Measuring Sustainability

One of the biggest challenges associated with the concept of “sustainable development” is the development of a single set of indicators to measure it. The Joint UNECE/Eurostat/OECD Working Group on Statistics for Sustainable Development was established in 2005 and had as its main task to articulate a broad conceptual framework for sustainable development measurement with the concept of capital at its center and to consider other approaches to the extent the capital approach is found insufficient from a conceptual standpoint. In 2008 The Working Group delivered its final report, “Measuring Sustainable Development” but stated that its work is only a research proposal. 

The Working Group could not agree on a single definition of sustainable development. One view within the group, referred to as the integrated view, held that the goal of sustainable development is to ensure both the well-being of those currently living and the potential for the well-being of future generations. The second, labeled the future-oriented view, held that sustainable development is about ensuring the potential for the well-being of future generations. 

The Working Group analyzed the possibility to develop a set of indicators based on the concept of capital. There are problems, in some cases, in translating the concepts of the capital approach into practical indicators that would meet the quality standards of official statistics. For the supporters of the integrated view, capital-based indicators will fall short of what is needed to measure sustainable development as they are focused on measuring the potential for the well-being of future generations. 

The other option that the Working Group has analyzed was the one of developing a single set of indicators based on the national sustainable development policy-based indicators. These indicators are based on the integrated view and their main strength is the close connection between the indicators and the national goals established for sustainable development. One of the main problems associated with these indicators is that they may be subject to change whenever national policies change.It is interesting that the majority of the common policy-based indicators are either directly comparable to a capital-based indicator or conceptually related to the approach.
The 28 indicators created by the Working Group are derived from the intersection of capital-based indicators and the most common policy-based indicators. The set is not of as much use for reporting on the elements of current well-being and cannot correspond perfectly to the policy priorities in all countries. The small set can, of course, be supplemented with additional indicators reflecting the national situation.

The main challenge for the future is to agree on a common conceptual framework on the basis of which to create sustainable development indicators. The lack of consensus on this topic explains the lack of indicators of current well-being from the most common policy-based indicators. The development of sustainable development indicators is a difficult task and should be seen as an evolutionary exercise.