As this wasn’t part of the lesson, I
thought it might be interesting for others as well. I wondered how the progress
of sustainable development is measured and visualized. Because of this I
searched for some actual systems.
The “Committee of Sustainable Development“
(CSD) introduced a set of basic indicators in 1997. Since then, 22 countries
(e.g. Germany) are testing these indicators. As the basic indicator set doesn’t
fit the need of all participating countries, each participant defined their own
set of indicators. Because of that, a comparison of the different countries is
extremely difficult. I will use the report of the Federal Statistical Office of
Germany as a base for this blog entry.
The report is divided into four parts. As
there are more than 30 indicators, I will mention only the most interesting The
first part handles the Intergenerational equity, which includes resource
conservation, climate protection, the usage of renewable energy sources and
other environmental issues. The quality of life is part of the second part,
this includes mobility, air quality, crime rate and healthcare. The third part
is about Social cohesion, examples for that are the employment rate,
integration and equal opportunities. The last part deals with the international
responsibility and includes only two indicators: Development cooperation and Opening
markets.
The report is published every two years. In
every report, the collected data is compared to the previous reports. These
trends are compared to the climate & sustainability goals of the
government. In the report of 2012, which is available online (see link), more
than the half of the indicator developed in a positive way. 20 indicators are
developing weaker than expected, the defined goals might not be achieved. The
remaining 8 indicators had a very high deviation of the target value.
This example shows the effort of some
countries in setting transparent goals for sustainability. On the other hand
these goals are relatively weak, as the government tries to set achievable
goals. There are several other criticisms as well, but as these indicator
systems are “new”, they might need some time to develop.
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