Background and request for advice
In recent years, central government, provinces and municipalities have often stated that their policies are aimed at achieving ‘wellbeing’. 'Wellbeing' reflects the idea that there is more to prosperity than money, material goods and services. After all, the public measure their wellbeing by more than their material well-being. For them, wellbeing is also about factors such as health, safety, the quality of their living environment and the quality of education.
For the Council for the Environment and Infrastructure (Rli), 'wellbeing' is relevant because it touches on a wide range of issues in the living environment, from the transition to sustainable energy to the redevelopment of rural areas. Addressing these transition issues affects wellbeing in society and its distribution. The main question addressed in the advisory report ‘Meaningful Government: Promoting Wellbeing’ is:
‘How can central government ensure that in its decision-making it focuses on maintaining and enhancing ‘wellbeing’, i.e. taking into account economic, social and environmental aspects, current and future generations, impacts in other parts of the world and the distribution between groups of citizens? How can we make it practical to promote wellbeing for different applications and how can we guarantee consistency in this?’
Explanation
The Rli notes that a number of factors that determine wellbeing are not in good shape. For instance, our natural environment is not in good shape, the housing shortage is worsening and the prevalence of obesity is rising. Government policy is currently failing to place a systematic focus on all these factors. On top of this, not enough attention is being paid to the distribution of wellbeing between groups of citizens, between current and future generations and between the Netherlands and other countries. Adopting a different approach will enable politicians to make better informed assessments, resulting in better decisions for the public.
In order to promote wellbeing, the Council believes the government needs to:
- Gather more and better information to better identify the impact of different potential policy measures and investments. This will provide politicians and administrators with a clearer picture of dilemmas.
- Base policy choices on this information so that all factors of wellbeing are systematically taken into account in assessments. Since not everyone has the same vision of wellbeing, final policy choices remain value-driven and therefore political.
- Make the consequences of choices visible in the national budget. This is a fundamental change, because it means making decisions based on more than just money. To this end, we recommend eventually introducing a 'capital budget' as part of the national budget. This will ensure that these capitals are fully taken into account in future policy choices. As this represents a drastic change, we recommend that, in preparation, national planning agencies develop an appropriate methodology and start with a number of national programmes (focusing on issues such as quality of life, security, the environment and rural areas). The introduction of a capital budget as an effective management tool will also require the introduction of an accrual accounting system as the budget and accountability system for central government.
- Reach better agreements at regional level between central government, provinces, municipalities and water authorities so that wellbeing is also promoted more effectively on a regional scale.
Information or comments
To comment or for more information, please contact the project leader, Douwe Wielenga, at douwe.wielenga@rli.nl, or on +31 (0)6 2124 0809.