Politicians are obsessed with “economic growth” as measured by the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Tony Blair said it would be the “judge and jury” of Labour's success. But GDP is at best a crude measure of progress. In effect it assumes that families, communities and the natural environment add nothing to economic well-being. Their damage or even destruction could count as growth.

The UK needs new indicators of progress - to show whether our national policies are improving our quality of life and safeguarding our environment. Labour in Opposition promised that it would introduce these indicators, and Parliament's Environmental Audit Commission repeated the call this summer.

Friends of the Earth's new website - Measuring Progress - allows you to see how well the UK is really doing, according to each person's definition of real progress..

Th site shows a new, revised interactive “Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare”. It counts only economic activity which improves our quality of life, by including factors such as air pollution and environmental damage. The site also allows people to create indices which reflect their own definition of progress, with graphs of the results. FOE also hopes that the site to help show how different groups of people - environmentalists and businessmen, politicians and academics - define economicand social progress.

Charles Secrett of Friends of the Earth said:

“Economic policies must meet people's needs. More growth for its own sake is making us all worse off. We need to replace GDP as our main measure of progress. There are more important and useful ways of defining successful development in our society. Our new website will help move the debate forward,

and push Labour to live up to its pre-election promise to bring in new measures of economic and social welfare.”

NOTES TO EDITORS:

[1] The website was developed by Friends of the Earth, together with the Centre for Environmental Strategy at the University of Surrey, and the New Economics Foundation.

[2] Quotes on the inadequacy of GDP as a measure of progress:

Robert Kennedy, US Senator: The Gross National Product includes air pollution and advertising for cigarettes, and ambulance to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors, and jails for the people who break them. GNP includes the destruction of the redwoods and the death of Lake Superior. It grows with the production of napalm and missiles and nuclear warheads...And if GNP includes all this, there is much that it does not comprehend. It does not allow for the health of our families, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It is indifferent to the decency of our factories and the safety of our streets alike. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, or the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials...GNP measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile; and it can tell us everything about America - except whether we are proud to be Americans”.

Simon Kuznets, creator of GDP, 1962: “The welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income as defined by the GDP ... goals for 'more' growth should specify of what and for what”.

Barber Conable, former President of the World Bank, 1989: “Unfortunately GDP figures are generally used without the caveat that they represent an income that cannot be sustained. Current calculations ignore the degradation of the natural resource base and view the sale of non-renewable resources entirely as income.A better way must be found to measure the prosperity and progress of mankind”.

Geoff Mulgan, now with the UK Social Exclusion Unit, 1995: “In previous centuries nations measured their success by military power. For most of this century they measured it by their economic power and their ranking in GDP tables. By 2020...our obsession with growth and GDP will seems as odd as the 19th century fetishisation of armies does to us now. Increasingly, societies will be judged by very different criteria: by quality not quantity, well-being not income, balance not growth”.

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Published by Friends of the Earth Trust