Anne Kerr
In Canada, the development of indicators of sustainability is proceeding on several fronts, as part of Canada's National Environmental Indicators Programme through the national set or series of environmental indicators, the urban sustainability indicators project, and a modelling and scenario analysis pilot project. Applications of these and other indicators of sustainability are becoming more common.
NATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL INDICATORS
The objective of Canada's national set of environmental indicators is to provide a profile of the state of the environment and a means of tracking progress towards sustainable development. Since its inception in 1989, Canada's National Environmental Indicators Programme has been strategically guided by three themes for environmentally sustainable development:
Environmental issues of national significance are categorized under each theme and the selection of indicators loosely follows a stress-condition-societal response model within each issue.
Over the years, Canada has been modifying and improving its indicator development framework. A fourth theme, 'pervasive influencing factors', was added to reflect activities that influence in a pervasive way the attainment of the three goals or themes for environmentally sustainable development. This addition recognizes the cross-cutting nature of such issues as energy consumption and transportation, whose effects cannot be confined to just one issue under the first three themes. Indicators grouped under this theme are similar to those of the 'driving forces' category of the UNCSD framework and the 'general' indicators in the OECD's core environmental indicators set.
The traditional stress-condition-societal response matrix has evolved into a cyclical model that is more illustrative of ecosystem linkages of human activity, stress, environmental condition, ecological/socio-economic effects, and societal response which, in turn, influence human activity. This conceptual modification has allowed for the incorporation of more economic and social/health links. Thus, this work is characterized as developing and reporting on sustainability or sustainable development indicators from an environmental perspective.
The integration of environmental, social and economic issues is one of the distinguishing features of ISDs. Making the environment-economy link tends to be easier when selecting and developing indicators of natural resource sustainability. For example, under the issue of 'sustaining Canada's forests: timber harvesting', the Canadian government has developed indicators of timber harvest levels, natural disturbance trends, economic values of harvesting and regeneration after harvesting. Similarly, under 'sustaining marine resources: Pacific herring fish stocks' , the government has developed indicators which consider the abundance (spawning biomass), commercial catch, and economic value of Pacific herring. Indicators are being developed for tracking the sustainability of Atlantic shellfish. These indicators include stock biomass estimates, commercial catch and its landed value, and total employment in harvesting and processing. Indicators for the Pacific salmon include the economic value of recreational fishery.
For global issues such as stratospheric ozone depletion and climate change, under the ecosystem integrity theme, the Canadian government has made an environment - economy link by juxtaposing GDP with the indicators of new supplies of ozone depleting substances and carbon dioxide emissions respectively. By graphing them together, it can be determined whether, over time, the change in the indicators is a function of, or independent from, movements in economic activity.
To date, the primary environment-human health linkage has only been measured through the urban air quality indicator which is measured in terms of the non-attainment of national objectives directly related to human health. However, another indicator has been developed, tracking toxic contaminant levels in birds' eggs to determine possible health effects in birds and potential health effects in other animals, including humans. It could be considered the environmental equivalent to the canary in a coal mine warning of explosive levels of methane.
Table 1 gives a summary of the indicators in the national series that have been published to date and those under development.
Bulletins are used to communicate the indicators for each issue in a succinct and timely manner. Those released are accessible on the Internet via Environment Canada's Green Lane http://www.ec.gc.ca and are also published in hard copy. Technical supplements accompany each bulletin to provide detail on data sources, methodology, reliability, and related information.
URBAN SUSTAINABILITY INDICATORS
A national workshop on urban sustainability, held in June 1995, stimulated a follow-up now underway to refine common elements of a framework, key characteristics of urban sustainability and a preliminary set of common core urban sustainability indicators. Much of the work draws from: existing municipal 'state of the environment' reporting (healthy conditions in the natural environment and human activities that affect environmental conditions); city reporting (human health and healthy environment); and quality of life reporting (social and economic conditions in urban areas), as well as work done by the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (UNCHS) on urban indicators. Environment Canada and the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation are collaborating on a multi-phased project to develop/customize an urban sustainability indicator software tool.
The aim of this computerized prototype is to facilitate local government and community efforts to assess and monitor their own progress towards the goals and trends of sustainable development. It will allow them to compare their results with each other and against national trends. The advantages of a software-based product include: the flexibility and interactive nature of software to convey information on indicators; the ability to easily add to and modify indicators to suit specific local needs; ready-to-use survey instruments, as well as data entry, analytical capabilities and reporting capabilities; the ability to provide and/or make direct links with databases supporting the indicators and; savings in time, effort and money for local governments. A broad study conducted in 1996 confirmed the feasibility of, and examined options for, developing a software-based product. Current work is focused on developing the substantive contents for the software and operating the framework to measure and monitor urban sustainability.
TESTING SUSTAINABILITY INDICATORS THROUGH SCENARIO MODELLING
A two-year pilot study to test the application of sustainability indicators for decision-making in a regional context, (the Fraser River Basin in western Canada) was completed in July 1996 (see also Box 1E). Conventional and state-of-the-art modelling techniques were used for discerning linkages among the indicators, and for testing the movement of the indicators in a variety of future scenarios. Ultimately the aim was to demonstrate the usefulness of sustainability indicators for decision-makers by identifying key trade-offs, as well as the relationship between potential policy choices.
The sustainability framework developed for the study drew from five summarized goals for sustainability in the Fraser River Basin. The issues were categorized according to the goals that they address, namely: ecological goals (air, water, land, biota); economic goals (production and consumption); social goals (cultural and human security); and institutional goals. Each issue has three primary dimensions: the present state of the system; intergenerational distribution (options); and intragenerational distribution (entitlement). All these issues and dimensions are tracked through time. The indicators had to cover more than one issue or dimension simultaneously, and reflect a stress or response function. Furthermore, the indicator set had to be flexible to accommodate changing goals. This implies that any single indicator cannot itself be linked to a specific sustainability goal on a one-to-one basis.
One of the study's principal conclusions is the importance of linking sustainability goals to a relatively small group of indicators within selected indicator classes (e.g. economic, social, environmental, or human health). The authors (Lonergan, Ruitenbeek, and Gustavson 1996) found that many indicators were closely correlated and that a proliferation of indicators did not necessarily improve the reliability of models to provide informed policy guidance. They suggest that indicator modelling work is most suited to identifying qualitative policy trade-offs and implications on large systems, rather than forecasting specific indicators.
APPLICATION
Indicators are routinely used in Canadian state of the environment reporting. A notable example is the Government of Canada 's recently released report, State of Canada's, Environment 1996. Indicators were also incorporated, to a limited extent, in the OECD's 1995 Environmental Performance Reviews - Canada. The 1996 Report on the Health of Canadians, prepared for the federal, provincial and territorial Ministers of Health, has integrated traditional health status indicators with indicators of factors that affect health. The latter include social and economic indicators that reflect living and working conditions, as well as indicators of the physical environment (including natural resource stocks), of biological conditions, and of personal health practices and coping skills.
Indicators were introduced in a comprehensive way for the first time in the federal Department of Environment's 1996 Performance Report to Parliament. These indicators demonstrated trends in issues related to the department's goals. The issues included: quality of air and global atmosphere, toxic substances emitted into the air, land and water, the diversity of life on earth, and the impact of human activities on ecosystems. A 1995 amendment to the Auditor General Act, requires all federal departments to table sustainable development strategies in parliament by December 1997. The strategies must include means for measuring the departments' performance. The need for indicators of sustainable development is now very real.
A considerable amount of indicator development work is ongoing in specific sectors of the government and at different levels of government. Two federal departments, for example, are required by law to present to parliament a State of the Forests Report, followed by a State of the Parks Report, both of which include indicators as a significant component. Under the Canadian Council of Forest Ministers (1996), six criteria and 83 indicators have been identified for sustainable forest management, covering forest ecosystems, and economic and social elements. Their development is an important step in implementing Canada's commitment to the National Forest Strategy, as well as those made at UNCED. A number of provincial, regional and municipal governments are engaged in sustainability reporting, in which indicators play a major role. The Report on British Columbia's Progress Toward Sustainability (interim draft, March, 1996) is an example of work underway to demonstrate and test an approach, which combines indicators into indices of human well-being and ecosystem well-being, in order to assess progress towards sustainability.
REFERENCES
Canadian Council of Forest Ministers (1995) Defining Sustainable Forest Management: A Canadian Approach to Criteria and Indicators. Canadian Forest Service, Natural Resources Canada, Ottawa.
Commission on Resources and Environment (1996) Report on British Columbia's Progress Toward Sustainability. (interim draft)
Department of Canadian Heritage, Parks Canada (1995) State of the Parks, 1994 Report. Ottawa.
Environment Canada (1996) Environment Canada Performance Report for the Period Ending March 31, 1996. Ottawa.
Federal, Provincial and Territorial Advisory Committee on Population Health (1996) Report on the Health of Canadians. For the meeting of Ministers of Health, September 1996. Health Canada, Ottawa.
Government of Canada ( 1996) The State of Canada's Environment -1996. Environment Canada, Ottawa.
Lonergan, S., J. Ruitenbeek, and K. Gustavson (1996) Selection and Modelling of Sustainability Indicators for the Fraser River Basin: Final Report. Occasional Paper Series No.8. Prepared for State of the Environment Directorate, Environment Canada (Ottawa) and Pacific and Yukon Region (Vancouver), Environment Canada, and State of the Environment Reporting, British Columbia Ministry of Environment. Ottawa.
Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service (1996) The State of Canada's Forests 1995-1996: Sustaining Forests at Home and Abroad. 6th Report to Parliament. Natural Resources Canada, Ottawa.
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (1995) Environmental Performance Reviews - Canada. OECD, Paris.