PERN Cyberseminar on Demography of sustainable human wellbeing - closing statement

[Aayushma K.C.]

Dear Colleagues,

Thank you so much for a productive exchange of ideas and perspectives over the last week around the topic of human wellbeing indicators, and especially the new Years of Good Life (YoGL) indicator. 

The purpose of this cyberseminar was to discuss the possible use of YoGL as a sustainability criterion, vet the inter-cultural acceptability of YoGL, understand the differing views on universality of human wellbeing measures, and compare it to other existing indicators. I think the discussions showed considerable progress on several of these issues. In particular, it reached near consensus that both objective and subjective aspects of wellbeing need to be reflected in such an indicator.   

Please join me in thanking our panelists for their contributions. Thank you to: Wolfgang Lutz, Partha DasGupta, Jeffery Sachs, David Smith and Kathryn Grace.Thanks as well to Wolfgang Lutz and Raya Muttarak from the Wittgenstein Center, and Alex de Sherbinin, and Susana Adamo from PERN for helping to organise the cyberseminar, as well as to Lisa Lukang for helping to set-up and run the cyberseminar, and to the broader PERN Scientific Committee for their support. Finally thanks to all who contributed to the email discussions and shared their views on the matter.

As a reminder, statements for the seminar and the background PNAS paper on YoGL are available on the Cyberseminar page, and a recording of the kickoff webinar is available on YouTube.

Thank you once again.

Sincerely, 

Aayushma