27 February 2023

 

Esteemed Chairperson, Dear Colleagues,

It gives me great pleasure to welcome all of you to the United Nations Headquarters.

During its 78-year history, the Statistical Commission has given the world important pillars of data-based information.

It has also proved to be responsive, when in 2015, it reacted quickly to create the Sustainable Development Goal indicator framework.

Through Big Data projects, you have expanded the notion of high-quality information architecture.

You have also understood the urgency of addressing the need for information on climate-related risks.

I hope that the same responsiveness and ingenuity will lead your discussions today on measures beyond GDP.

As the saying goes, GDP ‘measures everything except that which makes life worthwhile’.

We should find a methodology for measuring sustainability transformation that integrates human and social well-being, natural capital and economic development.

Please, create a tool for us that can validate real progress and shape decision-making. So, what we need is not only to measure the result of stand-alone past actions, but also to be used as a tool to assist designing further steps of the sustainability transformation.

A tool that is simple, usable, and flexible with global relevance, yet applicable to local and national conditions.

A tool that can help us in getting an honest account of what we are implementing in sustainability transformation.

As Joseph Stiglitz and his co-authors point it out, ‘what we measure affects what we do. If we measure the wrong thing, we will do the wrong thing. If we don’t measure something, it becomes neglected, as if the problem didn’t exist’.

Are we ready to have in-depth discussion on “Beyond GDP”?

If so, work underway by the High-Level Panel on the Multi-Dimensional Vulnerability Index must be also included in it.

It should also synthesize the results achieved in the United Nations, the World Bank, the OECD, the EU, and in Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hungary, India and some other countries. This integrating work ahead of us is huge, but doable. And most importantly, it has been long overdue.

On 10 April, I will convene the next scientific briefing for the General Assembly.

It comes as no surprise that one of its topics will be “Beyond GDP”.

In September, we will hold the SDG Summit. We will need a renewed commitment to the sustainability transformation. To make it credible, we have to make it sure, we build it on science and evidence.

Dear Friends,

If we make this endeavour correctly, a new “Beyond GDP” framework will be one of the most transformative projects in 2023 and beyond.

I wish you every success.