In today''s news we find that the NZ GDP for the July to September quarter was minus 0.4%, which is an annual rate of -1.6%, and following the previous two quarters of negative growth shows were still in a technical economic recession.

Wouldn''t be good to also be able to find out on a quarterly basis not just whether the size of the economy is up or down, but are the ''goods'' up and the ''bads'' down, and whether we are relying on the bads to achieve our economic growth. If GDP is down is this a lead or a lag on our quality of life and wellbeing.

What we should be seeing as well is whether or not we are increasing or decreasing our energy use to achieve that economic growth or is it decoupling. We should also be able to see whether how much we are depleting our natural resources and polluting our air and water ways to support that GDP achievement.

Are we improving the education of our children and of our workforce, are we preventing more disease and poor health with better diets, exercise and preventive health care, or are we stressed out from working more or leaving our kids susceptible to the wrong crowd.

If would be great to get data to answer those questions as well, which are surely as important to know each few months to see if were heading in the right direction or on the wrong track as a country.

Only then can we see if there are net benefits or disbenefits, and help us to assess whether our quality of life or wellbeing is improving or not.

Pita Sharples call for a GPI is a positive step as a well chosen GPI model and ongoing data collection and monitoring is a far more rounded and meaningful measure of success of a country than GDP on its own.

Today (15 December), Dr Pita Sharples wrote a thoughtful article about the need for a national GPI measure. What a thrill it is to see the Maori Party within the government. The holistic nature of measuring what counts in such a way as the GPI is aligned with an indigenous wordview. There is a real opportunity we have to support the Maori party during their time in this government. Lets make sure we keep reinforcing our support for the views expressed by Pita today. Another letter to the editor Frank?

One of my intellectual heroes, Kenneth Boulding, wrote a paper in 1966 on The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth. Boulding feels that we must want to be part of a society that continues into the future. He rejected the open “cowboy” economy of the 1960’s and focused on the coming need for the closed system economics of Spaceship Earth.

What is the time scale of our thinking? It is roughly 200 years. We all know of our great grandparents perhaps by photographs or Family Birth Marriage or Death documents. We should project forwards into our Grandchildren’s lives to 2100 based on life expectancy estimates and think sustainability for their sakes.

Happiness (and how to measure it) was on the cover of 23 Dec 2006 issue of The Economist. The central thrust of the leading article was that capitalism can make you well off and leaves you free to be as unhappy as you choose. The article concluded “To ask any more of it would be asking too much”
Happiness research is still evolving and has many unanswered questions. It seems that (personal) happiness is spoiled by status anxiety: we want to do better than our peers, position wise in organizations and reputation wise amongst those we consider our peers. This is a personal “Arms race” for the best schools, cars, houses etc

In many cases we find that striving to reach the top ruins your leisure time activities and leads to less happiness. So what might help? Lose your self in your work was an old saying and many professionals do just this. They enjoy their work and try to “go with the flow” (clear goals, good feedback and a personal sense of control) and happiness increases! Many people (knowledge workers) become self –employed and find this “flow” by working in teams on projects (I do so myself!!)

To summarise, the more you feel able to say to others “I’ll give away every thing I currently know/ believe so that I can help you solve the next problem WE need to fix” the more likely we are collectively to make progress. (All animal species have found that Co-operation is better than cutthroat Competition for survival EXCEPT humans)

None of us is as important as all of us--- co-operation is the way!

HEALTH IS WEALTH

Who would say to a young person planning their future, ''whether you are a success or not will be solely measured by the increase or decrease of your earnings.''

We advise young people that they consider many factors in evaluating their future plans, notably their own and families health, well-being and happiness. It is clear that non-monetary values are not as easily measured but it is also clear that these non-monetary values have an intrinsic value that earnings lack. Money is one of many factors that can enable health, well-being and happiness, however the pursuit of greater earnings can also be at the expense of non-monetary values and have a net negative effect.

We can apply this logic to GDP which is essentially a monetary measure and is not a measure of other societal values such as the health, well-being and happiness of the public and the health of the environment. In an similar fashion to the individual the pursuit of a greater GDP can also be at the expense of non-monetary values and have a net negative effect.

Fortunately GPIs "Genuine Progress Indicators'' provide a means of measuring progress in achieving the values that matter most to New Zealanders. Surely the ''GPI'' initiative is one who''s time has come.

The short answers are;
1. Does New Zealand need another measure besides GDP to measure the health and wellbeing of our society - the real health of our economy?

"Yes"

2. Do you see money as an end in itself, or a means to an end? To what end?

"As a means to an end. And that end should be primarily to promote wellbeing of the human species, but not to the detriment of other species or natural capital (the ''common wealth'')."

3. What’s more important – having a high GDP or having a clean and green, crime-free, healthy, peaceful society where people can achieve their dreams?

"Wellbeing and all that that involves is more important than GDP."


The big question though is how though do we get ''there'' i.e to this/these aspiration(s)?

There is no doubt that big mind shifts are required among a large number of people.

One of the keys to getting mind shifts embedded in the population at large is to infuse this thinking at all levels of education and especially (where appropriate) at secondary schools and especially at the tertiary sector.

A key is in the teaching style and teaching content of those who do the teaching and importantly in the text books and other resources use for teaching. And not the teaching just of budding economists and accountants, but teaching of planners, engineers, architects, valuers, marketers and more.

When for example are we going to see publication of an economics text which take these issues in to account? Do any exist already? Would for example the “Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet” by Jeffrey D. Sachs published early 2008 largely meet the need? Is a specific NZ text required? Who is going to write it and get it high in the pecking order on required reading lists?

A parallel step is to support the work of SANZ and to build on the horsepower and momentum they are gaining in conjunction with the UNDESD (United Nations Decade for Education of Sustainable Development).

Yes, it is so important that everyone understands what GDP ACTUALLY MEASURES. Just some simple examples will show why GDP should NEVER be used to measure the well-being of a country.

1. GDP measures ALL expenditures AS GOOD for well-being - for example increasing CRIME which leads to increasing money spent on prisons etc makes GDP go up, therefore a positive GDP result - is this positive well-being? Increasing ILLNESS, resulting in increasing health expenditures makes GDP go up, therefore a positive GDP result - is this positive well-being?

2. GDP only measures expenditure but does not take into account your ASSETS. That is, you can be selling off all your assets, hence a lot of money flow, GDP goes up, is this positive well being, may be in the short term but not the long term. A good example is our FISH STOCKS, while we fish the sea of all the fish, our GDP is growing showing a positive GDP, right up until the very last fish, at which stage the fishing industry collapses - is this good for our well being?
GPI is one way of correcting this absurdity. For example, in the GPI accounts, crime and sickness is treated as a negative and the asset base is recognised as an important aspect of well being.

Congratulations, Dave - the whole website is looking great.
The GPI is brilliant and could be supplemented by sector-specific indicators - to help people actively take part in sustainable action across all 4 wellbeings; environmental, social, cultural and financial, e.g. manufacturers could ask themselves what they are doing to contribute to local employment and human development as well as focusing on measures of resource efficiency and alternative models such as those modeled by Ray Anderson and Interface Carpets.

Congratulations Dave on getting the blog up and running. I believe GPI as a measure of progress is absolutely credible - but most people have never heard of it - for them GDP is the default measure of progress.
I am also concerned that most people do not seem to see a conflict between "growth" as in economic growth and "sustainability". For most people economic growth is an axiomatic good. Instinctively it seems to me that economic growth requires consumption of limited resources and that is a problem for sustainability. Can anyone point to good reference on the economic growth vs sustainability question? Maybe there is not a conflict and you can have both? Any replies on this would be welcome.
If my instincts are right (but let''s check first) then the urgent challenge is to extend this discussion to the many people who believe growth is good and GDP is a good measure of success.
Given that this is about discussion, debate and skepticism, I''ve attached a link to Bertrand Russell''s 10 commandments, a current favourite document for me.

Why indicators for sustainable development are important was discussed by participants at a one-day course convened by the Society for Sustainability Engineering and Science in May this year. The workshop was facilitated by Dave Breuer and David Kettle and introduced the idea of GPI. It helped understand different perspectives.
A need for better understanding about the application and reporting of indicators was stressed by council workers, the quality of indicators in environmental reporting was important to Ministry of Environment staff, academic researchers expressed interest in effective processes for developing indicators, and practising engineers and architects from the private sector talked of their role in improving sustainable practices and their encounters with divergent standards and languages of government partners.
I believe that highlights the importance to bring different perspectives into this discussion to translate ideals into proposals and change that is relevant in different sectors and contexts.
Follow the link below to read more about the discussion from that day in a report that I wrote afterwards. I concluded then that ...
“For the participants of the one-day workshop, the subject of sustainability showed itself to be a cross-cutting theme across government practices, where practitioners as much as analysts are hard at work to fashion practical tools. The range of national and international frameworks presented, suggest that the design of improved indicator systems has many potential sources of input. Judging by the discussions that took place, the adaptation of such models of practice will depend on how the language of indicators can be moulded to match the language of planners, policy makers and consulted publics; how target frameworks can be brought in line with implementation capacities; and how quantitative indicators can reflect underlying assumptions and overlapping ‘orders of outcomes’. As a first step, the participation in this workshop surely demonstrated a willingness to engage in that process by those that will be at the frontline of future applications of sustainability indicators.”

Give me money that''s what I want !!!! So sang the Beatles back in the 60s, well that''s what lots of people then focused on achieving, especially in Western economies. Has this pursuit of money for its own end improved world society ? No -we have an increasing rich/ poor gap, we have massive shortages of the key basics for human life on this planet that are concentrated in a few countries and we have no international strategies to re-distribute the necessities of life globally. As a nation NZ does not spend enough helping our neighbours, our giving is well below the UN target of 0.7% of GDP and only 2 political parties- UnitedFuture and the Greens see this assitance as being important in the future of our planet. So for all you guys out there who voted National you presumably only thought of what you''d get in your own pockets rather than what matters most in the global situation. Well let me tell you - money won''t buy you love either !

Yes we do need more than the GDP provides us. We need a system of measures that instructs us on how to achieve "What Matters Most to New Zealanders". In this money would be a servant, not the end goal.

“The recent global financial meltdown is indicative of our need of different economic values – one’s aligned with the imperatives and opportunities of the 21st century. What would an agenda for a new economy look like?”

We might start with revising what we measure. “The only legitimate function of an economic system is to serve life. Instead we have been managing the economy for financial performance, which translates into making money for people who have money – that is, making rich people richer. It has not been a wise choice. We now bear the devastating costs of this foolishness in the form of massive social and environmental damage and financial instability.” (See “Agenda for a New Economy” by David Korten, http://yesmagazine.org/article.asp?id 3139)

New Zealand has a reputation of leading the world in new initiatives. How about us taking the mantel to be the first country in the world to use the GPI (Genuine Progress Indicator) as a guidepost for future planning. This could retain the GDP while placing life values ahead of money values and dramatically reframe the public policy side of our economic decision-making.