The Happy Planet Index is a new global measure of progress, calculating the environmental cost with which countries deliver lives of different length and happiness, revealing for the first time that happiness doesn’t have to cost the Earth.
Launched today by nef (the new economics foundation), the Happy Planet Index is the first of its kind, and its results are surprising, or even shocking. The ranking puts the UK in 108th place and the USA in an even worse 150th out of 178 countries.
“The UK economy hoovers up vast quantities of the world’s scarce resources, yet British people are no happier than Colombians or Guyanese, who use far fewer. The current crude focus on GDP is outdated, destructive and doesn’t deliver a better quality of life. The UK economy must get much smarter and greener.”
Simon Bullock, Friends of the Earth’s economics co-ordinator
It is interesting note that the self-appointed “world leaders”, the G8, don’t rank very well at all. We’ve already seen how the UK and the USA fare, and Italy is 66th, Germany 81st, Japan 95th, Canada 111th, France 129th, and Russia 172nd.
” We are used to comparing countries in terms of crude riches or what they trade. There are international league tables for performance on issues from corruption to sporting success. But, nef’s Happy Planet Index measures something much more fundamental. It addresses the relative success or failure of countries in giving their citizens a good life, whilst respecting the environmental resource limits on which all our lives depend. The order of nations that emerges may seem counter-intuitive. But this is because, to a large degree, policy makers have been led astray by abstract mathematical models of the economy that bear little relation to the real world.”
Andrew Simms, nef’s Policy Director
nef proposes a Global Manifesto for a happier planet, outlining how we might begin to both live within our environmental limits and increase well-being. Below are what they consider to be necessary first steps.
Eradicating extreme poverty and hunger. Increasing material wealth in `developed’ countries does not lead to greater happiness, while in `developing’ countries extreme poverty systematically undermines people’s opportunities to build good lives for themselves and their families. We urgently need to redesign our global systems to more equitably distribute the things people rely on for their day-to-day livelihoods, for example: income, and access to land, food and other resources
Supporting meaningful lives. Governments should recognise the contribution of individuals to economic, social, cultural, and civic life and value unpaid activity. Employers should be encouraged to enable their employees to work flexibly, allowing them to develop full lives outside of the workplace and make time to undertake voluntary work. They should also strive to provide challenges and opportunities for personal development at work.
Identifying environmental limits and design economic policy to work within them. The ecological footprint gives us a measure of the Earth’s biocapacity that, if over-stretched, leads to long-term environmental degradation. Globally we need to live within our environmental means. One-planet living should become an official target of government policy with a pathway and timetable to achieve it. (The UK currently consumes at just over three times this level. If everyone in the world consumed as we do in the UK, we would need 3.1 planets like Earth to support us.)
But perhaps most importantly, nef calls for political organisations to embrace and apply new measures of progress, such as the HPI and properly adjusted GDP measures. Only then will we be equipped to address the twin challenges of delivering a good quality of life for all whilst remaining within genuine environmental limits.