Using ‘Equitable and Sustainable Wellbeing’ to Build the Post-MDGs Framework

During the last decade a multidimensional vision of progress of societies has been gathering increasing attention in developed and developing countries. A worldwide effort about the need to go ‘beyond GDP’ as a measure of societal progress has been organised around the OECD World Forums using the concept of ‘equitable and sustainable wellbeing’, which defines the ‘wellbeing of a society’ (or societal wellbeing) as the sum of the human wellbeing and the ecosystem condition and ‘progress of a society’ (or societal progress) as the improvement in human wellbeing and the ecosystem condition. In the context of the future model of development, which has to emerge from the post-2015 discussion, the concept of societal progress may represent a common framework for all countries of the world regardless of their level of income, model of consumption, social or political structure or environmental challenges.