A procedure for globally institutionalizing a ‘beyond-GDP’ metric
本文提出通过设立联合国常设小组来选择和推行一个超越GDP的全球指标，以应对环境和社会目标，并给出了指标选择的四个关键维度和标准。
If governments are serious about meeting environmental and social goals, they should overcome dominance of the GDP indicator in political discourse. Institutionalizing a beyond-GDP metric would be an essential step, in interaction with a shift in the direction of an “agrowth” paradigm. For a significant step forward, a permanent UN panel could be charged to explore the options and prepare a metric for global implementation. This essay outlines the choice spectrum and provides criteria and guidelines for the metric-selection process. It is suggested that the panel considers four critical dimensions of potential alternatives, namely means versus ends, objective versus subjective information, aggregate index versus multiple indicators, and monetary versus other units. In deciding about each dimension, serious attention needs to be given to the psychological-communicative appeal of the resulting options, so as to guarantee a fluent uptake of the selected beyond-GDP metric in society, media and politics. The combined environmental and inequality crises at national and global scales make this the right time to finally translate a respectable history of beyond-GDP thinking into practical action.