Beyond growth — why we need to agree on an alternative to GDP now
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Article Date: 18 November 2025
Article URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-03721-1
Article Image: https://media.nature.com/w767/magazine-assets/d41586-025-03721-1/d41586-025-03721-1_51707018.jpg
Summary
The authors argue that GDP is an inadequate measure of societal well‑being: it only counts market transactions, conflates costs and benefits and ignores unpaid labour, income distribution and environmental impacts. Since about 1950 ecological limits, rising inequality and weakening social cohesion have eroded the link between GDP growth and improved well‑being. A UN High‑Level Expert Group has been tasked with recommending beyond‑GDP measures and the authors propose four practical steps: adopt sustainable and inclusive well‑being as the central goal; agree a core set of well‑being indicators (roughly 20 components); develop dynamic, ecological macroeconomic models that embed the economy within the biosphere and track stocks and flows; and confront institutional ‘addictions’ to growth that lock in unsustainable behaviour. The article highlights existing experiments (for example Bhutan, New Zealand, Scotland, Wales), international accounting reforms and the opportunity to use big data and remote sensing to improve measurement.
Key Points
- GDP measures market transactions only and misses unpaid work, distributional issues and environmental costs and benefits.
- Post‑1950 ecological limits and social inequality mean growth no longer reliably delivers better well‑being.
- The UN has convened a High‑Level Expert Group to recommend beyond‑GDP metrics; SDG commitments push for adoption by 2030.
- Researchers identify 19 common well‑being components; authors recommend a core set of ~20 components for global reporting.
- Four-way strategy: (1) adopt sustainable and inclusive well‑being as the goal; (2) agree standard indicators; (3) build dynamic ecological‑economic models; (4) tackle institutional incentives that perpetuate growth addiction.
- Current mainstream models centre on GDP and assume high substitutability of resources; new models must be nonlinear, dynamic and able to compare resource use with environmental limits.
- Practical tools exist — UN accounting updates, citizen science, social‑media analytics and remote sensing can lower costs and improve coverage.
- Proliferation of alternative metrics has paradoxically slowed consensus; an agreed backbone of indicators and UN leadership can break the impasse.
Context and relevance
This is a timely policy blueprint: measurement shapes budgets, reporting and priorities. The article links academic work in ecological economics to UN processes and the SDGs, pointing to an expected set of recommendations from the UN expert group in early 2026. It is relevant to policymakers, statisticians, environmental scientists, NGOs and anyone involved in designing metrics or sustainability policy. The piece sits at the intersection of debates about degrowth, ecological limits and the need to embed nature and social outcomes in national accounts.
Why should I read this?
Short and blunt: if you want to know how the global conversation about replacing GDP is progressing, who’s leading it and what realistic next steps look like — read this. It’s a quick roadmap of where we need to move measurement, modelling and policy if we want decisions that actually protect people and the planet.
Author style
Punchy: leading ecological economists make a concise call to action. If you work on policy, sustainability or national statistics, the article’s recommendations matter — the detail is directly actionable and worth digging into.