An estimate of the Genuine Progress Indicator for Iceland, 2000–2019

Target 19 of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goal 17 calls for the use of alternative measures of economic welfare in addition to Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) is an example of such a measure, including various non-market benefits and environment...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Ecological Economics
Main Authors: Cook, David, Davíðsdóttir, Brynhildur
Other Authors: Umhverfis- og auðlindafræði (HÍ), Environment and Natural Resources (UI), Verkfræði- og náttúruvísindasvið (HÍ), School of Engineering and Natural Sciences (UI), Háskóli Íslands, University of Iceland
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Elsevier 2021
Subjects:
Economics and Econometrics
General Environmental Science
Sjálfbærni
Hagmælingar
Iceland
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11815/3158
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2021.107154
Description
Summary:Target 19 of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goal 17 calls for the use of alternative measures of economic welfare in addition to Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) is an example of such a measure, including various non-market benefits and environmental and social costs unaccounted for in GDP. This study presents the results from the first estimate of the GPI for Iceland over the period 2000–2019. Iceland represents an interesting case study given its remoteness, environmental vulnerability, natural resource dependency, and fluctuating economic performance in recent years, which has featured a banking collapse and tourism-fuelled resurgence. The study finds that Iceland's GPI was equal to between 2.41 and 3.05 times the value of national GDP. Statistics for both GDP and the GPI peaked in 2019 at 2,970,076 (USD M 24,237) and 7,163,300 million ISK (USD M 58,443), respectively. Mean annual rates of per capita expansion for both GDP and the GPI were 2.1% and 0.6%, respectively. Despite the scale of the Icelandic GPI, the study also revealed non-negligible values for environmental and social costs which, in aggregate, were equal to between 17.8% and 25.4% of the value of consumption. This paper has received no external sources of funding. The main author, David Cook, is in receipt of a Post-Doctoral Fellowship Grant from the University of Iceland.

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