Robert Smith, founder of Midsummer Analytics and a senior associate with the International Institute for Sustainable Development, will speak at Florida State University on Thursday, Feb. 2, about avenues to replace gross domestic product (GDP) as the central measure of a country’s progress.
Smith’s presentation serves as the keynote event of the ninth annual South Asian Media and Cultural Studies Conference, hosted by the College of Communication and Information in collaboration with the College of Social Sciences and Public Policy and the Center for Global Engagement at FSU.
The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will take place at 6 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 2, 2023, at the Globe Auditorium, 110 S. Woodward Ave., Tallahassee. A reception will take place prior to the lecture at 5:30 p.m.
GDP has been used as the central metric to judge how well countries are doing since World War II but is increasingly being seen as outdated. This talk will explore some of the avenues “beyond GDP” currently under consideration. It will argue that only one of these avenues of expanded measures of national wealth has any real hope of displacing GDP from its place in the center of the decision-making radar screen.
Smith is an experienced investigator and consultant with an international reputation for his work on environmental and economic issues. Midsummer Analytics, his Ottawa-based consultancy firm, focuses on the links between the economy and the environment.
He has a broad knowledge of the science, policy and economics related to natural capital, climate change, natural resources, ecosystems, wastes and environmental technologies and expenditures.
The event is free and open to the public. For more information about the conference and a full list of events, visit comm.cci.fsu.edu.