Sustainable Development Indicators: From Statistics to Policy

Abstract

Sustainable development indicators (SDIs) may have good potential to bring environmental concerns to the policy agenda. However, different understandings of sustainability, definitions of SDIs and measurement procedures may give completely different assessments of whether society moves towards a sustainable development path or not. Compilation of statistical indicators for environmental change and sustainability comprises not only a selection of facts in some technical sense, as the choices involved are conditioned by societal interests and implicit values embedded in the data-generating processes. This implies that statistical offices cannot ignore the role that values play in the generation of accurate data sets. To give an assessment of sustainability, we need not only to address historical trends but also to evaluate policy choices made today and how they may influence future development. SDI sets should be evaluated according to how they contribute to deliberation on sustainability in learning processes involving participants beyond the science-policy interface.

Clarifying some assumptions of coastal management: Analysis of values and uncertainties embedded in beach quality indexes

“…the 'story' explaining them (Garnåsjordet et al, 2012). The objective(s) of any study related to management, as is the case of the assessment tools, is the reflection of the narrative(s) being taken into account.…”

“…Martinez-Alier et al, 1998, Munda, 2005, Garnåsjordet et al, 2012, Giampietro and Saltelli, 2014. Since our first motivation was to verify if beaches were truly approached as SES, the search for assumptions focused on the partiality of the conceptualizations (pre-analytical choices (Kovacic, 2015)) behind the structure of the beach quality indexes.…”

“…Socioecologi cal processes occurring on beaches do not cease just because these are mainly managed as recreational spaces, thus sub-indexes responding to other SES processes rather than recreational activity should also be included. This assumption obstructs more integrated and collective conceptualizations (Bremer, 2013, Garnåsjordet et al, 2012, maintaining the reductionist view of the beach as a merely recreational space (James, 2000, Lozoya et al, 2014.…”

From Indicators to Policies: Open Sustainability Assessment in the Water and Sanitation Sector

“…Indeed, achievement of the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) set out by the United Nations will require a combination of accurate monitoring methods (including the estimation of sustainability indicators) and adequate governance processes that include full social participation [30]. Thus far, even though there is a multiplicity of approaches and methodologies for the estimation of sustainability indicators, the impact of these indicators on concrete governance processes seems disappointingly small [16,61,62]. This disconnection may partially be due to the fact that researchers, who concentrate their efforts on the descriptive aspects of sustainability and governance, do not always satisfactorily engage with the more normative and fully political aspects of governance "for" sustainability [40,63].…”

“…It is generally accepted that the ultimate goal of sustainability assessment is to assist in decision-making processes [12][13][14][15][16][17]. However, the fact that results from these assessments are rarely incorporated into official decision-making processes has put sustainability indicators under scrutiny [18,19].…”