Sustainability, Well-Being and Socio-Environmental Quality

This edited volume argues for multidimensional, policy-relevant measures of well-being beyond GDP, integrating economic, social and environmental dimensions to guide sustainable development at regional and local levels.

Progress does not happen only by chance and is not forever: it should be sustainable and directed towards the search for possible happiness, avoiding developing societies from the exclusive side of economic growth. Realistically, each of these dimensions is important in defining individual and collective well-being, in which all these aspects should coexist in a truly balanced and sustainable development path at the local scale. An approach measuring well-being, and possibly, sustainable development, based solely on the economic sphere, is reductive and misleading as a policy-relevant tool. The complexity of the argument at stake requires refined approaches and more elaborate measures – than simple gross domestic product (GDP).
Chapter 1 elaborates theoretically and practically on such assumptions and consists of two parts. In the first part, the theme of sustainability and the problem of analytically quantifying the well-being are treated from a theoretical and quantitative point of view, and in the second one, which is of more technical nature, official data and statistics are integrated with literature reviews, case studies and narratives of complex economic, social and environmental processes involving well-being, sustainability and local development paths, beyond the limitations found in the GDP indicator. The discussion of the limits of GDP as a measure of well-being (chapter 2) is followed by a review of the main alternative indicators available in the literature, highlighting their strengths and weaknesses, and the paths of development of the research in the sector (chapters 3–6). Indicators connected to individuals’ aspects of the quality of life appear as particularly relevant tools when measuring the level and advances in any sustainable development path, as they are aimed at measuring the political stability and the degree of freedom of a country (political indicators), the level and intensity of economic growth (economic indicators), the level of environmental pollution (environmental indicators) and the health development of a country (social indicators).
Our analysis addresses this issue by considering an advanced economy investigated in independent spatial aggregates and proposing a targeted elaboration at the level of homogeneous geographical areas, to capture specialisations and territorial peculiarities that would otherwise be latent. It is possible to conceive truly sustainable economic policies relying only on instruments and indicators involving multiple dimensions, in turn promoting quality of life. Moreover, applications of this perspective at regional and local levels are important, as territories are the collecting agents guaranteeing and promoting processes of supra-individual utility, for example, environment quality or social cohesion. These institutions are responsible for the important role of outlining specific development policies for communities and the sustainable paths to be undertaken, with the aim of increasing the effective well-being of individuals. Following these assumptions, and on the basis of recent developments in the academic literature, this edited book debates extensively on these topics, offering an updated theoretical ground and pragmatic examples delineating an operational and coordinated evaluation of well-being that integrates the economic dimension with the environmental and social ones, thus assuring a more complete interpretation of complex (local) development paths.