Gross domestic product (GDP) has long served as the dominant measure of economic performance, providing a common language for policymakers, statisticians and markets. But it is an incomplete proxy for progress. It captures the value of production, but not how that value is distributed, whether it enhances well being, or at what cost to societies and the environment.
In the context of today’s interconnected crises – including climate change, biodiversity loss, rising inequalities, demographic shifts and declining trust in institutions – the limitations of GDP have become increasingly consequential. Economic growth can coincide with environmental degradation, social exclusion, and the undervaluation of essential activities such as unpaid care work. In some cases, harmful activities may even contribute positively to GDP, while investments in long-term resilience or social cohesion
remain invisible in conventional metrics.
Recognizing these gaps, the international community has, over several decades, developed a wide range of complementary approaches to measuring progress – including the Human Development Index, multidimensional poverty measures, environmental-economic accounting, and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) themselves – Goals that integrate economic, social and environmental dimensions of development.
Recent United Nations work has sought to consolidate these efforts into a more coherent framework. The Secretary-General’s Our Common Agenda and the United Nations system-wide contribution on Valuing What Counts call for a renewed political commitment to develop complementary metrics that reflect well-being, sustainability, and equity – and to embed these in decision-making processes.
The UNECE region is particularly well positioned to advance this agenda. It combines high-income economies with countries in transition, offering a diverse laboratory for testing and applying new approaches to measuring progress. But challenges remain.
Efforts to go beyond GDP are often fragmented; data systems are uneven; and the link between measurement and policy action remains weak.
Moving forward will require not only technical innovation but also political leadership, institutional capacity and inclusive dialogue across stakeholders.
Against this backdrop, the panel will provide a multistakeholder platform to explore how Beyond GDP approaches can move from concept to practice – shaping policies, investments and public narratives in ways that better reflect well-being, sustainability and resilience in the UNECE region and beyond.
Guiding Questions
- From measurement to decision-making: What are the most promising ways to ensure that “Beyond GDP” metrics actually influence fiscal, economic and social policy — rather than remaining parallel statistical exercises?
- Integrating frameworks, avoiding fragmentation: With hundreds of existing indicators and initiatives, how can we converge towards a manageable, credible and policy-relevant set of metrics at national and regional
levels? - Data, capacity and trust: What investments and institutional changes are needed – particularly for national statistical offices – to produce robust, disaggregated and trusted data on well- being and sustainability?
- Challenging the growth paradigm: To what extent does moving “beyond GDP” require rethinking growth itself – and how can policymakers navigate this debate without undermining economic stability?
