Following its launch on Saturday, the Happy Planet Index 2.0 report has garnered lots of attention from the media. Here’s a selection of some of the top articles and programmes.
The BBC’s home affairs editor Mark Easton got in early, with a Saturday morning blog post where he explored the HPI results with his customary detail. Mark highlighted the important link, which we also make in our report, between the HPI and the work of the UK government’s Sustainable Development Commission, whose report Prosperity without Growth?, has been looking at alternative models of progress and economic success. There were also a number of items on BBC news programmes, including Nic Marks, the founder of the centre for well-being, taking part in a relaxed interview with John Pienaar on Saturday’s
Weekend News programme on Radio 5 Live, and packages on the story on the BBC World Service and Radio 4 news. Saamah Abdallah, the lead author of the HPI report, was interviewed by the BBC Caribbean Service and made use of his fluent Spanish in an interview with BBC Mundo.
UK press coverage, such as the story The Telegraph tended to focus on the overall HPI rankings, and Costa Rica’s place at the top of them, but The Guardian also picked up on our analysis showing a drop in the scores of OECD countries since 1961 and The Financial Times pointed out the relevance to the French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s Commission on the measurement of economic performance and social progress. The story was Saturday’s editor’s pick on the Sky News website, and Sky also interviewed Saamah Abdallah for their TV news programme.
The story has been covered widely internationally, fromCNN in America, to Jamaica, to Iran. An article by report co-author Juliet Michaelson was published in both English and Chinese on the China Dialogue website. Meanwhile, the Sydney Morning Herald has now corrected its initial claim that Australia had come third in the Index (we’re not sure where that came from), with the correct story of its ranking in 102nd place.
That’s just a taste of the wide reporting that’s out there in print, on the web and in the blogosphere. Watch this space for further news of the impact of HPI 2.0 on the world...
