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Sustainable Development and Organizational Sustainability
Published in Dalia Štreimikienė, Asta Mikalauskiene, Remigijus Ciegis, Sustainable Development, Leadership, and Innovations, 2019
Dalia Štreimikienė, Asta Mikalauskiene, Remigijus Ciegis
The authors of the study employed the original evaluation methodology. When evaluating countries according to happiness, usually data about the size of GDP per capita or similar indicators, predicting life expectancy or revealing the environmental pollution level, are used from different countries. In the Happy Planet Index, various social indicators are evaluated; however, the evaluation of their own life by individual people living in different countries is viewed as the most significant criterion:Index = (life satisfaction × life expectancy)/environmental pollution Among the top ten countries in the 2006 ranking, where residents are the most satisfied with their lives, we also find (in order): Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Panama, Cuba, Honduras, Guatemala, and Salvador. Malta (40) took the highest place among the European countries, while Austria, Iceland, Switzerland, and Italy was at the beginning of the sixth tenth of this list. These results are not that cheerful, but understandable. Intensive work of a large group of scientists revealed a very simple truth: the possibility of unrestricted consumerism and a comfortable life, filled with modern technologies, does not guarantee an individual’s well-being and a feeling of happiness.
Moving Beyond Sustainability
Published in Yongyuth Yuthavong, Sparks from the Spirit, 2018
The World Happiness Report[57], published by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, gives an analysis of happiness and a list of countries ranked according to data compiled from polls on six different topics. The topics are gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity, and perceptions of corruption. People are asked how they evaluate life in their countries on a scale of 0 to 10 compared to a hypothetical worst country, Dystopia, with a score of 0. Not surprisingly, countries that rank high are mostly developed countries, but some developing countries also score well. Many of the topics contributing to the happiness score are similar to the goals of sustainable development. Another measure of happiness takes the cost to the environment into account. The Happy Planet Index (HPI) [58] combines four elements to arrive at the scores: a sense of well-being, life expectancy, inequality of people within the country, and the ecological footprint. The HPI reflects the average years of happy life produced by a given society, nation, or group of nations per unit of planetary resources consumed, roughly representing the efficiency with which countries convert the earth’s finite resources into well-being experienced by their citizens. Countries with top scores include many developing countries, mainly due to their relatively lighter ecological footprint.
Sustainability Analytics and Decision Acumen
Published in Ram Ramanan, Introduction to Sustainability Analytics, 2018
Happy planet index215 is an ecological efficiency measure—that is, it aims to capture the degree to which happy life years are achieved per unit of environmental impact. It measures “what truly matters to us—our well-being in terms of long, happy, and meaningful lives—and what matters to the planet—our rate of resource consumption.” This measure of sustainability explicitly includes life outcomes and scales them by a measure of resource use.
Impacts of sustainability and resilience research on risk governance, management and education
Published in Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure, 2021
Linda Nielsen, Michael H. Faber
New approaches and measures of social welfare that propose to do away with the GDP include the Happy Planet Index, the Inclusive Wealth Index and the Social Opportunity Function. The Happy Planet Index, introduced by the New Economics Foundation in 2006 is also based on the utilitarian principle of maximizing well-being in good health and longevity. It is calculated as a function of a given country’s subjective life satisfaction, life expectancy at birth and ecological footprint per capita. On the positive side, the HPI contributes to the study of economic growth in that it attempts to measure the positive consequences of growth, namely well-being and health. It has also met with some strong criticism about the subjectivity of life satisfaction reporting, the controversiality of the footprint concept, which narrows its usage, and not least using the term happiness to measure not happiness but rather the degree of environmental efficiency supporting well-being.