SIPI's Prosperity Navigation Tool

Definition

Purpose & Wellbeing puts human flourishing at the centre of personal, organisational, and public life. Basic health, food and safety are its floor. Above that floor it tracks what makes a life go well: meaningful work, strong communities, and a sense of purpose — fostering meaning through culture and belief while building care systems that sustain people across every stage of life. Human flourishing also depends on a healthy relationship with the living world: this pillar holds people's access to and connection with nature as lived experience, while ecosystem condition and environmental pressure are measured under Planetary Integrity.

Why it matters

Switzerland performs well on income and safety by conventional measures, yet mental-health burden, workplace stress, and rising disengagement from work and civic life signal a real gap between material prosperity and lived experience.

Definition

Regenerative Stewardship calls on all actors — organisations, governments, and communities — to move beyond harm reduction toward active restoration. It covers natural capital stocks, circular material flows, ecosystem services, and the governance of long-term commitments that transcend political and business cycles. Those operating under this pillar are accountable not only for their direct impact, but also for the health of the broader living systems on which they depend.

Why it matters

Some types of damage cannot be easily undone. Crises like biodiversity loss, soil damage, and water depletion outlast any typical political term or business plan.

Definition

Opportunity Access measures whether the conditions for a good working and civic life are fairly distributed. It covers fair access to the job market, equal pay, quality education, social mobility and services. Inclusion is understood as social, digital and financial — financial inclusion is one measurable access channel among these, not the heading. Legal and systemic protections count only where they give real, practical access rather than on-paper promises. Crucially, this pillar focuses on tackling structural exclusion: the ways in which a person's gender, origin, or socioeconomic background can limit their participation in economic, social, and civic life before they even have the opportunity to contribute based on their own efforts. Housing and spatial access belong to this pillar: affordability and physical access to opportunity are access questions, not cohesion questions.

Why it matters

When access to opportunities is restricted by systemic barriers, economic potential is wasted and trust in society breaks down.

Definition

Social Cohesion addresses the relational, civic, and institutional bonds that make collective life possible. It encompasses interpersonal and institutional trust, civic engagement, cultural belonging, and the legal foundations for collective action. It covers how organisations behave as members of the communities they operate in, how public institutions earn and sustain legitimacy, and how residents themselves build trust and solidarity through their own participation — and the way societies manage differences: whether diversity becomes a source of collective resilience or a fault line of division, whether solidarity networks hold under pressure, and whether institutions retain legitimacy when acting on behalf of those they serve. In an inclusive society, differences are recognised and can become a source of collective capability and resilience.

Why it matters

No system, however technically well-designed, functions efficiently without the trust and legitimacy to sustain it.

Definition

Planetary Integrity measures the aggregate pressure that production, consumption, and public policy together place on the Earth's systems. It is anchored to the planetary-boundaries framework, covering climate stability, biosphere integrity, freshwater availability, land-system change, and biogeochemical flows. It asks not only whether actors are reducing harm, but whether the pace and scale of their activities remain within the limits that sustain the conditions for human flourishing. The dependence runs both ways: a healthy natural environment underpins human flourishing, so people's access to and connection with nature are measured under Purpose & Wellbeing, while this pillar holds ecosystem condition, pollution, biodiversity, land use, and ecological pressure.

Why it matters

Planetary boundaries are not a metaphor: they mark the limits beyond which the risk of large-scale, potentially irreversible changes to Earth systems rises sharply.

Definition

Equitable Growth & Innovation addresses how economic value is created and shared across businesses, policy frameworks, and communities. It does not treat growth as an end in itself, but asks a fundamental question: does economic value reach people broadly or accumulate narrowly? This pillar shifts the focus from aggregate output to distributive outcomes — examining income and wealth distribution, labour's share of income, corporate governance, and smaller actors' access to innovation. Ultimately, it ensures that productivity gains, technology, and AI serve the many rather than the few, distributing both their benefits and their risks fairly.

Why it matters

Economic growth without equitable distribution can produce prosperity on the balance sheet that does not reflect in daily life: rising output can coexist with stagnant wages, widening regional divides, and shrinking opportunity for the majority.

Definition

Resilient Economies measures how effectively organisations, systems, and communities can withstand sudden disruptions and adapt without permanently harming public wellbeing. It covers economic diversification, financial stability, supply-chain resilience, physical and transition risks from climate change, fiscal sustainability, and secure access to essential goods like food and energy. Crucially, resilience is different from simple efficiency: it requires back-up systems and flexibility, rather than just cutting costs to optimise for the short term.

Why it matters

Efficiency without a backup plan leads to fragility. Recent disruptions in global energy supplies, financial markets, and supply chains have proven that resilience is not a luxury — it is a requirement for long-term prosperity.