The Bes project was launched in 2010 to measure Equitable and Sustainable Well-being, and with the aim of evaluating the progress of society not only from an economic, but also from a social and environmental point of view. To this end, the traditional economic indicators, GDP first of all, have been integrated with measures of the quality of people’s life and of the environment.
Since 2016, indicators for monitoring the objectives of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the so-called Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations have assumed importance. They were chosen by the global community through a political agreement between the different actors, to represent their values, priorities and objectives. The United Nations Statistical Commission (UNSC) has set up a shared set of statistical information to monitor the progress of individual countries towards the SDGs, including about 250 indicators.
The two sets of indicators are only partially overlapping, but certainly complementary (see the synopsis).