Sustainable well-being – Newsletter March 2023
22.3.2023
Dear members and friends,
Finland is the happiest country in the world. The second place is held by Denmark, while Switzerland has dropped from fourth to eighth place. That’s the outcome of the World Happiness Report, issued this week by UN SDSN.
Interestingly, the same two Nordic countries top the ranking in SDSN’s Sustainable Development Report, where Switzerland again holds rank eight. It's tempting to jump to conclusions here. But let's instead take a look at another indicator from the Sustainable Development Report: The spillover rankings, where a low rank indicates that a country has a strong negative impact on other countries' abilities to reach the Sustainable Development Goals. Finland ranks 124, Denmark 137, and Switzerland even lower at 157.
While there isn't a strict mathematical correlation, it is obvious that the happiest countries all have strong spillover effects, which are mostly a consequence of domestic consumption and production. That brings up a difficult question: Are we happy at the expense of others? Is our well-being based on the resources of other countries? Or, if we take the questions a step further toward finding solutions: Can we decouple well-being from resource consumption?
The answer to this last question is easy on a personal level. Yes, I can increase my well-being with activities like reading a book from the local library, taking a stroll with a friend, or meditating while catching a few rays of sunshine. However, apart from the individual level we need the systemic level to follow suit or even lead the way. Who knows, if Swiss politics start focusing strongly on sustainable well-being and companies find appropriate business models we might even climb back to rank 1 in the happiness ranking (which we held in 2015) and at the same time make way for other countries to increase the well-being of their people.
On behalf of the SDSN Switzerland team, we wish you a happy week!
Niklaus Salzmann, Communications Manager SDSN Switzerland
Sustainable well-being – Newsletter March 2023
Dear members and friends,
Finland is the happiest country in the world. The second place is held by Denmark, while Switzerland has dropped from fourth to eighth place. That’s the outcome of the World Happiness Report, issued this week by UN SDSN.
Interestingly, the same two Nordic countries top the ranking in SDSN’s Sustainable Development Report, where Switzerland again holds rank eight. It's tempting to jump to conclusions here. But let's instead take a look at another indicator from the Sustainable Development Report: The spillover rankings, where a low rank indicates that a country has a strong negative impact on other countries' abilities to reach the Sustainable Development Goals. Finland ranks 124, Denmark 137, and Switzerland even lower at 157.
While there isn't a strict mathematical correlation, it is obvious that the happiest countries all have strong spillover effects, which are mostly a consequence of domestic consumption and production. That brings up a difficult question: Are we happy at the expense of others? Is our well-being based on the resources of other countries? Or, if we take the questions a step further toward finding solutions: Can we decouple well-being from resource consumption?
The answer to this last question is easy on a personal level. Yes, I can increase my well-being with activities like reading a book from the local library, taking a stroll with a friend, or meditating while catching a few rays of sunshine. However, apart from the individual level we need the systemic level to follow suit or even lead the way. Who knows, if Swiss politics start focusing strongly on sustainable well-being and companies find appropriate business models we might even climb back to rank 1 in the happiness ranking (which we held in 2015) and at the same time make way for other countries to increase the well-being of their people.
On behalf of the SDSN Switzerland team, we wish you a happy week!
Niklaus Salzmann, Communications Manager SDSN Switzerland
Sustainable well-being – Newsletter March 2023