Is GDP the right way to measure a nation’s progress?
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres just lately stated that GDP just isn’t the most correct way to measure a nation’s progress and wealth.
In his speech to mark World Environment Day, he urged G20 international locations to dismantle their coal infrastructure. He added that to rescue the world atmosphere – and humanity’s future — we should rework the accounting programs that reward air pollution and waste.
We should place true worth on the atmosphere and transcend Gross Domestic Product as a measure of human progress and well-being. Let us not neglect that once we destroy a forest, we’re creating GDP. When we overfish, we’re creating GDP. GDP just isn’t a way to measure richness in the current scenario in the world.
Is this strategy in any respect possible? What do economists consider this?
Dr Biswajit Dhar, former professor of economics at the JNU and a former member of the National Biodiversity Authority, says Mr. Guterres has ‘slavishly’ reproduced the superior nation narrative, which basically shifts the burden of rectifying the environmental degradation on the creating international locations, which is unfair on at the least three counts.
First, creating international locations are being requested to bear the burden of addressing a downside that they haven’t precipitated. This is a direct consequence of abandoning the ideas of “common but differentiated responsibilities” and “polluter pays”.
The latter precept wants an trustworthy admission from superior international locations about their position in occupying the carbon area since the industrial revolution, which has now left little area for the creating international locations to pursue their developmental aspirations.
Second, developed international locations have turned their backs on fixing the environmental downside in a spirit of cooperation that was the spotlight of the UN’s much-touted Agenda 21, adopted greater than three many years in the past.
What do you consider the GDP as a metric? Have you come throughout one other accounting system that does away with GDP? Write to us in the feedback under.
Script and presentation: Ok. Bharat Kumar
Videography: Thamodharan Bharath and Shiva Raj
Ideation: Nivedita V
Production: Shibu Narayan
