Why the World Must Measure Well-Being, Not GDP

For many years, I had the privilege of collaborating with Harriet Mayor Fulbright, whose lifetime of international peace work helped shape my understanding of what truly sustains a nation. Through the work and discussions, ideas of diplomacy, cultural exchange initiatives, and unwavering support of human dignity remained both radical and urgently necessary, especially the idea that the success of a society should be measured not by economic output, but by the well-being and happiness of its people. In our discussions, peace was never merely the absence of conflict, nor prosperity a reflection of rising GDP alone; both depended on whether individuals could live meaningful, healthy, and connected lives. That perspective—rooted in empathy, culture, and long-term human flourishing- continues to inform my conviction that the world must move beyond GDP as its primary measure of progress and toward metrics that reflect what truly matters.

For more than eighty years, gross domestic product has served as the dominant measure of national success. Governments announce quarterly growth figures as proof of progress, markets respond to rising or falling GDP with confidence or alarm, and entire policy frameworks are structured around the assumption that economic growth equates to societal well-being. Yet this assumption has become increasingly untenable. At a moment defined by climate breakdown, widening inequality, biodiversity loss, and widespread mental-health crises, GDP no longer tells us whether societies are truly thriving.

In their 2025 article “Beyond growth—why we need to agree on an alternative to GDP now,” published in Nature (Vol. 647, 20 November 2025), ecological economists, including Robert Costanza, Professor of Ecological Economics at the Institute for Global Prosperity (IGP) at University College London (UCL). and colleagues of the International Society for Ecological Economics (ISEE) argue that GDP is fundamentally misaligned with the realities and needs of the twenty-first century. Designed in the mid-twentieth century to measure market activity and national income, GDP was never intended to capture the quality of human lives, the health of ecosystems, or the long-term viability of societies. Yet it has come to dominate decision-making precisely in those areas where it performs worst.

One of the central problems with GDP is that it measures economic activity without distinguishing between costs and benefits. Financial transactions that arise from ecological damage, social breakdown, or ill health—such as pollution cleanup, disaster recovery, or increased medical spending—are counted as positive contributions to growth, even though they often reflect deep systemic failures. At the same time, GDP excludes vast domains of value altogether. Unpaid care work, volunteer labor, cultural transmission, community cohesion, and the services provided freely by functioning ecosystems remain invisible within its accounting framework. A society can therefore register economic “success” while exhausting its soils, fracturing its communities, and deepening inequality.

Equally troubling is GDP’s silence on distribution and sustainability. Rising GDP can coexist with extreme wealth concentration, persistent poverty, and irreversible environmental degradation. As the Nature authors note, humanity is now exceeding multiple planetary boundaries while billions of people still lack access to basic needs. Under these conditions, economic growth becomes a dangerously misleading signal—one that suggests progress even as the foundations of future well-being are eroded.

What societies actually seek, the authors argue, is not growth for its own sake, but sustainable and inclusive well-being. Well-being encompasses physical and mental health, meaningful social relationships, cultural vitality, security, dignity, and a thriving natural world capable of supporting life over time. These dimensions cannot be reduced to monetary throughput. They require multidimensional measures that recognize humans as embedded within ecological and social systems, rather than as abstract economic units that maximize consumption.

Over the past several decades, hundreds of alternative indicators have been proposed, ranging from well-being and happiness indices to composite measures that integrate environmental limits, social equity, and quality of life. Paradoxically, the abundance of options has slowed adoption. Without consensus, GDP persists by default. The Nature article, therefore, calls not only for alternatives but for agreement on shared goals, common measurement frameworks, and indicators that can realistically guide policy at national and global scales.

Moving toward well-being as the primary measure of success would fundamentally reshape governance and priorities. Instead of optimizing for short-term economic expansion, societies would be incentivized to cultivate healthy communities, resilient ecosystems, equitable opportunity, and long-term stability. Investments in education, public health, care work, ecological restoration, and cultural life would no longer be treated as secondary to “growth,” but recognized as core contributors to collective prosperity. In this reframing, prosperity is no longer defined by the amount extracted, produced, or consumed, but by how well people and the living systems around them are allowed to flourish.

For initiatives concerned with culture, memory, and the sensory dimensions of human experience—such as those explored in Plantings—this shift is especially significant. Many of the most vital aspects of human life, including cultural continuity, place-based knowledge, and relationships with the natural world, have never been legible to GDP. A well-being-centered framework offers a way to acknowledge these values not as peripheral or sentimental, but as essential to resilience and meaning in an era of profound change.

As the authors of “Beyond growth” make clear, redefining progress is no longer a theoretical exercise. It is a practical necessity. If we continue to measure what is easiest rather than what matters, policy will continue to reward depletion, fragmentation, and inequity. Agreeing on a shared approach to measuring well-being is therefore not simply an economic reform—it is an ethical recalibration, one that asks societies to align their metrics with their deepest aspirations for human dignity, ecological balance, and intergenerational responsibility.

Only when we measure what we truly value can we begin to build systems capable of sustaining it. living networks within them. Cities and nature need each other.

Gayil Nalls, PhD is an interdisciplinary artist and theorist and the founder of the World Sensorium / Conservancy.