Beyond GDP: Why International Development needs a new way to measure success.

Bhutan has a Gross National Happiness index.  The United Nations sought the development of the Human Development Index.  The exclusive World Economic Forum ran a series about the end of the "love affair" with GDP.  

In this season 3 finale, Dr. Anders Hayden joins Dr. Bob Huish to talk about why development needs to go beyond GDP, what the consequences of it are, and what why we should all rethink development.

Anders Hayden is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.  He is particularly interested in the evolving balance between efforts to promote ecological modernization (“green growth”) and sufficiency-based challenges to the endless growth of production and consumption. He has written on efforts to promote "green growth" in Canada, Britain, and the European Union. 

His interest in the sufficiency approach has included examination of policies and initiatives to reduce hours of work as well as research on Bhutan, a country that has established Gross National Happiness, rather than Gross National Product, as its overriding goal. 

He is currently involved in research on the political and policy impacts of alternative measures of wellbeing and prosperity (“beyond GDP” measurement). He is the author of two books: When Green Growth Is Not Enough: Climate Change, Ecological Modernization, and Sufficiency (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014) and Sharing the Work, Sparing the Planet: Work Time, Consumption & Ecology (Zed Books / Between the Lines, 1999), and co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of Global Sustainability Governance (Routledge, 2020).

Follow his latest project about moving beyond GDP here:  www.beyondgdpindicators.com

Follow Dr. Bob on Twitter @ProfessorHuish