Oil Shock Mitigation Strategies

Beyond GDP in Africa:Day 1 Summary

Pretoria University29 October 2014

120 minutesRobert Costanza:Context: The 21st Century WorldWe live in a full world beset by wicked problemsovershooting some planetary boundariesclimate change resource depletionpollutioninequality of wealth and incomesocial dysfunctions2Problems with GDP as an indicator of social progressGDP says nothing about the distribution of income and wealth (inequality)GDP measures only market-traded goods and services, not well-being or happiness, which are (arguably) the ultimate goals for human developmentGDP is not measuring sustainable income (not counting depletion of capital stocks)reinforcing the resource curse in Africa

34Building the future we desire requires that we measure what we want.A prosperous, high quality of life that is equitably shared and sustainable.Enrico Giovannini:Beyond GDP and the SDGsOECD stats division moving beyond GDPmuch more interest initially from developing countries to measure equitable and sustainable well-being, but they have resource & capacity constraintssome countries and regions are beginning to embrace this agendaBGDP agenda is similar to MDG agenda and we should seize this opportunity5Alternative IndicatorsAttempts to improve or complement GDP6InternationalNationalLocalWater AccountsStandard Environmental-Economic AccountsGreen Economy IndexGross National HappinessGenuine Progress IndicatorGCRO BarometerMonitoring decent workNatural capital accountsDecent WorkLessonsWith limited financial resources & capacity, you cant measure everything all the timeFor every indicator of progress, there is an unequal and opposite indicatorA quick way to boost GDP in Africa is to spend more money on surveys of informal sector economic activity7Green Economy Indexweighting of indicators is a major challengesensitivity of results to weights & indicatorsshould be based on stakeholder engagementonly really useful for rankingsbut how important are interntl comparisons? policy should be based on context-specific measures of well-being8Environmental-Economic Accountingstandardised international methodologycan use same data from ecosystem assessment in ecosystem accountingneed much more research on SAs ecosystems; regular (annual?) updatesSEEA provides a powerful framework but some way to go on implementation9Genuine Progress IndicatorMind the Gap!attempt to close the historical divergence between GDP and GPI

1011Thank you.

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