From Beyond GDP to Life-Coherent Progress
Re-Grounding Progress, Wealth, Peace, Efficiency, and Governance in LifeBy Dr Bichara Sahely
Length6h 31m
About this audiobook
From Beyond GDP to Life-Coherent Progress argues that the global movement to complement GDP with broader measures of well-being, equity, sustainability, and resilience is necessary but incomplete. The United Nations Beyond GDP agenda rightly recognizes that economic output cannot serve as the master measure of progress. Yet a wider dashboard can still become performative if it measures harm without transforming the relations that produce harm.
This white paper proposes a life-coherent deepening of the Beyond GDP agenda. Drawing on the UN Beyond GDP framework, John McMurtry’s life-value onto-axiology, Johan Galtung’s positive peace, and Humberto Maturana’s relational biology, it reframes progress as the expansion of life-capacity: the real capacity of persons, communities, ecosystems, and future generations to live, heal, participate, repair, and flourish.
Audiobook details
GenreBusiness and Economics
Length6 hrs 31 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateMay 13, 2026
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1Chapter 1
2Abstract
3Executive Summary
4Part I — The Historical Opening: Why GDP Is No Longer Enough
51.1 The contribution of this paper
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61.2 The guiding question
71.3 The structure of the argument
82.1 Foundational principles: peace, human rights, and respect for the planet
92.2 Current well-being: the widening of lived experience
102.3 Equity and inclusion: from averages to unequal burdens
112.4 Sustainability and resilience: capital, future well-being, and the problem of substitution
122.5 The strength of the dashboard approach
132.6 The limitation of dashboard thinking
14Part III — The Missing Depth: From Measurement to Life- Value
153.1 The hidden ontology of progress
163.3 Life-capacity as the real measure of progress
173.4 Universal human life necessities
183.5 Why this deepens Beyond GDP
19Part IV — Life Capital: Deepening the Five-Capitals Framework
204.2 The danger of capital neutrality
214.3 McMurtry’s life capital
224.4 True capital and life-incoherent capital
234.6 Human capital through the life-capital test
244.7 Social capital through the life-capital test
254.8 Institutional capital through the life-capital test
264.9 Natural capital, life-ground, and non-substitutability
274.10 The life-capital audit
28Part V — Life-Coherent Efficiency: From Output Productivity to Life-Good Provisioning
295.1 The conventional meaning of efficiency
305.2 False efficiency and burden displacement
31A life-coherent efficiency test therefore asks:
325.3 Three domains of life-coherent efficiency
335.4 Ecological efficiency
345.5 Physical input-output efficiency
355.6 Human development efficiency
366.3 Structural violence as life-capacity reduction
376.4 Cultural violence and the legitimation of harm
386.6 Toward life-coherent peace indicators
39Part VII — Relational Biology and the Worlds Measurement Brings Forth
407.3 The emotional ground of rational systems
417.4 Organism–niche relations
427.5 Legitimate coexistence
43Legitimate coexistence therefore asks:
447.7 The relational upgrade to Beyond GDP
45Part VIII — The Life-Coherent Framework for Progress
468.1 The life-master question
478.3 From health systems to life systems
488.4 Exposure, repair, and margins
498.5 Exposure burden
508.6 Repair capacity
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