Monitoring Environmental Progress

Annotation Showcases improvements in environmentally sustainable development indicators by using them to analyze policy-oriented issues. The World Bank is both a compiler and a user of environmentally sustainable development (ESD) indicators. Although the Bank is more a user than a compiler of indicators in general, it believes in ensuring proper communication between users and compilers, especially for users who are policymakers. It is essential that policymakers have at least rough indicators of whether environmental conditions are improving or deteriorating in broad areas of concern. This report showcases improvements in ESD indicators by using them to analyze policy-oriented issues. The report examines issues in developing indicators that are understood by compilers and users, including definitions, methodology, and practical considerations. It addresses the gray area where physical indicators of environmental conditions blend into policymaking and proposes a change in the role of national accounting, where poor measurement of environmental aspects can send distorted signals to decisionmakers.

This book provides measurement tools, including indicators, to support countries’ efforts to achieve economic growth and development, while ensuring that natural assets continue to provide the resources and environmental services on which well-being relies.

The book contains the proceedings of the OECD Conference that was held in Rome in December 1999. It presents the wide range of initiatives and indicators that are already in place, and outlines the challenges that remain in measuring progress towards sustainable development.

Abstract: Understanding how a circular economy (CE) can reduce environmental pressures from economic activities is crucial for policy and practice. Science provides a range of indicators to monitor and assess CE activities. However, common CE activities, such as recycling and eco-design, are contested in terms of their contribution to environmental sustainability. This article assesses whether and to what extent current approaches to assess CE activities sufficiently capture environmental pressures to monitor progress toward environmental sustainability. Based on a material flow perspective, we show that most indicators do not capture environmental pressures related to the CE activities they address. Many focus on a single CE activity or process, which does not necessarily contribute to increased environmental sustainability overall. Based on these results, we suggest complementing CE management indicators with indicators capturing basic environmental pressures related to the respective CE activity. Given the conceptual linkage between CE activities, resource extraction, and waste flows, we suggest that a resource-based footprint approach accounting for major environmental inputs and outputs is necessary--while not sufficient--to assess the environmental sustainability of CE activities. As footprint approaches can be used across scales, they could aid the challenging process of developing indicators for monitoring progress toward an environmentally sustainable CE at the European, national, and company levels

Finding and using indicators that are most suited for tracking progress, raising awareness and supporting analysis is a challenge. Indicators need to be used in appropriate contexts and should ideally be fit-for-purpose. For example, indicators which are best used for awareness-raising cannot be used for monitoring policy goals. This report presents a short review of different indicators typically encountered by environmental policy makers. General advice is provided regarding their uses. In the second part of the report, an overview of the environmental-economic accounting work of the Nordic statistical institutes is presented. Lessons learned from the development of these accounts as well as ideas for future work are described. These types of environmental accounts provide a framework for developing information about the connections between the economy and the environment. The study was commissioned by the Nordic Council of Ministers and conducted by the national statistical agencies in the Nordic countries, led by Statistics Norway and Statistics Sweden.

Environmental indicators, like economic indicators, are important tools for translating quantities of data into succinct information that can be readily understood and used by decision makers and the general public. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has taken the first step in leading an international initiative to develop a series of indicators and Canada is beginning to work on developing a similar series. This report presents a brief overview of efforts now underway to develop consistent, reliable indicators to measure the quality of our environment, the stresses placed on it, and the steps taken to prevent or reduce those stresses.