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What Really Counts is an essential, firsthand story of the promise and challenges of accounting for social, economic, and environmental benefits. Ronald Colman recounts two decades of working with three governments to adopt measures capable of quantifying factors that GDP overlooks.
List of contents
A Note to Readers: Coronavirus—a Turning Point for Humanity?
Prologue
1. The Magic Number
2. Counting What Matters
3. A Nova Scotia Start
4. The New Measures in Action
5. Scaling Up
6. Challenges Behind the Scenes
7. Genuine Progress Meets Politics
8. A New Zealand Interlude
9. Invitation to Bhutan
10. (Mis)Measuring Gross National Happiness
11. Educating for Gross National Happiness
12. The Gap Between Words and Action
13. A “New Economic Paradigm” for the World
14. Can Genuine Progress Really Happen?
15. Forging a New Economy
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
About the author
Ronald Colman is the founder and former executive director of GPI Atlantic, a nonprofit research group that built an index of well-being and sustainable development in Nova Scotia. He has worked with New Zealand government bodies and communities on measures of well-being and spent ten years in Bhutan assisting the government’s development of holistic progress measures, a new global economic paradigm, and other initiatives.
Summary
What Really Counts is an essential, firsthand story of the promise and challenges of accounting for social, economic, and environmental benefits. Ronald Colman recounts two decades of working with three governments to adopt measures capable of quantifying factors that GDP overlooks.
Additional text
I had the pleasure of working with Ronald Colman on the establishment of GPI Atlantic. He worked tirelessly on this mission in Nova Scotia and Bhutan, producing first-class, thoroughly researched reports that push for political change on levels from local to international. This book is timely and readable in its understanding measures of progress in terms of social and intergenerational equity.
