Many economic indicators, like GDP, don’t measure the environmental and social aspects of progress. Which do you prefer?

The GPI (or whatever acronym one wishes to use for the concept) can be inclusive of any/all indicators that one would wish to include. So, separating the ecological footprint or access to water as exclusive options in this 'poll' is not a valuable exercise as they could/should reasonably be included in the GPI.

Could the Triple bottom line be expressed with two ratios?

Value/environmental harm
Value/human harm

Value is the sum of value created for the different stakeholders and notably for the customers. In a business like tourism the main stakeholders would be the organisers, the tourists and the hosts.

Environmnetal harm could be taken as the ecolocigal footprint or the carbon footprint.

Human harm is trickier but somewhere the quality indicator value/price should fit in! Especially in poor countries producing value for price could be seen as a social indicator.

Raine Isaksson
Gotland University

GDP is definitely not a relevant indicator of progress, but rather one of degradation of our planet. Is is no more relevant for people's development. We should start with three, to get out of the consumers era and adapt to other interested parties than finance (people and the earth):
- GDP will remain (as it is easy for old fashioned & lazy economists that still lead this kind of measurements of "the wealth of nations", as if "natural resources were unlimited" as "liberals" Say)
- HDI will has to be added for social issues
- Ecological footprint has to be added for earth preservation
Others may be developed but we should start to think about balancing the first three: are they equal? How are they calculated?

We should consider using many different indicators for answering different questions. I don't look into my wallet to figure out if I'm happy or not. Neither do I look at my expenditures the last year to define if I'm making progress or not. The question is are we ready to start asking different kind of questions about ourselfs and our society? Questions that don't necesserily involve money. Questions that are answered by indicators like the Gross National Happiness in Bhutan. What about an indicator for how a country is doing in living in harmony with nature and promoting the coexistence of many species? I would want indicators answering these questions and others that are really important to me!

Sanna Siitonen

I think that we need to somehow combine the GPI with HDI (Human Development Index), or at least we need to look at them both. The GPI is a good "green GDP" but it leaves out most measures of true humanitarian progress. On the other hand, HDI needs to have distribution of wealth added to the index somehow.

The contemporary development pattern is severely plagued by minimalist approach—of economic imperatives. To be more representative, we require adopting integrated approach with a holistic view. Though we all understand sustainable development, we tend to address it in individual elements which is the biggest factor behind its defeat. We have allowed this for long forcing the degradation of the environment to unsustainable limits.

Terms like ecological footprints and carbon footprints are common these days to impress the impact of ‘development’ on the natural environment. It is time we start assessing our progress in terms of ‘Sustainability Footprints’. The more conscious we get of this factor, the better chance we stand of avoiding any apocalyptic implications of our giant strides to develop.

We need all the tools we can get to move away from "more stuff = happier". Bhutan is the only country to use the wellbeing index in place of the GDP. We would do well to follow. As has been said, it's a societal thing, and we can alter the perception.

The marker must conbnect between the ecological foot print and the
GDP.

Agree with a combined metric.

How many professors of accounting are teaching the triple bottom line? Ask Dr. Curt DeBerg, cdeberg@csuchico.edu, about this.

Van Ajemian, J.D.
Borderless Educations

After reading the information on wars under the vital signs, the state of health or GNH indicator (let us diverge from the economic frame) has to include a measure on military spending and arms research giving higher ratings of health to countries who redirect military and arms research expenditures into poverty reduction projects, human rights policy, and sustainable development research.

Costa Rico is on the right path. Wake up America, how do we achieve peace through security paranoia and vetoing declarations (Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples) that can heal festering historical wounds?

Extract from NYT - 05-10-04:

Economists measure consumer confidence on the assumption that the resulting figure says something about progress and public welfare. The gross domestic product, or G.D.P., is routinely used as shorthand for the well-being of a nation.
But the small Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan has been trying out a different idea.
In 1972, concerned about the problems afflicting other developing countries that focused only on economic growth, Bhutan's newly crowned leader, King Jigme Singye Wangchuck, decided to make his nation's priority not its G.D.P. but its G.N.H., or gross national happiness.

While household incomes in Bhutan remain among the world's lowest, life expectancy increased by 19 years from 1984 to 1998, jumping to 66 years. The country, which is preparing to shift to a constitution and an elected government, requires that at least 60 percent of its lands remain forested, welcomes a limited stream of wealthy tourists and exports hydropower to India.

"We have to think of human well-being in broader terms," said Lyonpo Jigmi Thinley, Bhutan's home minister and ex-prime minister. "Material well-being is only one component. That doesn't ensure that you're at peace with your environment and in harmony with each other."

Each of the proposed metrics offer compelling statistical information for different questions. The question presented by Worldwatch is a popular contest. However, this is an inappropriate approach for determining which metric is the most useful.

GDP is a great metric for determining progess within the existing markets. Unfortunately, politicians and economists use GDP as a wealth measure, which it is not as it is only based on a few of mankind's assets and resources. GPI is the best attempt to remedy GDP's short-comings. If the goal is to affect political outcomes, GPI is undoubtedly the best.

Ecological Footprint is an interesting metric which is useful for individuals to consider how we may change our behaviour to reduce the footprint. Additionally, Footprint is the least anthropocentric; which for deep greens may make the metric better. However, Footprint fails to account for technological innovation, and therefore, is not useful in comparing present impact versus past impact, and would not work for incentivizing private enterprises to be innovative in reducing their impact, but rather encourage a one-size-fit-all approach to tackling problems.

Finally, access to water and sanitation has its own merits in assessing progress in assessing the percentage of humans that meet a baseline need for survival and success. Thus, Water & Sanitation eliminates from consideration increasing wealth of the wealthy, and rightfully focuses on how the bottom 1/3 population is doing. Most GPI indicators attempt to do something similar by reducing GPI growth when the top percentiles increase wealth disportionately compared to the bottom percentiles. I think the Water & Sanitation metric is most useful for those involved in eliminating world poverty, but otherwise the metric fails to provide any useful data on the environment and society, and is too anthropocentric and short-sighted.

It is imperative that economic development is controlled with environmentally sustainable checks and balances. Although many of us are developing ways to continue life as we know it, frugal use of petroleum products is seriously lacking. Are biofuels the answer? Maybe for now, as a means of transitioning to other ecologically friendlier alternatives still on the developmental horizon. The glory days of the energy consuming, inefficient internal combustion engine will not come soon enough for me. Governments must be called to task concerning regulations and restrictions and development of alternative sources of energy.

Jeffery Schultz
VEESSA

GDP tells us not only how fast we are running just to give the illusion of economic progress, but it is an excellent indicator of the acceleration in consumption and depletion of natural resources, and in general, ruination of our environment. It doesn’t seem to account for the negative growth in the future from the debt caused by today’s financial deficits, and it surely ignores the ecological debts caused by out-of-control resource consumption.

A much better measure of the environmental and social aspects of progress would be ‘natural resource use per capita’, or perhaps ‘ecological footprint’, which was option #1, and which may be roughly equivalent.

Regarding the 1/24/08 “Banning Biofuels: Good for Business?” Worldwatch email, of course the world should come to its senses and ban biofuels. They will ultimately ruin our topsoil, which can take over 100 years to replenish, and biofuels will never come close to matching the volume of gasoline used by our cars, even if you include cellulosic ethanol. Moreover, the biofuel madness will pollute rivers, raise grain prices, waste scarce fresh water, and have many other unintended negative consequences.

I think that we need to admit that the automobile game is over. The car has to be phased out into extinction, at least for everyday personal use. Cars are the obvious offender in the depletion and essential squandering what is arguably the most valuable natural resource in the world – oil. This is a commodity, which at the moment, is necessary for basic survival, and the world is quickly running out of it. We’ll look back 20 years from now and say, “remember the good old days of $100 oil and $3 gas?”

Oil is so important and valuable, and really irreplaceable, that nations go to war over it. Let’s not pretend we have a viable substitute for oil. If we try electric cars, then we will surely burn every crumb of coal in the world by 2100, and at that point, our world will be an ecological hell. Ethanol powered cars can’t be the answer, as discussed above, and in the “Banning Biofuels” email.

Of course, this idea will go over like a lead balloon in the automobile industry, as well as its labor unions, but so will the $20 per gallon gasoline, which will essentially bankrupt most car companies. So, the car, as we know it, is eventually going away anyway. The only question is, will the high price of gas be the reason, or will societies be more proactive in preparing for the end of oil, by doing smart things like eliminating cars?

Worldwatch must understand the environmental unsustainability and consequences of the personal car, and realize what havoc it is wreaking on the earth, both in global warming and in oil depletion. Therefore, in my opinion, unless Worldwatch actually thinks cars make sense in the long run, then it has an obligation to lead the charge against the feasibility of the car. It can’t simply push for greater car fuel efficiency – which gives false security in the short run, and just passes the car associated ecological destruction into future generations. Further, it must push for a rapid transformation to large-scale urban mass transit, while there is still enough world economic strength to pay for what will be a necessary and very expensive transportation infrastructure overhaul.

Productivity should be a component also since economics will at least partially drive the resources to the most effecient use.

Is a nation producing 10% of the output of the planet using 10% of the resources better than one using only 9% of the resources but producing just 8% of the output?

Need a combined metric to represent the three components here plus others to get a balanced assessment.

John Henry Looney
Sustainable Direction Ltd