Sustainability can sometimes feel like a hard vision to sell to people – it is often seen as being synonymous with cutting back on things that are enjoyable – things that make us happy. This is why it is so important to link well-being and sustainability in the way we think about social progress. By incorporating this vision into the policies that are designed to improve society we can create a realistic goal of achieving sustainability while also promoting people’s well-being. At the Centre for Well-being at nef (the new economics foundation) we argue that ‘progress’ must mean well-being for all and this means that sustainability is essential – after all, there is no point ‘performing well’ and enjoying life today if it leads to societal collapse tomorrow and insufficient resources for future generations to enjoy life. Our latest report, Measuring our progress: The power of well-being, proposes a framework to understand how sustainability and well-being tie together. nef’s framework presents the key relationship between resources and goals. It asks, in effect, how efficient we are at achieving the goal we want – high well-being for all – given our limited planetary resources. The answer will largely depend on how efficient our human systems – things like the economy, democracy, education system and other human activities – are at using resources sustainably, and how efficient these human systems are at delivering high well-being for all citizens. In other words, a sustainable view of progress is one that recognises well-being as the goal of societal progress instead of intermediate aims such as economic growth. So adopting a focus on well-being as the ultimate outcome is a crucial part of the sustainability agenda. On a practical policy level, one of the major tasks lies in addressing the question of how policy-makers at all levels of government can use our limited resources more efficiently to create well-being. Caerphilly County Borough answered this question by creating a list of three objectives and targets for 2030 based on the idea behind another of nef’s reports, The (un)Happy Planet Index: to promote longer healthier lives; to promote fulfilled and satisfied lives; and to consume less resources. Progress on these three objectives is measured using Caerphilly’s Sustainability Index (an efficiency measure of the ecological cost of having high life expectancy and life satisfaction). Recently the sustainability index has been used by Caerphilly, Torfaen and Carmarthenshire County Borough Councils and the Welsh Local Government Association to produce an interactive web-based version for children called the Green Grin-o-meter. However this is rare: in most cases improved sustainability or well-being are not the main objective but are by-products of policies designed for other purposes. The well-being agenda is receiving increasing media and political attention. We now need to make sure that this vision of well-being – good lives now – is used alongside sustainability – good lives in the future – to drive real changes in the way that we design policies. Visit nef. VIEWPOINT July 2011 Page 10

Story courtesy of Cymmal Cymru