including the ecosystem services, which are the basis for life.

And sometimes, an increase in

GDP can take place at the expense of destruction or deterioration of these ecosystems. I know
in your research that you're trying to actually work on this question of how can we make other
kinds of indicators that support GDP. In finding these new indicators, do we it need an entirely
new indicator or can we just supplement GDP? Well, I think it would be very difficult to find
one single indicator of human welfare in all its aspects. What I do in my research is I try to
adjust GDP or subtract the costs of environmental destruction. If some aspects of the
environment have been harmed during the year, I try to estimate the cost of that and subtract
it from GDP. On the other hand, if some investment has been made to improve the
environment, we should add that to get what I call a green national product. The green GDP,
as we call it, is an attempt to at least make sure that we account for, as best we can, the effects
of economic activity on the environment. So, we get a better impression of where the GDP
growth has happened at the expense of the environment. Is this just an academic exercise
then? Or, do you see any kind of rising demand for something like a green GDP in political
circles or in societal circles? Well, there are several politicians who have expressed interest in
getting such a measure of a green GDP and certainly also a lot of other groups. It's a difficult
thing to do, as you can imagine. How do we value the environment? The environment of goods
and services are not traded in the market. It's hard to say how much people value them and
some people even question whether it makes sense to add up the value of the environment to
the value of goods and services produced in the market. There are many controversial issues
involved in estimating green GDP. But there is a growing demand for it because there's this
growing recognition that ecosystem services and environmental goods are becoming
increasingly scarce relative to the goods we produce in the marketplace. Well, there are all
these problems with GDP in terms of sustainability, do we need an entirely new economic
system to even measure sustainable development? Of course, just measuring the damage to
the environment is not enough to ensure that we don't do too much damage to the
environment. So we need stronger environmental policies. We need to manage our natural
resources and ecosystems much more responsible than we did responsibly than we've done in
the past. That means that we should try to put a price on environmental goods and services,
say, via pollution taxes so that we as consumers or business firms are confronted with the
environmental costs of their actions. If that's impractical, not possible for practical political
reasons, we need regulations, environmental regulation that constrains economic activity in
areas where it's harmful, too harmful to the environment. So, in that sense, we need to
reorient our economic policies. It can still be done in many cases in a way that is compatible
with the workings of markets. It's actually a way to get markets to work better. So what you're
really saying is that we can actually use the market actively as a tool to help reach sustainable
development if we rethink some of the approaches that we've had? In many cases, we can.
Yes. My second guest is an engineer, Professor Michael Zwicky Hauschild, from the Technical
University of Denmark. Michael's work relates directly to SDG number 12, responsible
production and consumption, which is one of the goals which gives a particularly great
challenge for many developed countries. One of the SDG that many countries are really
struggling with is number 12, which is responsible production and consumption. But how can
we really know if something we buy is responsible, if it's sustainable? Are there any methods
to actually measure that? I'd like to take a step back and say, well, really, all products are part
of consumption. So, really, what we should start with, I think, is the Brundtland Commission
for sustainable development about meeting the needs of present generation without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs because that's really
what it's about. So, a sustainable consumption is a consumption that we can have without
jeopardizing future generations, without undermining, if you like, the material basis of that
consumption. And that consumption, of course, is performed through products that we buy.
So, if we want to talk about whether a product is sustainable, we need to first talk about
whether the consumption pattern is sustainable. And what is sustainable there really depends
on a number of things, for how many, how many people are we that has this consumption. So,
population numbers in the world and certainly also affluence, levels of affluence, and how it is
distributed around the world. And a lot of the other SDGs focus in on that, how everybody in
this world can have a healthy life and access to education and so forth. And that entails
consumption. So, there are some absolute limits that our consumption needs to stay inside.
And if we are nine and a half or 10 billion people as we are are predicted to be around 2050,
then, of course, the space for each of us will be proportionately smaller than it is today. If we
can agree that everybody has the same space, they're many ethical elements in this and talk
about how doe we share it? So, that's really not straightforward. But one approach could be to
say, well, we all have the same share of that space. Then, that tells you, that gives you actually
a budget of greenhouse gas emissions, how much can your activities cause release of every
year? And that gives us two challenges. One of them is to say, okay, I have this space, how
much of that should then be assigned to food, to clothing, housing, transportation, whatever it
needs activities as you have? That's one thing. And the other thing is, so if I would like to
consume this product, what are then the greenhouse gas emissions associated with that
product? And when you want to answer a question like that, so you could in principle put a
CO2 target or greenhouse gas target on each product, just like you have a declaration of
content, you could also have a declaration of environmental impact. So, which climate change
impact has this product then caused or does it cause? And in order to determine that, you
need to look at the whole life cycle of the product. So it's not enough to just look at your
contact with the product. You consume it. You use it to drive your car. Of course, you have
CO2 emissions if you drive a petrol driven car, but there is also CO2 emissions or other
greenhouse gas emissions involved in the production of the car and in the mining of the ores
that give the metals that go into the car. And in the end of life of the car, the treatment there,
all of these activities constitute the life cycle. So, from the cradle to the grave, it's also
sometimes calls, and this was climate change. But, of course, there are many other
environmental impacts than climate change. And if we want to be sustainable, that means,
meet the needs of our working generation without compromising the ability of future
generations to meet their own needs, we can, of course, not erode the ecosystems in other
senses than climate change as well. I mean, there is acidification, there is release of toxic
substances, there are also human health impacts through the environment like particulate
pollution that we hear a lot about nation cities, and so forth, many different types of impacts.
And those as well, you need to quantify and you need to ensure that this product's impact,
together with all the other products that you consume, these impacts together stay within the
environmental space. We know, at least theoretically, what sustainability is when we talk
about production and consumption, but we really don't have the mechanisms yet to be able to
label a single product as being sustainable, but it could come that there's lots of research going
on. There's a lot of research going on, and there are some, I would say, the challenges that are
there are really manageable. And a lot of it is really also political, to decide, for instance, as I
said before, how do we want to share this space that is there? So, there's scientific challenge in
quantifying this space and then there's a political challenge in deciding how to share it. But I
think it's very promising actually to work on different ways of taxing products based on their
environmental impact because we can put numbers in the environmental impact. And we
could have product taxes follow the impacts so that the products that have a high
environmental impact have a higher product tax than the good products. That would be a way
of using the market to direct demand in the direction of the more sustainable products. Thank
you. I find all of this research aiming at developing new metrics for assessing sustainable
development to be incredibly exciting. As our understanding of sustainable development
evolves, so does our ability to quantify it. We zoomed in on only two examples of metric
development here today, but this kind of work is going on in many disciplines and will be
increasingly useful as implementation of the SDG's progresses.

[MUSIC] 17 SDGs is a large number to deal with. Therefore, in order to simplify

implementation of the SDGs, there's a tendencies for companies and

other organizations to cherry pick among the 17 and to select those that they

consider to be most relevant for their particular products or activities. Not surprisingly, when
cherry picking

SDGs, most organizations select those where their activities

make a positive contribution. The problem with that strategy is that

it's very difficult to envision activities that do not have both negative and

positive effects on the SDGs overall. We can not achieve a sustainable

development trajectory unless we simultaneously work

to reduce negative impacts at the same time we exploit

the positive interactions. Numerous studies have been carried out

since the adoption of the 2030 agenda in which the interactions between

different SDGs are mapped. Clearly, mapping the 17 goals, and there are 169 targets against
each other,

becomes a mammoth task. Therefore, most studies only

consider a subset of the goals. One such study, where interactions

between four goals were considered, was recently carried out by ICSU,

the International Council for Science. As you can see, there are a myriad of

interactions both between these four goals, number 2, zero hunger,

number 3, good health and well being, number 7, affordable and

clean energy, and 14, life below water, as well as with

these goals and the other goals. Some interactions are negative and others
positive, and not all are of equal weight. That is to say that some more

important than others in terms of achieving

sustainable development. Thus, it's very difficult to map