UNDP’s first Human Development Report in 1990 recognized the limitations of existing development metrics and introduced the Human Development Index (HDI). The need for better approaches to measuring progress beyond short-term economic indicators has been echoed more recently by other international institutions and opinion leaders, including the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development’s Better Life Initiative; UN Secretary General’s High-level Global Sustainability Panel (cited above), and earlier the Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Commission, which concluded in 2009 that a broader range of welfare indicators should be used alongside GDP. National initiatives to go beyond GDP are also growing, notably by the Kingdom of Bhutan and the United Kingdom.
UNDP’s Human Development Report Office has begun exploration of ways to develop a “Sustainable Human Development Index, ” recognizing that it poses a number of large conceptual and methodological challenges, including how best to link present choices with future choices (do they have the same weight?), how to reflect concepts of ‘planetary boundaries’ or ‘tipping points’ given that climate change in particular has already begun imposing significant costs on people, with the brunt being felt by poor nations and poor communities, and how to connect issues of global responsibility with the need to ensure equal rights of all citizens on this planet.