The seminar was organized jointly by Centre for Socio-Eco-Nomic Development (CSEND), UNCTAD, Future of the UN Development System (FUNDS) and Business Systems Laboratory.

A newly published book was introduced and a subsequent thematic debate focused on the question whether the current approach to measuring sustainable development is good enough to support sustainable development in developing countries. This debate is part of the larger discourse on Post-2015 sustainable development goals.

Important ideas were discussed such as the need to bring back immediacy and depth to the notion of sustainability; the need to measure comprehensively sustainable development (e.g. the current analytic framework does not measure social sustainability); the interface between individual behavior and institutional rules; the inter-generational aspect of sustainability and its cross-cultural perspective; and the importance of measuring progress towards human development goals.