What is the Youth Network on Beyond GDP
The Network advocates through United Nations processes and initiatives to articulate and argue for an economics that works for people and planet. This is a space for young people, by young people, leveraging the UN’s convening power and the international network of economic thinkers at Beyond Lab, Rethinking Economics International and UNCTAD.
Through the network young economic thinkers are empowered to:
- Provide educational leadership around the Beyond GDP agenda to young people across social movements
- Ensure that issues of intergenerational equity and economic and social justice act as core principles in the redesigning of economic practice.
- Institutionalise intergenerational equity as a core principle in redesigning economic systems.
Our story
The “Youth Moving Beyond GDP” initiative stems from the Beyond Lab’s “What’s Next” on Rethinking Economic Systems for Long-term Sustainability, organised in November 2023, which explored how concepts such as beyond GDP can refocus economic systems to support people (both current and future generations) and planet.
In February 2024, the initiative kicked off with the global Essay Competition “What Counts in the Future? A Youth Perspective on Measuring What We Value”. The competition invited young people to share their perspectives on values and priorities for frameworks that complement or move beyond GDP. Over 600 essays were submitted, with the top ten essays featured in a joint publication and the top five winners invited to a high-level dialogue in Geneva in April 2024. The insights gathered from this competition form the initiative’s foundation.
Since then, multiple dialogues, including official side events of the Summit of the Future Action Days and the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4), have been held to formally launch the initiative and ensure that the voices of young people and future generations are central to policymaking.
The Challenge
Sustainable development, as outlined in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), is grounded in the principle of intergenerational equity. This principle asserts that the needs of the present must be met without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own. However, political, social, and economic decisions often prioritise short-term gains over long-term sustainability, reinforced by the traditional reliance on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as the primary measure of progress, development, and well-being.
The GDP measure is limited by its short-term economic focus and its failure to account for other critical dimensions of sustainable development, namely social and environmental, needed for a more comprehensive understanding of well-being for both people and planet. By prioritising short-term, extractive economic goals, GDP neglects these vital dimensions of sustainability and contributes to unsustainable practices, negative long-term spillover effects, and a “debt to future generations.” This compromises both human well-being and the planet’s long-term viability.
As those who will inherit current economic systems, young people and the needs of future generations must play a central role in shaping the transition toward a framework for measuring progress on sustainable development that complements and goes beyond GDP.
Our Impact
- Meaningful and inclusive engagement of young people and integration of intergenerational perspectives into convenings and processes on measures that complement and go beyond GDP.
- Publication and dissemination of policy recommendations from young people, including on the needs of future generations, on how to complement and go beyond GDP, and building on insights from the global youth essay competition.
- Establishment of a Youth Network to serve as a “sounding board” for Member States and the Secretary-General’s High-Level Expert Group on Beyond GDP.
- Development of grassroots engagement activities to ensure that intergenerational perspectives remain central to UN-led intergovernmental and national processes, providing a sustained, bottom-up approach to reshaping economic systems.