The need to measure sustainable development

Have a look at our downloadable article:    "A Community and Environmental Health Framework for Sustainable Development"

What gets measured gets done: measuring sustainable development is a prerequisite for making progress. Agenda 21 called for organisations to develop sets of indicators that would "contribute to self-regulating sustainability of integrated environment and development systems" . In fact, there are two levels of measurement that are required. The first level describes how well sustainable development has been achieved, in terms that we can all recognise and understand. The second level of measurement focuses on what in physiological contexts are sometimes called "biomarkers". These are the system properties that most powerfully indicate overall health. Without clear and unambiguous definitions of sustainable development, it has been difficult to identify these biomarkers. However it is likely that they will include concepts such as efficiency and biological diversity.

The OECD has suggested that measurements should reflect the health of ecosystems, the health of current and future generations of people, the impacts of the people on ecosystems, social equity, and the connections between these.

Sustainable development is as much about process as it is about endpoints or outcomes, and process elements also need to be measured. Thus we need to consider measuring levels of community participation, capacity-building, levels of intellectual and real world dynamism, engagement with local realities, and key external influencing factors.

A system of indicators needs to be able to illustrate linkages and tradeoffs, long term impacts, and express progress with reference to baselines and trends. Simple measures are required, that can be easily communicated and used in political contexts, as well as providing a basis for comparison. Detailed measures are also needed, and measures should also cover concerns related to core global issues, such as climate change, water pollution, and health of global ecosystems. All these measurements need to be presented in a comprehensive, structured manner that encourages a system-wide view, and allows people to extract messages that are most meaningful for them.

Approaches to measurement

Various approaches to measuring sustainable development are in use, although there is no universal framework that has yet been adopted. The Global Reporting Initiative is an example of a set of protocols in use internationally to facilitate reporting for organisations. Sweden measures sustainability in terms of efficiency, contribution and equality, adaptability, and the values and resources for coming generations. Countries such as Austria have used national strategies as the reporting framework. Canada and Norway have taken a "capital" environmental accounting approach. Accounting frameworks, that consider stocks and flows of natural resources, materials, and pollutants, provide useful information on interactions and a basis for evaluating efficiency. However they can be complex and impenetrable, and are limited to the economic and environmental dimensions. There are difficulties in measuring social capital.

Increasingly, there is interest in presenting progress towards sustainable development in terms of social, economic, environmental and (sometimes) cultural well being, or health. This potentially provides a basis for clarifying tradeoffs, as well as enhancing the likelihood of comprehensiveness, and provided the stepping stone to developing the NZ2100 framework for sustainable development.

NZ2100 - a new approach based on ecosystem health

If you haven't already checked it out, the NZ2100 framework is described here. It provides a new, structured model of environmental and community health that meets requirements for measuring sustainable development. In principle, health is a property of living organisms, rather than ecosystems. However, it has been convincingly argued in the international literature that the ecosystem health approach is a pragmatic approach justified by limited understandings of how ecosystems work. It also meets all of the requirements for a practical operational model. It is simple, yet asks searching questions about the health of our economic, social, environmental and cultural systems. It is values-based, and can accommodate indicators that would be required for international comparisons, if that is required. It addresses processes as well as outcomes, and can reflect priorities and preferences of society, while being guided by fundamental concepts of ecosystem health. It also readily lends itself to risk-based approaches, as deficient performance in any of the 28 performance areas carries risk. We can think of the 28 performance areas as constituting a high level risk portfolio that needs to be carefully managed and balanced.

Within NZ2100 and KiwiGrow, growth is viewed as development and improvement rather than augmentation. Augmentive growth is a measure of performance to the extent that it affects how the system is supportive, nurturing, responsive, contributing, etc. Ecological limits may be communicated through the "supportive", "nurturing" and "responsive" qualities, with the latter being capable of capturing perceived threats to ecosystem viability as well as the associated response.