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June 2024
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June 2024
Emerging Pathways Beyond GDP: Presentation of the High-Level Expert Group’s Emerging Recommendations and Intergenerational Dialogue with Youth Moving Beyond GDP
Official Solutions Session Proposal
The Second World Summit for Social Development (World Social Summit) provides a crucial opportunity to accelerate the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as well as the Pact for the Future. The objective of the World Social Summit is to foster inclusive social development and address key challenges to achieve well-being for all. However, globally, progress and well-being continue to be measured predominantly by gross domestic product (GDP), which focuses solely on economic output, overlooking the social and environmental dimensions of sustainable development. It also fails to account for long-term impacts as well as distributional equity.
In line with this imperative, this Solutions Session serves as the presentation of the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Expert Group on Beyond GDP’s (High-Level Expert Group) emerging recommendations. These initial recommendations aim to support a forthcoming global framework to inform future intergovernmental negotiations and policymaking processes at both national and global levels to measure progress on sustainable development by complementing or going beyond GDP. This presentation is an important milestone in the work of the High-Level Expert Group toward transitioning from GDP as the dominant metric to a more inclusive, equitable, and sustainable framework for measuring progress on sustainable development.
Throughout the High-Level Expert Group’s work, an inclusive process to which all stakeholders can contribute has been vital. In this regard, the World Social Summit serves as an important platform for global dialogue and collaborative action on social development issues and social progress, ensuring that no one is left behind in our global sustainable development journey. Current young people and future generations are not only the inheritors of these systems but, in the case of today’s youth, also active changemakers. The 2030 Agenda is grounded in the principle of intergenerational equity, which asserts that the needs of the present must be met without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own (PP6 and OP18). The Pact for the Future further emphasizes the importance of protecting the needs and interests of both present and future generations (PP1).
This Solutions Session serves as a forum for a presentation of the High-Level Expert Group’s emerging recommendations on measures of progress on sustainable development that complement and go beyond GDP. The first presentation of their initial recommendations serves as a launching point for wider public discussion, national uptake, and intergovernmental negotiation.
Building on the High-Level Expert Group’s consultative process, the session will feature responses from diverse stakeholders, including through the Youth Network on Beyond GDP, highlighting how intergenerational perspectives across sectors have helped shape these recommendations.
This session aims to create a space for multi-stakeholder and intergenerational exchange to:
Designed as a forward-looking, participatory, and collaborative dialogue, the session aligns with the World Social Summit’s call for interactive Solutions Sessions that promote co-development and active participation. It aims to inform commitments on inclusive well-being for all, anchored in the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs.
The event also aligns with the Zero Draft of the Political Declaration of the World Social Summit, with SDG Target 17.19, and with Action 53 of the Pact for the Future, which supports the development of new global frameworks to move beyond GDP. It will use the format of a collaborative dialogue to foster knowledge exchange and practical co-creation of next steps, particularly around scalable actions and partnerships to support intergenerational equity in the adoption and implementation of the High-Level Expert Group’s recommendations.
This in-person session will be structured as a collaborative problem-solving dialogue to foster intergenerational exchange and active engagement between the High-Level Expert Group and diverse stakeholders, including Member States, young people, experts, and civil society.
The session will include three interactive segments:
1. Presentation of the High-Level Expert Group’s Emerging Recommendations (30 mins)
The High-Level Expert Group will formally present its emerging recommendations, including elements of its conceptual framework and the overall roadmap proposed to advance the wider Beyond GDP movement.
2. Intergenerational Dialogue: Reactions and Co-Creating Solutions (30 mins)
An open, facilitated dialogue for representatives of the Youth Network on Beyond GDP and key stakeholders to share their reactions to the emerging recommendations and highlight opportunities for participatory, transformative policymaking rooted in intergenerational equity. Topics may include:
3. Panel: From Recommendations to Action — How Local and National Governments Can Move Towards Beyond GDP (30 mins)
This panel will feature representatives from local and national governments leading on Beyond GDP implementation and academic partners. Together, they will explore how to move from conceptual recommendations to real-world policy change. Panelists will share practical insights on enabling policy environments, institutional readiness, and research-policy linkages that support the uptake of Beyond GDP approaches.
The Solutions Session will be co-hosted by the High-Level Expert Group on Beyond GDP. The session is co-hosted with the “Youth Moving Beyond GDP” initiative: Beyond Lab, Rethinking Economics International, and UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD) as its core partners, and the Government of Germany, whose Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) provides generous support to the initiative.
Other governments were invited as co-organizers (TBC).
The Solutions Session will prominently follow a pluri-disciplinary, intergenerationally equitable, and multi-stakeholder approach.
