Najam Interviewed by BBC on Future of GDP
Pardee School Dean Emeritus and Professor Adil Najam was Interviewed by the BBC Radio show The Climate Question (30 April, 2023) in the episode titled “Is there a greener way to rank successful economies?” Najam was joined by other leading experts of measuring development and environment to discuss the future of the GDP (Gross Development Product) as a measure of development and comment on its strengths and weaknesses.
The episode and discussion can be heard in full here:
The description of the episode, as provided by BBC, is as follows:
Many blame our obsession with economic growth as being one of the biggest drivers of climate change. The United Nations is currently looking at options for what might replace Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as the world’s primary go-to indicator of success, taking into account factors including sustainability and the natural environment. If this happens, it would be the biggest shift in how economies are measured since nations first started using GDP in 1953, 70 years ago.
Najam suggested that the while the GDP has many and long-known problems as a measure, its power comes from its simplicity and its wide usage. He suggested that its replacement will, therefore, not be easy and maybe not possible; even if the need to do so is strong. Najam also spoke about ‘growth’ as a concept and suggested that our notions of growth derive partly from how GDP has been constructed as a ‘League table’ for countries and is very problematic. He pointed out that even though many people think GDP ‘measures’ development, it is in fact a measure of economic activity and assumes that more activity is always better and that is where the challenge from environment and climate becomes most relevant.
Adil Najam is a global public policy expert who served as the Inaugural Dean of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University and was the former Vice-Chancellor of the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS). While currently on sabbatical he is based at the University of Oxford’s Wolfson College and the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. His research focuses on issues of global public policy, especially those related to global climate change, South Asia, global governance, environment and development, and human development. Read more about Najam on his faculty profile.