“Well-being, Sustainability and Equity (WiSE)” Transformation is a pioneering science-to-policy research area of the United Nations University – Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS) in cooperation with the Bonn Alliance for Sustainability Research, Germany.

The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is still the predominant indicator used to measure the quality of our life. WiSE will aspire towards a holistic, beyond GDP, assessment of the preconditions for well-being, sustainability and equity. To transform towards a WiSE society, this emerging initiative intends to bring together a broad range of interdisciplinary scientific expertise necessary to understand the interface between well-being, sustainability and equity.

WiSE Transformation aims to achieve three core goals:

• To develop holistic data and policy models to weigh all dimensions of well-being, sustainability and equity for decision makers;
• To develop an approach to identify and integrate systemic opportunities and risk analysis into the WiSE framework;
• To develop a compelling narrative for the holistic WiSE framework.

While politics, media and economists traditionally focus on economic growth to gauge economic success, WiSE Transformation represents the next generation of thinking and a move towards a globally inclusive narrative that values human well-being, environmental protection and equity for all.