It is the first ever index to combine environmental impact with human well-being to measure the environmental efficiency with which country by country, people live long and happy lives.
By addressing the relative success or failure of countries in supporting good lives for their citizens, whilst respecting the environmental resource limits upon which our lives depend, the HPI has much to teach us. Analysing its results could help us to move towards a world where we can all live good lives without costing the earth.
The Happy Planet Index (HPI) is an innovative new measure that shows the ecological efficiency with which human well-being is delivered around the world. It is the first ever index to combine environmental impact with well-being to measure the environmental efficiency with which country by country, people live long and happy lives.
The Index doesn’t reveal the ‘happiest’ country in the world. It shows the relative efficiency with which nations convert the planet’s natural resources into long and happy lives for their citizens. The nations that top the Index aren’t the happiest places in the world, but the nations that score well show that achieving, long, happy lives without over-stretching the planet’s resources is possible. The HPI shows that around the world, high levels of resource consumption do not reliably produce high levels of well-being (life-satisfaction), and that it is possible to produce high levels of well-being without excessive consumption of the Earth’s resources. It also reveals that there are different routes to achieving comparable levels of well-being. The model followed by the West can provide widespread longevity and variable life satisfaction, but it does so only at a vast and ultimately counter-productive cost in terms of resource consumption.
The Happy Planet Index (HPI) strips the view of the economy back to its absolute basics: what we put in (resources), and what comes out (human lives of different length and happiness). The resulting Index of the 178 nations for which data is available, reveals that the world as a whole has a long way to go. In terms of delivering long and meaningful lives within the Earth’s environmental limits - all nations could do better. No country achieves an overall ‘high’ score on the Index, and no country does well on all three indicators.
No single country listed in the Happy Planet Index has everything right. We have to acknowledge from the start that while some countries are more efficient than others at delivering long, happy lives for their people, every country has its problems and no country performs as well as it could. Yet, fascinatingly, it is possible to see patterns emerging that point to how we might better achieve long and happy lives for all, whilst living within our environmental means.
The challenge will be whether we can learn the lessons of the HPI and apply them.
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. Put another way, it represents the efficiency with which countries convert the earth’s finite resources into well-being experienced by their citizens.
In an age of climate change, when it is more important than ever that we use our resources efficiently, the European Happy planet Index reveals that Europe as a whole is less carbon efficient at delivering human well-being in terms of relatively happy, long lives to its citizens than it was over 40 years ago.
Overall, the Index reveals that:
- Iceland tops the Index. Scandinavian countries are the most efficient – achieving the highest levels of well-being in Europe at relatively low environmental cost with Sweden and Norway joining Iceland at the top of the HPI table.
- Major European nations trail well behind – Spain performs best of a poor bunch coming in 12th, followed by Italy at 14th, Germany 15th and France 18th on the Index of carbon efficiency and well-being.
- The UK trails well behind, coming 21st in the league of 30 nations. Only transition economies, and Portugal, Greece, and Luxembourg do worse.
Europe as a whole has become less efficient, not more, in translating fossil fuel use into relatively long and happy lives. In fact, the Index reveals that Europe is less carbon efficient now than it was in 1961.On current performance, Europe is not remotely close to navigating an economic course set to reach its desired location on climate policy. It needs to achieve a carbon footprint small enough to help prevent the planet warming by more than 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels. This requires cuts in emissions by industrialised nations of between 70 and 80 per cent by 2050 compared to 1990 levels according to Sir Nicholas Stern, author of the UK Treasury’s influential report on the economics of climate change.
Worse still, as the European Happy Planet Index reveals, Europe is heading in the wrong direction, its carbon footprint still growing, and its level of carbon efficiency in terms of fuelling happy, long lives is lower than it was over 40 years ago.
To reverse this trend, we need to look to the example of those European countries that are already the most efficient – some of the most socially progressive and technologically advanced nations anywhere in the world. Countries like Iceland, the highest scoring nation on the 2007 European Happy Planet Index clearly show that happiness doesn’t have to cost the earth. Iceland’s combination of strong social policies and extensive use of renewable energy demonstrate that living within our environmental means doesn’t mean sacrificing human well-being – in fact, it could even make us happier. Countries that have most closely followed the Anglo-Saxon, strongly market-led economic model show up as the least efficient on the Index.
Why do we need the Happy Planet Index?
In the Western world, economics is at the heart of our thinking about most issues. When we talk of growth or development, we are typically thinking about the distribution and flow of money. A nation’s progress is also most commonly measured in terms of GDP. Defined as the total value of a country’s annual output of goods and services. GDP is the standard measure of economic activity and the key headline indicator for government policy in the vast majority of countries.
GDP was never intended to function as an indicator of well-being. Even the economist Simon Küznets, a central figure in the development of GDP, in 1934 urged the US Congress to remember “The welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income.” Yet, until quite recently, it has routinely been assumed to be a reliable proxy for standard of living.
The logic underlying this was that- growth in GDP implies economic activity, which in turn implies that people are spending money and improving their quality of life. But GDP turns out to be a poor indicator of welfare in several key respects. For a start, interpreting it as a standard-of-living measure means assuming that income is strongly correlated with national well-being, such that -all else being equal general well-being will increase as the economy grows. It has been repeatedly proven in recent years that this is simply not true. Undoubtedly, a relationship exists between income and well-being, but after a certain, surprisingly low level of GDP is reached, the strength of this relationship declines markedly.
GDP is also insensitive to the distribution of income within countries. A country with high rates of poverty, a small but affluent elite, and high exports could have a similar GDP per capita to one with comparably little inequality and a thriving domestic economy. GDP also fails to distinguish money spent correcting or compensating for undesirable events. This can lead to some apparently perverse results. For example, it has been estimated that the Enron accounting scandal may have contributed up to $1 billion to US GDP. Natural disasters - hurricanes, floods and so on -also tend to boost GDP, because huge amounts of public money are typically spent in mitigating the resulting damage. From an environmental perspective this is a disastrous oversight - GDP counts resource consumption, but takes no account whatsoever of the extent to which it can be maintained, or its real cost.
nef's Global Manifesto for a happier planet
nef’s Global Manifesto for a happier planet makes recommendations for each component of the HPI. The score that different nations achieve on constituent parts of the Index, provides an indication of which component policy-makers in countries around the world need to prioritise:
1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.
Increasing material wealth in (so-called) developed countries does not lead to greater happiness, and that extreme poverty systematically undermines people’s opportunities to build good lives for themselves and their families. We urgently need to redesign our global systems to more equitably distribute the things people rely on for their day-to-day livelihoods, for example: income, and access to land, food and other resources.
2. Improve healthcare.
High life expectancy in a country reflects good healthcare and living conditions, and has a positive relationship to people’s sense of well-being. Globally we need to increase access to clean water, halt the rise in diseases such as HIV/AIDS and malaria, and reduce child and maternal mortality. The World Health Organization estimates that everyone in the world could be provided with a good level of basic healthcare for just $43 per person, per year.
3. Relieve debt.
Many developing countries are forced to prioritise the service of crippling financial debt over providing a basic standard of living. Debt sustainability calculations should be based on the amount of revenue that a government can be expected to raise without increasing poverty or compromising future development.
4. Shift values.
Value systems that emphasise individualism and material consumption are detrimental to well-being, whereas those that promote social interaction and a sense of relatedness are profoundly positive. Government should provide more support for local community initiatives, sports teams, arts projects and so on, whilst acting to discourage the development of materialist values where possible (for example, by banning advertising directed at children).
5. Support meaningful lives.
Governments should recognise the contribution of individuals to economic, social, cultural, and civic life and value unpaid activity. Employers should be encouraged to enable their employees to work flexibly, allowing them to develop full lives outside of the workplace and make time to undertake voluntary work. They should also strive to provide challenges and opportunities for personal development at work.
6. Empower people and promote good governance.
A sense of autonomy is important at all levels for people to thrive, and there is growing evidence that engaging citizens in democratic processes leads to both a more vibrant society and happier citizens. Promoting open and effective governance nationally and internationally, including the peaceful resolution of conflicts and elimination of systematic corruption, is important for all of us achieving greater well-being in the long term.
7. Identify environmental limits and design economic policy to work within them.
The ecological footprint gives us a measure of the Earth’s biocapacity that, if over-stretched, leads to long-term environmental degradation. Globally we need to live within our environmental means. One-planet living should become an official target of government policy with a pathway and timetable to achieve it. (The UK currently consumes at just over three times this level. If everyone in the world consumed as we do in the UK, we would need 3.1 planets like Earth to support us.)
8. Design systems for sustainable consumption and production.
We need to reverse the loss of environmental resources, conserve our ecosystems and integrate a sustainable development approach throughout the global community. Ecological taxation can be used to make the price of goods include their full environmental cost, and to encourage behaviour change. Clear consistent labelling that warns of the consequences of consumption, as with tobacco, would also help, as well as giving manufacturers full life-cycle responsibility for what they produce.
9. Work to tackle climate change.
For the UK to play its part in preventing catastrophic and irreversible global warming it is estimated that we will need to cut our greenhouse gas emissions by at least three per cent every year. More broadly, rich countries need to meet and exceed their targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions set under the Kyoto Protocol, cutting emissions to a level commensurate with halting global warming so that temperature rise is kept well below 2°C. After 2012, and in subsequent commitment periods of the Kyoto Protocol, emissions cuts should put industrialised countries on track to savings of up to 80 per cent by 2050.
10. Measure what matters.
Note: Please go to the site for the description of each of the above.
HPI and rankings of selected countries (based on most recent study 2006):
Australia HPI 34.1 Rank 139/178
Barbados HPI 52.7 Rank 43/178
Bhutan HPI 61.1 Rank 13/178
Canada HPI 39.8 Rank 111/178
China HPI 56 Rank 31/178
Denmark HPI 41.4 Rank 99/178
Germany HPI 43.8 Rank 81/178
India HPI 48.7 Rank 62/178
Israel HPI 39.1 Rank 117/178
Nepal HPI 50 Rank 54/178
Nigeria HPI 31.1 Rank 146/178
UK HPI 40.3 Rank 108/178
USA HPI 28.8 Rank 150/178
Vanuatu HPI 68.2 Rank 1/178
Philippines HPI 59.2 Rank 17/178
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QaR
November 2009 
Mila
The logical and analytical type. They are especialy attuned to difficult creative and intellectual challenges and always look for something more complex to dig into. They are great at finding subtle connections between things and imagine far-reaching implications. 
The independent and problem-solving type. They are especially attuned to the demands of the moment are masters of responding to challenges that arise spontaneously. They generally prefer to think things out for themselves and often avoid inter-personal conflicts. 
The active and play-ful type. They are especially attuned to people and things around them and often full of energy, talking, joking and engaging in physical out-door activities. 
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