About
GDP asks how much an economy is producing.
GDR asks whether it is capable of continuing to produce.
Gross Domestic Regeneration scores what a place restores, beside what it earns. The GDR Institute carries Tenzin Seldon's framework from thesis into practice.
Tenzin Seldon proposes GDR as a satellite account: a record of what a nation holds, published by its statistics office beside GDP.*
The problem
The problem GDR answers
GDP counts a year's output, so it can reward extraction. In Tenzin Seldon's published commentary, clearing the Amazon rainforest adds to output and the forest's loss goes uncounted.
The claim
Deficits surface later
GDR's central claim is stated so that it can fail: a deficit in any pillar leaves current output intact, then over decades widens the swings in future output and deepens the worst-case losses.*
The evidence
Half supported, half open
On the GDR method's own grading of its evidence, the wider swings have support in research on resource-dependent economies; the deeper losses have a mechanism, tipping points and capital withdrawal, and no direct estimate yet.*
The horizon
Seven generations
The GDR method judges an economy over seven generations and discounts nothing, so a loss borne far ahead counts as fully as one borne now.* The principle comes from Indigenous oral constitutional tradition.
Origin
Tenzin Seldon's question
How do we create and sustain regenerative systems? Tenzin Seldon, who originated GDR, argues that capital should look beyond GDP to what an economy regenerates.
She reads a company by four signals: whether it restores its natural inputs, its communities' strength, its revenue's resilience, and what rising premiums say about the systems beneath it.
Mission
Where the Institute works
The Institute puts GDR to work in government, commercial sectors and bioregions, and designs economic models that sustain prosperity and a habitable planet together. It convenes leaders in business, investment and research with people working in climate, conservation and Indigenous leadership.
Vision
GDR as an adopted standard
The Institute works toward GDR as a standard: recognized by a multilateral statistical body, a routine input for long-duration investors and sovereign risk analysis, and a candidate framework for the agenda that succeeds the Sustainable Development Goals.
The measure
How the measure is built
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Named public sources
Every value comes from a named public series. A missing value is reported as a gap, with its source, so a thin record stays visible.
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A range on every score
Each score carries an interval set by its data's quality, so close scores overlap and readings are published as bands.
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When data cannot be checked
Where data cannot be verified, as in a nation at war, the method withholds the overall score, may report the ecological indicators alone, and says why.
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Companies read apart
A company track runs beside the national one and is never added into it. Public disclosure supports the ecological pillar for some companies today; the other two pillars need data few companies publish.
The test
How the Institute tests GDR
Tenzin Seldon offers GDR as a conceptual and methodological proposal, and what its scores predict is untested.* A measure earns trust when others can check it, so the Institute's work starts there.
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Verify the method
Outside experts review the method, and before its core is locked every figure must reproduce from named public sources.
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Publish the calculation
The data, code and method behind every score go into a public repository that records each change.
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Pilot at every scale
Ahead of the pilots, the Atlas shows what a reading looks like.
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A test fixed in advance
The first test asks whether a rising GDR goes with steadier sovereign borrowing costs. The result that would count against GDR is written down before the data panel it needs is built.
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Rankings that must hold
The ranking is re-run under different limits and ways of combining indicators, and counts as robust only when the orderings agree closely.
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Who holds the method
An originator, an executive director designate, an action committee and a council. The Institute is raising funding from several sources and writing conflict-of-interest rules, so the method answers to its evidence.
The partners
Kinds of partner
The Institute tests GDR at four scales to learn whether the measure holds from a single municipality up to the multilateral system. A partner is named once an agreement is signed.
Local
Communities and municipalities
The municipal track is the least developed part of the GDR method.*
Regional
Bioregional hubs
A hub joins the places that share one ecosystem, such as a river basin, across town and national borders, so the reading follows the land.
National
Governments and national banks
The partner is a government, a national bank or a sovereign wealth fund.
International
Multilateral bodies
The partners are central banks, funding bodies and any institution that already reports on environmental, social and governance (ESG) measures.
Insurance and reinsurance
Insurance is the first proposed channel into capital markets:* cover is repriced every year, so it can respond faster than sovereign debt.
The risk in that channel
GDR's first real effect could be to raise the cost of transferring risk for the nations least able to bear it.*
Debt-for-nature swaps
Where a nation's debt is exchanged for conservation commitments, a verified GDR trajectory could become the standard trigger, in place of terms written deal by deal.
* Source: the GDR white paper by Tenzin Seldon.
Connect with the Institute
The Institute's current goal is to test how GDR can assist studies, pilots and economic development partnerships.
The Institute plans a book that carries GDR to policymakers, investors and the public.
Reach out to discuss:
- Where your region stands on GDR, and which pillar holds it down
- The paths that could move it: programs, partners and investment vehicles
- Research, data and press