About the Stockholm Seminars

The Stockholm Seminars cover a broad range of perspectives on sustainability issues and are focused on the need for a sound scientific basis for sustainable development policy. The seminars are given at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and are visited by a large audience, including scientists, students, media and policy makers in the public and private sector.

About this seminar

The Inclusive Wealth Report (IWR) presents a new metric known as inclusive wealth index (IWI) for evaluating progress in human well-being. The metric is based on a welfare economic framework but goes just beyond incorporating the economic component of welfare to include natural and social systems.

There has been much debate on the declining natural systems and the implications this will have on human well-being. We make a strong case in contradiction to recent literature from the natural sciences that humanity's life support systems include not just the natural systems but also the social and economic systems.

The first IWR 2012 focuses on Natural capital and presents the Inclusive Wealth for 20 countries over a period of 19 years. Preliminary results suggest that most countries have positive Inclusive wealth rate changes (a non-declining productive base) but also show declining rates of natural capital calling into question the sustainability of the productive base.