The Happy Planet Index

nef's Happy Planet Index is an innovative measure that shows the ecological efficiency with which human well-being is created around the world.

It is the first ever index to combine environmental impact with well-being to measure the environmental efficiency with which country by country, people live long and happy lives. The second compilation of the global HPI, published in July 2009, shows that we are still far from achieving sustainable well-being and puts forward a vision of what we need to do to get there.

The Index doesn’t reveal the ‘happiest’ country in the world. It shows the relative efficiency with which nations convert the planet’s natural resources into long and happy lives for their citizens. The nations that top the Index demonstrate that it is possible to achieve high life satisfation and long life expectancy without over-stretching the planet’s resources.

The HPI shows that around the world, high levels of resource consumption do not reliably produce high levels of well-being. It also reveals that there are different routes to achieving comparable levels of well-being. The model followed by the West can provide widespread longevity and variable life satisfaction, but it does so only at a vast and ultimately counter-productive cost in terms of resource consumption

Find out more at www.happyplanetindex.org