Aspirations, life chances and functionings: a dynamic conception of well-being.

Assessing sustainable development consists in evaluating a) development defined as the well-being of current generations (and therefore, the effectiveness of extant patterns of production and consumption in satisfying needs and aspirations) and b) sustainability: the amount and productive potential of resources left to future generations. There is a large consensus now (at least inside the sustainable development community, but this one is getting larger and larger) that GNP (or GDP) is -– at best – insufficient for assessing development and inappropriate for evaluating sustainability. Since the publication of the Brundtland report in 1987 and still more since the Conference on Environment and Development in 1991 in Rio, the indicators industry has been intensely busy in trying to overcome (or bypass) the GDP’s limitations.

Boulanger P-M., Lefin L., Bauler T., Prignot N. (2009), Aspirations, life chances and functionings: a dynamic conception of well-being. International conference of the European Society for Ecological Economics ‘Transformation, innovation and adaptation for sustainability’, 29 June - 02 July 2009, Ljubljana, Slovenia.