It endless growth via conventional industrialisation exacerbates climate change, over-exploits finite planetary resources, and doesn’t necessarily make us happier anyway, what alternative goals should we have? Research just published by the New Economics Foundation makes some important proposals. It posits that a successful society is one that can support good lives that don’t cost the Earth. The index adopted to measure progress towards this target embodies 3 criteria: high life expectancy, high life satisfaction, and a low ecological footprint. The results turn our idea of progress on its head. Whilst the index confirms that the countries where people enjoy the healthiest lives are mostly richer developed countries, it also shows the unsustainable ecological price we pay. But it’s the exceptions that are most interesting.

It reveals that there are less wealthy countries, with significantly smaller ecological footprints per head, that still have high levels of life expectancy and life satisfaction. Surprisingly, middle-income countries, such as those in Latin America and South-East Asia, tend to be the closest to achieving sustainable well-being. Many produce long, happy lives with far lower levels of resource consumption than we might expect. Costa Rica, which tops the index, has citizens who live longer than Americans, and report much higher levels of satisfaction, and yet have a footprint that is less than a quarter the size.
Among OECD nations, representing many of the world’s richest countries, the HPI (Happy Planet Index) scores plummeted between 1960 and the late 1970s and were higher in 1961 than in 2005 (at the growth peak just before the credit crunch). Life satisfaction and life expectancy combined have increased only marginally in these countries over the 45-year period, but have still come at an Earth-shattering cost – an increase in ecological footprint per head of no less than 72%.
The Costa Rican HPI score was 76 out of 100. Of the following 10 countries, all but one is in Latin America. The bottom 10 HPI scores were all suffered by sub-Saharan African countries, with Zimbabwe bottom with a score of just 16. Rich nations fall somewhere in the middle. The highest-placed Western nation is the Netherlands, at 43rd place. The UK still ranks midway down the table – 74th, behind Germany, Italy and France. It is just pipped by Georgia and Slovakia, but beats Japan and Ireland. The US comes a long way back in 114th place.
Should not HPI, or some variant, replace our relentless pursuit of GDP?

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