- The Happy Planet Index: http://www.happyplanetindex.org
The HPI is an innovative measure that shows the ecological efficiency with which human well-being is delivered around the world. It is the first ever index to combine environmental impact with well-being to measure the environmental efficiency with which country by country, people live long and happy lives. The second compilation of the global HPI, published in July 2009, shows that we are still far from achieving sustainable well-being and puts forward a vision of what we need to do to get there.
The Index doesn’t reveal the ‘happiest’ country in the world. It shows the relative efficiency with which nations convert the planet’s natural resources into long and happy lives for their citizens. The nations that top the Index aren’t the happiest places in the world, but the nations that score well show that achieving, long, happy lives without over-stretching the planet’s resources is possible.
The HPI shows that around the world, high levels of resource consumption do not reliably produce high levels of well-being, and that it is possible to produce high well-being without excessive consumption of the Earth’s resources. It also reveals that there are different routes to achieving comparable levels of well-being. The model followed by the West can provide widespread longevity and variable life satisfaction, but it does so only at a vast and ultimately counter-productive cost in terms of resource consumption.
Global and European
The HPI strips the view of the economy back to its absolute basics: what we put in (resources), and what comes out (human lives of different length and happiness). The resulting global index of the 143 nations for which new, improved data is available, reveals that the world as a whole has a long way to go. In terms of delivering long and meaningful lives within the Earth’s environmental limits – all nations could do better. No country achieves an overall ‘high’ score on the Index, and no country does well on all three indicators.
Also available is the HPI for European countries, compiled in 2007. Based on the carbon footprints of European countries, it provides a picture of the relative carbon efficiency of European nations.
Steering towards success
No single country listed in the Happy Planet Index has everything right. This is what is acknowledged by the graffiti on the title above. While some countries are more efficient than others at delivering long, happy lives for their people, every country has its problems and no country performs as well as it could. Yet clear patterns do emerge that point to how we might better achieve long and happy lives for all, whilst living within our environmental means.
Our challenge now is to learn the lessons of the HPI and apply them. The happy planet charter, launched alongside the latest report in July 2009, provides some key goals to help the planet achieve good lives that do not cost the earth.
nef's global manifesto for a happier planet makes recommendations for each component of the HPI. The score that different nations achieve on constituent parts of the Index, provides an indication of which component policy-makers in countries around the world need to prioritise. First launched in 2006, these 10 steps to sustainable well-being are as relevant today as ever:
1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
2. Improve healthcare.
3. Relieve debt.
4. Shift values.
5. Support meaningful lives.
6. Empower people and promote good governance.
7. Identify environmental limits and design economic policy to work within them.
8. Design systems for sustainable consumption and production.
9. Work to tackle climate change.
10. Measure what matters.
1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.
Increasing material wealth in (so-called) developed countries does not lead to greater happiness, and that 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.
2. Improve healthcare.
High life expectancy in a country reflects good healthcare and living conditions, and has a positive relationship to people’s sense of well-being. Globally we need to increase access to clean water, halt the rise in diseases such as HIV/AIDS and malaria, and reduce child and maternal mortality. The World Health Organization estimates that everyone in the world could be provided with a good level of basic healthcare for just $43 per person, per year.
3. Relieve debt.
Many developing countries are forced to prioritise the service of crippling financial debt over providing a basic standard of living. Debt sustainability calculations should be based on the amount of revenue that a government can be expected to raise without increasing poverty or compromising future development.
4. Shift values.
Value systems that emphasise individualism and material consumption are detrimental to well-being, whereas those that promote social interaction and a sense of relatedness are profoundly positive. Government should provide more support for local community initiatives, sports teams, arts projects and so on, whilst acting to discourage the development of materialist values where possible (for example, by banning advertising directed at children).
5. Support 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.
6. Empower people and promote good governance.
A sense of autonomy is important at all levels for people to thrive, and there is growing evidence that engaging citizens in democratic processes leads to both a more vibrant society and happier citizens. Promoting open and effective governance nationally and internationally, including the peaceful resolution of conflicts and elimination of systematic corruption, is important for all of us achieving greater well-being in the long term.
7. Identify 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.)
8. Design systems for sustainable consumption and production.
We need to reverse the loss of environmental resources, conserve our ecosystems and integrate a sustainable development approach throughout the global community. Ecological taxation can be used to make the price of goods include their full environmental cost, and to encourage behaviour change. Clear consistent labelling that warns of the consequences of consumption, as with tobacco, would also help, as well as giving manufacturers full life-cycle responsibility for what they produce.
9. Work to tackle climate change.
For the UK to play its part in preventing catastrophic and irreversible global warming it is estimated that we will need to cut our greenhouse gas emissions by at least three per cent every year. More broadly, rich countries need to meet and exceed their targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions set under the Kyoto Protocol, cutting emissions to a level commensurate with halting global warming so that temperature rise is kept well below 2°C. After 2012, and in subsequent commitment periods of the Kyoto Protocol, emissions cuts should put industrialised countries on track to savings of up to 80 per cent by 2050.
10. Measure what matters.
People all over the world want to lead happy and complete lives, but we all share just one planet to live on. We urgently need our political organisations to embrace and apply new measures of progress, such as the HPI and adjusted GDP indicators. Only then will we be equipped to address the twin challenges of delivering well-being for all whilst remaining within genuine environmental limits.
Download the new report The Happy Planet Index 2.0: Why good lives don’t have to cost the Earth, first published in July 2009. The report presents the results of the second global compilation of the Happy Planet Index, based on improved data for 143 countries around the world – representing 99 per cent of the world’s population. The results shows that globally we are still far from achieving good lives within the Earth’s finite resource limits. But although the evidence shows that we are heading in the wrong direction, the achievements of some countries around the world provide reasons to believe that we can achieve true sustainable well-being.
Note that this pdf corrects an error on p54 of the printed report where the Greek characters alpha and beta failed to print.
