GDP is a measure of the domestic production of goods and services in a country. This indicator and the System of National Accounts (SNA) on which it is based are available in practically every country in the world and are constructed in a comparable manner based on international standards. These characteristics have made GDP a measure widely used as a summary indicator of the development of countries, beyond the purpose for which it was conceived.
However, GDP is an insufficient measure of development and does not adequately reflect essential aspects, such as environmental sustainability and biodiversity loss, inequalities in access to the benefits of economic growth or the quality of institutions and the prevalence of the State. of law.
In September 2021, the Secretary General of the United Nations presented the report Our Common Agenda, with its vision for the future of global cooperation and multilateralism. In it, he calls for “new measures, complementary to GDP, so that people can fully understand the repercussions of business activities and what we can and should do better for the good of people and our planet.” The United Nations System Chief Executives Board for Coordination set out to discuss the development of metrics to measure progress beyond GDP, in support of the follow-up processes to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Our Common Agenda. Its current work considers two types of response to the challenges and limitations outlined above: on the one hand, supporting the improvement of GDP measurement and updating the SNA and, on the other, defining a set of complementary indicators.
This seminar is a space to dialogue with the authorities of the national statistical offices and other statistical institutions on the various statistical challenges related to improving the measurement of GDP and the production of complementary indicators to account for the economic, social and environmental.
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