Publication:
Challenges of wealth-based sustainability metrics: a critical appraisal

Date

2024

Authors

McLaughlin, Eoin
Hanley, Nick

Director

Publisher

Elsevier
Acceso abierto / Sarbide irekia
Artículo / Artikulua
Versión publicada / Argitaratu den bertsioa

Project identifier

Métricas Alternativas

Abstract

There has been widespread debate about whether the way in which we measure economic activity is fit for purpose in the twenty-first century. One aspect of this debate is to move away from measuring a nation’s income (GDP) towards monitoring a nation’s assets (their inclusive wealth), as a better indicator of sustainable economic development. We provide the first critical comparison of the approaches of leading international organisations – the World Bank and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) – to estimating changes in wealth. Our paper reveals important inconsistencies in how these organisations measure sustainability and the conflicting messages that policy makers receive, despite a common underlying conceptual framework linking changes in a nation’s wealth to future well-being. We attribute these differences to methodological (applied theory) choices made by researchers at the respective institutions. These choices matter. At the most extreme, countries that perform the worst according to the UNEP are shown to perform well according to the World Bank. This confusion in signals makes better policy making more difficult.

Description

Keywords

Wealth, Sustainability, Natural capital, Sustainable development

Department

Economía / Ekonomia

Faculty/School

Degree

Doctorate program

item.page.cita

McLaughlin, E., Ducoing, C., Hanley, N. (2024) Challenges of wealth-based sustainability metrics: A critical appraisal. Ecological Economics, 224, 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2024.108308.

item.page.rights

© 2024 The Authors. This is an open access article under the CC BY license.

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