Editor’s Note: Simona Renieri-Kane is a young expert in the Global Governance Innovation Network. This commentary is part of the GGIN’s Next Generation Experts series, which aims  to elevate youth research and writing. Simona Renieri-Kane’s interests and research center on conflict and security, multilateral cooperation, and international financial architecture reform.
By Richard Ponzio, Director, Global Governance, Justice & Security Program
The UN Delivers on Its Commitment
As the sustainable development agenda faces setbacks, new financial decision-making is needed to address longstanding inequalities. Treating Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as the measure of progress reinforces inequalities by prioritizing economic output while obscuring how gains are distributed and overlooking the social and environmental costs of growth. In response to growing recognition that GDP alone provides an incomplete picture of progress, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres appointed the independent High-Level Expert Group (HLEG) on Beyond GDP in May 2025, following a mandate from Member States in the Pact for the Future.
On May 7 the HLEG presented its report Counting what counts: A Compass of Progress for People and Planet, which recommends new metrics to assess countries’ progress beyond economic output through GDP, accounting for people’s and the planet’s well-being. Called for by Action 53 of the Pact for the Future, the report launches an intergovernmental process to develop a consensus-based global framework of sustainable, equitable, and inclusive indicators to complement GDP.
However, UN agencies have yet to change how they measure and report productivity growth. UNDESA’s latest World Economic Situation and Prospects as of mid-2026 is still heavily GDP-centered despite acknowledging GDP’s limitations and referencing the HLEG’s proposed framework. UNDP’s latest assessment of the Iran war’s impact on the Arab region’s economic growth, despite tracking declines in health and education through its Human Development Index, still relies on GDP as the main benchmark.
Whether the Beyond GDP agenda produces meaningful change will ultimately depend on Member States’ willingness to incorporate the HLEG’s recommendations into national frameworks. A key test of that commitment is now approaching, with the August 26 deadline for stakeholders to submit contributions to the Elements Paper on Beyond GDP that will guide future discussions.
The Limits of GDP
GDP has been the dominant measure of national economic performance because it enables comparisons across countries and over time. Yet there is growing global consensus that GDP fails to capture crucial dimensions of progress, including sustainability, equity, and well-being. Hence, moving beyond GDP is also a matter of equity. Current concessional finance criteria overlook structural and environmental vulnerabilities underpinning growth, including resource depletion and other environmental costs. Likewise, international metrics guiding lending, debt, and trade rules prioritize national income, creditworthiness, and debt sustainability, discouraging governments from investing in health, education, and climate policies that generate long-term development benefits without necessarily boosting GDP.
GDP’s exclusive focus on economic output ignores environmental and social determinants of well-being. Moreover, GDP places disproportionate weight on industrial sectors that drive income growth while increasing CO2 emissions, notably energy and agriculture, and leaves out negative externalities of growth like pollution, environmental degradation, and biodiversity loss. Finally, GDP does not account for informal economic activity, including unpaid care work within households, thus obscuring the links between economic prosperity, welfare, and human rights. Reforming metrics and models is particularly urgent given the broader setbacks in advancing the 2030 Agenda, with only 16% of the SDGs on track for 2030.
Momentum is Building
The HLEG on Beyond GDP’s Counting what Counts report brings full circle more than a decade of UN efforts to rethink economic progress. It builds on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (particularly SDG17), the Secretary-General’s Our Common Agenda, Policy Brief 4 on Meaningful Youth Engagement in Policy and Decision-making Processes Valuing What Counts: Framework to Progress Beyond Gross Domestic Product, and the UN High-Level Committee on Programmes report Valuing What Counts: United Nations System-wide Contribution on Progress Beyond Gross Domestic Product.
Political momentum culminated in Action 53 of the Pact for the Future, through which UN Member States requested that the Secretary-General establish the independent HLEG on Beyond GDP and committed to launching an intergovernmental process upon publication of its final report. As per the Pact’s timeline, the Secretary-General appointed 14 experts in May 2025, drawn from a pool of international scholars across multiple disciplines. In November 2025, the HLEG on Beyond GDP published its Interim Progress Report following a multi-stakeholder open consultation process. In May 2026, the HLEG presented its final recommendations.
The final report seeks to overcome the fragmentation of existing alternative frameworks, such as the Human Development Index, the Multidimensional Poverty Index, and OECD’s well-being indicators. It proposes a dashboard of 31 country-owned, universally applicable indicators organized around a common conceptual framework, and identifies priorities for implementation, statistical development, and national uptake. Drawing extensively on SDG indicators, it measures four dimensions of progress: foundational principles, current well-being, equity and inclusion, and sustainability and resilience.
What Comes Next
The report’s release on May 7 launched the intergovernmental process co-facilitated by Guyana and Spain with multi-stakeholder consultations involving Member States, international financial institutions, statistical bodies, researchers, UN entities, and civil society. These consultations aim to help governments adapt the proposed indicators to national priorities while fostering broad stakeholder participation. Country-level pilot initiatives under UN auspices are also envisioned. On July 10, with a letter to Member States, Spain launched a call for contributions by all stakeholders to prepare the Elements Paper on Beyond GDP to include key issues to address in future discussions. The Beyond GDP agenda also featured prominently during the High Level Political Forum in July, with a dedicated side event on its practical implementation.
The Beyond GDP report acknowledges successful implementation will depend largely on data availability, consistent reporting and methodological standards, predictable funding, and, above all, sustained political commitment. Since the adoption of the Pact for the Future, which catalyzed momentum around reviving the multilateral agenda, persistent UN paralysis and divisions over major global crises highlight multilateralism’s struggle to deliver impactful solutions. Whether Member States can follow through on their pledge articulated in the Pact for the Future and unite behind replacing an outdated, yet dominant tool of global and national policy-making remains uncertain.
The Ball is in Member States’ Court
As foreign policy driven by nationalism and capitalism undermine international cooperation, it is difficult to predict that Member States will rise to the occasion and embrace a fundamental paradigm shift in how wealth is measured, generated, and distributed. Supporting the Beyond GDP agenda requires more than adopting inclusive, equitable, and sustainable metrics; it also demands a vision of global development in which countries are assessed not solely by economic output but also by their work to enhance the well-being of their people and the planet. The sharp rise in global military spending, the historic decline in foreign aid, and surge in conflicts, reflect the erosion of a global order founded on cooperation. For the Beyond GDP reform agenda to translate into meaningful change, governments must do more than refine their statistical dashboards. Lasting progress requires addressing the political imbalances and economic inequalities undergirding global power dynamics. An important open question remains: Will UN Member States honor their pledges made in the Pact for the Future? Upcoming milestones, including the opening of the new UN General Assembly session in September 2026, and the July 2027 High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development, which will start off discussions on the post-2030 agenda, may signal the future trajectory of the Beyond GDP process.
Although the ball is now in Member States’ court, UN leadership will be critical to sustain momentum and turn the Beyond GDP agenda into action. As the UN prepares to select its new Secretary-General amid declining confidence in its ability to deliver results, progress with the Beyond GDP agenda could be a bellwether of whether the organization and its Member States can translate commitments into meaningful change.
International & Regional Organizations
The UN Delivers on Its Commitment
As the sustainable development agenda faces setbacks, new financial decision-making is needed to address longstanding inequalities. Treating Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as the measure of progress reinforces inequalities by prioritizing economic output while obscuring how gains are distributed and overlooking the social and environmental costs of growth. In response to growing recognition that GDP alone provides an incomplete picture of progress, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres appointed the independent High-Level Expert Group (HLEG) on Beyond GDP in May 2025, following a mandate from Member States in the Pact for the Future.
On May 7 the HLEG presented its report Counting what counts: A Compass of Progress for People and Planet, which recommends new metrics to assess countries’ progress beyond economic output through GDP, accounting for people’s and the planet’s well-being. Called for by Action 53 of the Pact for the Future, the report launches an intergovernmental process to develop a consensus-based global framework of sustainable, equitable, and inclusive indicators to complement GDP.
However, UN agencies have yet to change how they measure and report productivity growth. UNDESA’s latest World Economic Situation and Prospects as of mid-2026 is still heavily GDP-centered despite acknowledging GDP’s limitations and referencing the HLEG’s proposed framework. UNDP’s latest assessment of the Iran war’s impact on the Arab region’s economic growth, despite tracking declines in health and education through its Human Development Index, still relies on GDP as the main benchmark.
Whether the Beyond GDP agenda produces meaningful change will ultimately depend on Member States’ willingness to incorporate the HLEG’s recommendations into national frameworks. A key test of that commitment is now approaching, with the August 26 deadline for stakeholders to submit contributions to the Elements Paper on Beyond GDP that will guide future discussions.
The Limits of GDP
GDP has been the dominant measure of national economic performance because it enables comparisons across countries and over time. Yet there is growing global consensus that GDP fails to capture crucial dimensions of progress, including sustainability, equity, and well-being. Hence, moving beyond GDP is also a matter of equity. Current concessional finance criteria overlook structural and environmental vulnerabilities underpinning growth, including resource depletion and other environmental costs. Likewise, international metrics guiding lending, debt, and trade rules prioritize national income, creditworthiness, and debt sustainability, discouraging governments from investing in health, education, and climate policies that generate long-term development benefits without necessarily boosting GDP.
GDP’s exclusive focus on economic output ignores environmental and social determinants of well-being. Moreover, GDP places disproportionate weight on industrial sectors that drive income growth while increasing CO2 emissions, notably energy and agriculture, and leaves out negative externalities of growth like pollution, environmental degradation, and biodiversity loss. Finally, GDP does not account for informal economic activity, including unpaid care work within households, thus obscuring the links between economic prosperity, welfare, and human rights. Reforming metrics and models is particularly urgent given the broader setbacks in advancing the 2030 Agenda, with only 16% of the SDGs on track for 2030.
Momentum is Building
The HLEG on Beyond GDP’s Counting what Counts report brings full circle more than a decade of UN efforts to rethink economic progress. It builds on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (particularly SDG17), the Secretary-General’s Our Common Agenda, Policy Brief 4 on Meaningful Youth Engagement in Policy and Decision-making Processes Valuing What Counts: Framework to Progress Beyond Gross Domestic Product, and the UN High-Level Committee on Programmes report Valuing What Counts: United Nations System-wide Contribution on Progress Beyond Gross Domestic Product.
Political momentum culminated in Action 53 of the Pact for the Future, through which UN Member States requested that the Secretary-General establish the independent HLEG on Beyond GDP and committed to launching an intergovernmental process upon publication of its final report. As per the Pact’s timeline, the Secretary-General appointed 14 experts in May 2025, drawn from a pool of international scholars across multiple disciplines. In November 2025, the HLEG on Beyond GDP published its Interim Progress Report following a multi-stakeholder open consultation process. In May 2026, the HLEG presented its final recommendations.
The final report seeks to overcome the fragmentation of existing alternative frameworks, such as the Human Development Index, the Multidimensional Poverty Index, and OECD’s well-being indicators. It proposes a dashboard of 31 country-owned, universally applicable indicators organized around a common conceptual framework, and identifies priorities for implementation, statistical development, and national uptake. Drawing extensively on SDG indicators, it measures four dimensions of progress: foundational principles, current well-being, equity and inclusion, and sustainability and resilience.
What Comes Next
The report’s release on May 7 launched the intergovernmental process co-facilitated by Guyana and Spain with multi-stakeholder consultations involving Member States, international financial institutions, statistical bodies, researchers, UN entities, and civil society. These consultations aim to help governments adapt the proposed indicators to national priorities while fostering broad stakeholder participation. Country-level pilot initiatives under UN auspices are also envisioned. On July 10, with a letter to Member States, Spain launched a call for contributions by all stakeholders to prepare the Elements Paper on Beyond GDP to include key issues to address in future discussions. The Beyond GDP agenda also featured prominently during the High Level Political Forum in July, with a dedicated side event on its practical implementation.
The Beyond GDP report acknowledges successful implementation will depend largely on data availability, consistent reporting and methodological standards, predictable funding, and, above all, sustained political commitment. Since the adoption of the Pact for the Future, which catalyzed momentum around reviving the multilateral agenda, persistent UN paralysis and divisions over major global crises highlight multilateralism’s struggle to deliver impactful solutions. Whether Member States can follow through on their pledge articulated in the Pact for the Future and unite behind replacing an outdated, yet dominant tool of global and national policy-making remains uncertain.
The Ball is in Member States’ Court
As foreign policy driven by nationalism and capitalism undermine international cooperation, it is difficult to predict that Member States will rise to the occasion and embrace a fundamental paradigm shift in how wealth is measured, generated, and distributed. Supporting the Beyond GDP agenda requires more than adopting inclusive, equitable, and sustainable metrics; it also demands a vision of global development in which countries are assessed not solely by economic output but also by their work to enhance the well-being of their people and the planet. The sharp rise in global military spending, the historic decline in foreign aid, and surge in conflicts, reflect the erosion of a global order founded on cooperation. For the Beyond GDP reform agenda to translate into meaningful change, governments must do more than refine their statistical dashboards. Lasting progress requires addressing the political imbalances and economic inequalities undergirding global power dynamics. An important open question remains: Will UN Member States honor their pledges made in the Pact for the Future? Upcoming milestones, including the opening of the new UN General Assembly session in September 2026, and the July 2027 High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development, which will start off discussions on the post-2030 agenda, may signal the future trajectory of the Beyond GDP process.
Although the ball is now in Member States’ court, UN leadership will be critical to sustain momentum and turn the Beyond GDP agenda into action. As the UN prepares to select its new Secretary-General amid declining confidence in its ability to deliver results, progress with the Beyond GDP agenda could be a bellwether of whether the organization and its Member States can translate commitments into meaningful change.
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