So let's start with Livia Bizzicova, who's the lead for monitoring and governance at the International Institute for Sustainable Development, who has a few comments to offer.

Thank you so much and really appreciate it to be able to share our views. So we've been working with countries on First, data assessment. If they have the indicators, that could also include the recent report, also comprehensive wealth measurement. What policies, what the estimation collecting data from the statistical offices means for their policymaking kind of uptake, and also creating a roadmap of how they could do this kind of assessment regularly. So we've been working in Indonesia, Trinidad and Tobago, Ethiopia, just recently Zambia and Ghana. We work with youth and university people as well as experts and policymakers. Just very few quick points. First of all, when we work through these groups in these countries, I would say generally, which is very good news for the Beyond GDP agenda, that it's quite relatable. Even though we talk about a macroeconomic indicator, many people relate to it because they are either part of a growth sector or they live in places where growth happens or they are actually not part of the growth sector. They actually suffering from inequality. So there is a really broad idea for people about what that Beyond GDP could mean to them and why it is important to think about that, which many UN topics, you know, it's not there, but this one I feel there is a strong interest. The other thing from the uptake point of view is that countries, especially these days when it's, you know, very stressful time, limited resources, a lot of things going on in the world, already been engaged on some things, not Beyond GDP, but similar things. Let's say they created statistical units to measure SDG indicators. They created offices at the Prime Minister's office to coordinate. They've been engaged in natural capital measurements. They've been engaged in green transition, green growth, and many other things. So I think, and these pockets of efforts are there, but if we don't act quickly on the Beyond GDP agenda and try to say, okay, let's bring that expertise together and now let's kind of get this umbrella, which is the Beyond GDP, because these things kind of relate to that topic, and use your already created capacities and somewhat governance systems to start doing something, they will disappear. The countries, they may feel that, oh, now it's coming beyond GDP and I'm starting over again. I think that is really important if you want to keep the country's attention, especially in these times, to be very quick. From that point of view, I think it's also important to think how UN and other international agencies can help countries. Here we have examples from UK, Mexico, same for Canada. We also have our well-being indicator system actually linked for the Treasury Board as well. But so what UN can do, because let's say dashboards, regular reporting may not be the best way to help countries, because when we talk about that, it's always said since 2024, country-owned, action-oriented, meaning policy-oriented. But what that mean in practical action, like how we build capacity so that countries can do it, let's say peer-to-peer learning, How we can provide policy examples when we say, you know, your indicator on education, health is, let's say, can be improved. What exactly countries can do? So as much as they can help on to do things by themselves, for themselves, would probably be the biggest kind of contribution of Beyond GDP agenda to actually see change instead of really too much focusing on this is the right indicator or maybe not, maybe should consider that. Like, that's part of the discussion, but we've seen from the countries that there is enough indicators in most countries to start the process and start doing something instead of waiting some time to collect.

Okay, I feel that urgency. Thank you. We also have Otto Saki from the Ford Foundation, Senior Program Officer for Global Governance. The floor is yours.

Thank you so much, and I appreciate the reflections shared by, you know, the panel. And to George's point, the moment that we're in is a trying moment. I think we need to reckon with that. The importance of speaking about Beyond GDP is the fact that we are facing a planetary crisis. We have been propagating growth without looking at the harm that we're going— that is taking place in the environment. So all those factors have to be taken into account going forward. So that's the first. The second is, As philanthropy, we do have a role to play. We might not necessarily have the entire sums of money that are required, but we can play a catalytic role in these conversations, and we've done so over the past few years. As you might know, Ford was established in 1936, and since our history, we have taken human welfare and economic sustainable development as one of the things that we want to prioritize. Going forward, I think there are a couple of things that I think we could be useful. The first is we can make strategic bets, multiple strategic bets at the country level, bearing in mind that the implementation of this is not going to be one-size-fits-all. Countries are going to respond differently based on their needs, based on, as Rodolfo said, how their citizens are prioritizing issues. The second point I think we need to think about is it's not a technocratic exercise. I appreciate the economics, the statisticians, but this is about the human being. How do you implement this in such a way that human beings, citizens, can actually relate and not just see it as numbers? I think the counting of numbers or the counting of beans and the counting of coins has been useful, but I think it has not gotten us to where we want to be as a society. The third point is we need to democratize the agenda. It should be participatory, it should be inclusive. We are concerned as a foundation that many of the spaces where these conversations are taking place, are quite restrictive and inaccessible. I think there's something that we need to deal with. The 4th point, I think, just for me to wrap up is, what is it that societies value and what do we owe future generations? Because I think we are investing in these conversations thinking about the future. If so, we have to think more on what are we measuring and does it matter for society? And therefore, this conversation should not be siloed as a metrics discussion. Over to you.

Thank you. Great to have voices from civil society. And it makes me think about, you know, how do we balance participation and democratic input with the urgency that Lydia talked about of needing to finally do something and get towards some sort of agreement? on these metrics and move forward and put them to use? I mean, George, how would you think about that question?

I think one of the things that we're seeing right now is that the UN will be starting an intergovernmental process that will reach civil society, it will reach different stakeholders, and it will take its own sweet time because there is no clock on this. This has been happening for years, it will continue to happen. I think that we need to take guidance from those member state experiences, many that we just heard, for example, on this panel. There's already dozens of experiences out there that are taking bits and pieces on different parts of the agenda. I think the challenge for us is to listen, to hear, and to think about what is different about this agenda vis-à-vis, for example, where it's emerging from, which is the SDG agenda. What is different about Beyond GDP within the SDGs? And I think we need to have an answer to that because the SDGs have catalyzed a fantastic process for the world, thinking about environmental, economic, and social sustainability in one sentence, saying this is how we think about growth. Beyond GDP, in the way that HLEG has been looking at it, I think revolves around people. It's more micro, but at the same time it's also more planetary. It's thinking about that frequency of the planet and of nature, and we need to crack those frequencies and we need to think about how that proceeds. At the UN, UNCTAD, UNDP, other agencies will be following the intergovernmental process and we'll be developing some pilots both on policy uptake just to show what countries are already doing, but also on metrics and metrics innovation because there's a lot out there on subjective well-being, on natural capital accounting, and so many more things. So we think that process is emerging, it's going to be important, we need to listen, And it may feed into something very important for all of us, which is how we think through the last 3 years of the SDG agenda and what comes after that. What is the 2030 agenda about? What is it that we have learned over this cycle? It's a long cycle of discussion and practice. And what do we take from it? How do we move forward? I think that's the challenge. And we're excited about it, as I said at the very beginning. There are some tough issues. I know that there is— when you look at the report and some of the press that came out after the report said, Well, where's the index? You know, where's that single number that tells me that you're better or worse than GDP or whatever? And that did not emerge at this moment. What we have is a dashboard, but it may well emerge over the next few years, and I would not discount that, that we come up with summary measures in the future. But for now, as was just mentioned, it's not about the metrics, right? It's about people. It's human-centered right now. So let's listen. I think that's what's catalyzing this whole process, and then the UN has to act upon it. upon that as well in the General Assembly and all the agencies that follow through this process.

Yeah. I think I might have been among those press people asking, all right, you want a different GDP? Like, let's— where's the number? And I know it's very hard, but I also know that many economists have been working on this for many years and say, well, we have— we did it. We came up with the metrics. Why don't you just use them? And of course, it's not that easy. But I did want to touch on sort of what countries think they will get out of this, right? Like, for developing countries in particular, they're resource constrained. It takes a lot of time and money to collect data and develop measurements. So, you know, Rodolfo, you mentioned there's interest for using some of these metrics for concessional finance or other access to capital. Like, and curious for Otto and Olivia's perspective as well, like, is there— is it fair to expect that these be used in the process of obtaining finance, because maybe that is not the reason we should recommend countries embark on this process.

Yeah, no, I think that what George is referring to when he says that the SDGs are the part of the agenda where the Beyond GDP comes to at the UN at this point is factual. But the context in which we're actually discussing Beyond GDP is not the 2030 Agenda. Is a financing for development agenda that predates the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs, and was supposed to be the agreement in which member states would come together with— these are the deliverables that we're going to do— and to put the money to actually fulfill this agenda. Now, when you're talking about what the discussions in the UN have been in the process for FFD4, the 4th Financing for Development Conference in Sevilla— Mexico was one of the facilitators— Pact of the Future, 2nd committee, all these places and forums in which the discussion has been happening, I can tell you that the discussion has been solely about how a group of countries can get access to concessional finance, development finance, technical capacity, and other types of resources, because the argument here in this particular space is that there's different groups of countries that have different vulnerabilities and special challenges that need to be tended to in their own unique characteristics. And that means addressing and understanding their own vulnerabilities. Over the past couple of years, we've seen an exercise as well with the Multidimensional Vulnerability Index, in which the main argument was to get this to be focused only on small island development states with a climate component. When you bring this to a political forum and there's countries that don't see this as an existential threat, obviously politics comes into play, and that process suffered I would say a bump in the road in the sense that the final product, the resolution that came out, was not able to link this so that international financial institutions could incorporate this instrument and use it for the effects that that particular group of countries wanted. Now, the question of whether or not we want the same for Beyond GDP differs because those actors in the financial and financing landscape already have their own mechanisms, already have their own ways of measuring either beyond GDP or vulnerabilities. And what we would like to have out of this process is to have a beyond GDP agenda that allows us to not only think about what we can do with the current SDGs, because the 17 SDGs only have one target on economic growth, but they don't have anything else on macroeconomics, right? So what we would like to see is this complement the SDGs for the last couple years in which the agenda is going to be fulfilled while we have the discussion on what to do with the agenda. And to have the institutions tell us under which criteria, depending on the vulnerabilities that we find in these indicators, we can access certain instruments, certain resources, even capacity building. And I think that's where the conversation is. Depending on the member state, depending on their category, depending on their situation, groups come together and they have to find the lowest common denominator because this is how the UN works. In a sense, you get consensus, but sometimes everyone's unhappy. But in this particular process, there are very big groups that have ambition to make this an agenda that helps everybody, that moves forward. And that also means asking the uncomfortable question of if we get to a point where the 2030 agenda gets kicked back, gets said we're not going to fulfill it, or we develop something new, can the Beyond GDP agenda outlast these conversations and actually help us frame what comes next, depending on where we're at in 2030, where we're at next year in the political declaration of the SDG Summit. And we need help from the agencies as well, because they have the metrics, they have the understanding, they have country offices that support our statistics offices, and that helps us inform our position. But I think it's a little bit too premature and early to tell what the membership really wants out of this process, because as As George said, this is just opening the door to what we could have, and this is going to be a process that has to last a little bit longer because consultations on issues that are so inherent to human perspectives cannot be done in 6 months to a year.

I appreciate that real talk. I'm going to— we have— we're going to have a little— I want to have Grace's response to that, but if anyone has any burning questions that have not been address questions, not statements. I'll come to you in like 2— just let me just ask Grace, did you have any sort of reflections on that?

Well, I mean, I think it is really interesting that the Beyond GDP conversation is starting this thinking about what comes next after the Sustainable Development Goals. I mean, we are a few years out, but as we know, everything in the UN and intergovernmentally takes time. Um, you know, so next year we will start those conversations across the membership and broader. Um, and obviously this is sort of one set of proposals, one set of thinking. And, you know, we're also hearing other countries suggesting, you know, different things that they felt were maybe missed in that original framework or need to be considered. Um, you know, through negotiations we have here, there's, there's far more talk about You know, things like the contribution of care to the economy and things like that. So, you know, I think it's a really interesting time for these various technical and more political conversations to start bubbling up and see really what is there, because I think you can look at the SDG framework and think, well, that covers everything, but obviously it doesn't necessarily. And, you know, and I think the Beyond GDP agenda is trying to help shift away from the sort of output or input measures more towards what's the outcome and what's the outcome for people and planet and sustainable growth. So I think it's a super interesting time. You know, I think we are a bit premature to say, well, this will be what the next thing is. But I think this is all amazing inputs into that conversation.

Okay. Questions from the floor? Ma'am, yes. Okay, great.

So I'm Anna Potter, I work for— as the National Coordinator on the Sustainable Development Goals for the Netherlands. A question in terms of the potential really triggered by that.

So I was wondering in terms of the potential of this initiative in terms of steering capital to sustainable development, I was wondering, have you engaged with credit agencies, financial sector, in terms of how could this concept be used to integrate into bonds, issuing bonds and SDG bonds or beyond GDP bonds?

So if we can mainstream this kind of thinking in terms of how bonds being valued on beyond GDP, I was wondering your reflections on that.

Thank you.

Sounds like a George question.

I'm happy to take that. That's the burning question. I think that over the past 3 or 4 years, the Multidimensional Vulnerability Index analysis, the Beyond GDP analysis have revealed something similar, that there is going to be a metrics conversation and there's going to be a conversation about access to capital markets and graduation from concessional finance and moving in and talking about debt and long-term affordable financing. I think that maybe 5 years ago, I myself was a little more naive in thinking that if we just had the right metrics, we would move the capital markets. I think we need new metrics, but first we need to figure out what access to capital markets is all about. As you just mentioned, there's ways of greening capital markets, there's ways of making them more inclusive, there's ways of thinking about risk and how SIDS are affected by risk, how low-income economies are affected by risk. So that conversation I see as being the core of the international financial architecture discussion about capital market access, about debt. It will involve metrics, but I think that's probably the outcome of that discussion. I think this one is mostly starting with metrics but revealing some of these problems. So that's one of the problems. The other problems are about development. What is progress? Low-income, middle-income development, developing— do these make sense? And this is not a rhetorical question. When we think about the universal reach of the SDGs, the question is, what is universal about it? What are 193 countries doing about climate change right now? So we have to ask if it's coalitions of the willing, if it's 2 or 3 countries doing something about climate change, it's not quite universal, right? So I think that's where we are at this moment, at this moment in history. We have to come back and think, what are the global public goods aspects of the agenda that we've been discussing for years? And what are things that nation states can do and do? And I think we haven't had that discussion. We've sort of put them together. We've called that the global goals, and we're discussing both global and national at the same time. I think this agenda allows us to distinguish and say this is in the in the realm of cities and nations, and this is in the realm of the globe, of of the collective 193 countries. I think the Beyond GDP agenda touches on on all. all levels. And that's why it's so exciting. But we need to distinguish those. So just coming back to your question, I think capital market access is where we have to go with that question. That's what we have to do. It will reveal new metrics, but I don't think that new metrics will reveal new capital markets. So that's where I would move in the next few years.

Burning questions. Yes, sir, in the back.

Hi, my name is Ashok. I must say Ashok means always happy. So therefore my question is also this, that how do you increase the happiness quotient beyond GDP? I think beyond GDP is how happy is that person or the society is. The absolutely goal the lady said there about happiness quotient. I come from the country of Gautam Buddha. Einstein, Gautam Buddha all said that the Real purpose of education is to train people. So my question is, my own research is developing citizenry. I'm a big follower of Lincoln who said democracy is of the people, for the people, by the people. So if democracy is a dish, then people are the raw material. So if raw material is bad, can democracy— can dish be delicious? No. So my question is, are you making any efforts, or is there any effort to train people? in the lines of Buddha and Einstein, that unless you train people, the whole miseries I say is because of lack of training of mind and soul. In fact, my research is also on this. A couple of books I have authored, I told the moderator that this can be done, how to train people. Unless we train people, we'll be again same. Discussion is okay. I really congratulate UN and Beyond GDP is subject so close to my heart. So Beyond GDP is happiness quotient. So anything which disturbs happiness is to be excluded and anything which adds to happiness is to be added. It is as good as mathematics. So is there any effort by UN or by any of your countries or any other person that how to train people to be happy? And it is not one person, the society as a whole.

Yes, Bhutan has been a leader in this for sure for years. I learned about it as a child. So Grace, you had a thought.

I can come back on that, that quickly. Um, I think it's been really interesting in how we've been using these well-being metrics because, you know, we're, we're seeing the lack of the correlation between, um, level of income above a certain extent and happiness and well-being. And that is informing some of how we develop education policy. So it is informing how we're thinking about some aspects of our school curriculum and what the focus might be within that on practices like mindfulness and elements that are trying to get to that bit about quality of life that is not just linked with income or economic output. So I think it's a really important— and we have a lot to learn from Bhutan on that. Thank you.

Yeah, well, I think it also highlights the idea that, you know, subjective measures of— or rather objective measures of well-being like your income don't always correlate correlate perfectly with your happiness, yeah.

Any—

oh, we got many questions. Okay, back of the room here. We only have a minute and a half, so this might be our last. All right.

I'm Corinne Tromsdorf from the French Solid Waste Partnership.

I just wanted to bounce on the vision that you mentioned, what is development, and the beyond GDP metrics. We're in a society of extraction that has produced value— extraction of resources, extraction of labor. Today it's an extraction of attention of people that produces value. How do we shift from, from this extraction pattern to a more circular pattern that produces less waste, less pollution, less broken people?

I think that's partly what this is all about, right?

Absolutely. I would say when we think about what is a day in the life, a day in the life is a Beyond GDP day. You know, you wake up, can you walk the streets safely? Can you take public transportation, go to school, train your minds, build, you know, empathy? Can you work? Is it dignified? That's a day in the life. It's a Beyond GDP day. It's not a GDP day. It's not about the flow of goods and services. However, growth and GDP growth is also important for jobs, for incomes, for assets. So there's a place for GDP and GDP growth. But I think this moment, this historical moment, is about what's that beyond GDP about? And it's linked to the GDP, of course. But I think this is the moment to express ourselves in that other realm. And I think that's where we are right now. It's an exciting moment for that.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think this— it all comes down to a little bit like what are countries getting out of this? And if you can't— these are often things that can't be monetized. And that's a hard thing. It's a hard way to motivate a country. But it also matters very deeply to their citizens. I think we had an announcement from the Mission to Space from Spain. I wrote it down. Ignacio García Lombreras, sir, did you have a comment to make?

Thank you.

Hello?

Thank you. Yes, I am Ignacio García. I am the Minister Counselor of the Spanish Mission and, well, it has been mentioned here by several that Indeed, there is an intergovernmental process which started right after the report by the high-level group was published back in May. So Spain and Guyana started. Now it's Spain and later on we'll see. And we have had some consultations already. First, of course, the report was presented. Then there was a consultation of member states by most of the experts from the high-level group. Then there was a consultation with member states as such. And finally, we had the co-facilitators— the co-facilitator in this case— a consultation with stakeholders. I heard an idea which reflects what we're trying to do, which is that it is as inclusive as possible and as democratic as possible. So in that spirit, in that vein, we have opened a call for inputs for an elements paper which would be the next landmark of the process. And so until the 10th of August, we have called for, of course, member states but also, of course, stakeholders with the help of the Secretariat and it will be published on their website as well because there is a website— there is a page on the UN website about the Beyond GDP process to contribute elements for this elements paper. There are a set of guiding questions to guide precisely the inputs which we want, but of course it's very open. It's open to all stakeholders. It's open to all of you who are today, it's open to the civil society, and there are some, like, 4 main blocks on this— for this elements paper on this guiding question, which would be first the political vision of the Beyond GDP process, then more technical questions on the indicators. We've talked also possible headline indicators, indicators because the high-level group has identified 31 indicators. It is very well, but sometimes you want more aggregated indicators, a set of indicators, because nobody is talking about replacing GDP. GDP will always be there. This is about complementing GDP. But complementing GDP with 31 indicators is fine, but perhaps if you have a set of headline indicators, very well also. Also, there is a set of guiding questions about national implementation because there is 2 competing, let's say, vectors: universal framework but also a national country ownership. So this is one of the questions we must say and, of course, the governance of this— Yes. Beyond GDP and how it relates to other processes or to other agendas. We have the Seville Commitment, we have the 2030, etc., so the Multi-Vulnerability Index. So as I say, it is very open, it is very inclusive, and we want to ask member states and stakeholders what direction they want to give to this process. And I just want to remind that the deadline would be the 10th of August. With all these contributions, we will try to make an elements paper which will open the following phase of this process, which should eventually lead to some kind of resolution by the General Assembly. But first, let's focus on these element papers and we really want this to be as inclusive as possible and receiving as many contributions as possible. Thank you very much.

Thank you. So you know who to talk to. Talk to Ignacio if you want to have input in this process. August 10th sounds like a deadline. But with that, thank you all very much for participating. Thank you all for coming. And that will conclude our panel.