What the HPI tells us

On a scale of 0 to 100 for the HPI, we have a target for nations to aspire to by 2050 of 89. This is based on attainable levels of life expectancy and well-being and a reasonably-sized ecological footprint.

Based on the results of HPI 2.0, published in July 2009, the highest HPI score is only 76.1, scored by Costa Rica. The lowest, and perhaps less surprising than some other results, is Zimbabwe’s at 16.6. No country achieves an overall high score and no country does well on all three indicators. Costa Rica, for example, has an ecological of life expectancy at 69 years.

The message is that when we measure the efficiency with which countries enable the fundamental inputs of natural resources to be turned into the ultimate ends of long and happy lives, all can do better.

This conclusion is less surprising in the light of our argument that governments have been concentrating on the wrong indicators for too long. If you have the wrong map, you are unlikely to reach your destination. But the nations that do perform well on the HPI provide valuable insights into how we could do things differently:

- On the global HPI, Latin America tops the Index. Nine of the top ten nations in the HPI are in Latin America. In general, middle-income countries such as those in Latin America and South East Asia tend to be the closest to achieving sustainable well-being. In other words, our current framework achieves its optimum at middle-income levels, but even that optimum does not represent good lives that do not cost the Earth.

- It is interesting to note that many of the countries that do well are composed of small islands (including the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Cuba and the Philippines). Half of the ten small island nations included in the latest global HPI are in the top 20 per cent of the HPI rankings. Only one of the remaining five is not in the top-half of the rankings. The remarkable survival and relative success of other islands suggests that more immediate contact with, and hence a greater awareness of, physical limits can successfully encourage ecological efficiency.

What the HPI doesn’t tell us

The HPI is not an indicator of the happiest country on the planet, or the best place to live. Nor does it indicate the most developed country in the traditional sense, or the most environmentally friendly. Instead, the HPI combines all of these providing a method of comparing countries’ progress towards the goal of providing long-term well-being for all without exceeding the limits of equitable resource consumption.

As is generally the case with composite indicators, it is possible for countries to achieve comparable scores on the HPI for quite different reasons. However, because the HPI consists of three separate components that are conceptually distinct from one another yet combined intuitively, analysing the differences between such countries is both relatively straightforward and extremely informative from a policy perspective.

HPI over time

The most recent HPI report also makes it possible to look at trends in HPI over time for major countries across the world. The scores of the world’s most developed nations, the members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), plummeted from the 1960s to the late 1970s. Although there have been some gains since then, HPI scores were still higher in 1961 than in 2005. Life satisfaction and life expectancy combined have increased 15 per cent over the 45-year period, but it has come at an earth-shattering cost – an increase in ecological footprint per head of 72 per cent.

Of a group of 36 major nations it was possible to track over time in detail, around two-thirds increased their HPI scores marginally between 1990 and 2005, but the three largest countries in the world China, India and the USA (all aggressively pursuing growth-based development models) have all seen their HPI scores drop in that time.

European HPI

The European Happy planet Index reveals that Europe as a whole is less carbon efficient at delivering human well-being in terms of relatively happy, long lives to its citizens than it was over 40 years ago.
Overall, the Index reveals that:

- Iceland tops the European Index. Scandinavian countries are the most efficient – achieving the highest levels of well-being in Europe at relatively low environmental cost with Sweden and Norway joining Iceland at the top of the HPI table.

- Major European nations trail well behind – Spain performs best of a poor bunch coming in 12th, followed by Italy at 14th, Germany 15th and France 18th on the Index of carbon efficiency and well-being.

- The UK trails well behind, coming 21st in the league of 30 nations. Only transition economies, and Portugal, Greece, and Luxembourg do worse.