Chris Morrey
In 1994 the government of the United Kingdom published its Strategy for Sustainable Development, following the commitment made at the Earth Summit in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro. In the strategy, the UK government highlighted the importance of indicators to help inform people, including those in government, industry, and non-governmental organizations, about the issues involved in considering whether development in the United Kingdom is becoming more sustainable and whether the government is meeting its objectives as set out in the UK strategy.
There is no widely accepted set of key indicators to measure the state of the environment or sustainable development. The volume of primary environmental data collected each year is enormous. For example, concentrations of various air pollutants are collected hourly from automated monitoring sites throughout the UK. This data is then aggregated and summarized, and the results are published in an annual publication, Digest of Environmental Statistics. But it is difficult, even from these summaries, to obtain an overview of how the environment, as a whole, is changing over time. A more highly aggregated series of indicators is needed to convey the main messages to policy-makers and the public.
To fulfil the commitment outlined in the UK Strategy, an interdepartmental Indicators Working Group was set up to develop a preliminary set of sustainable development indicators for discussion. The conclusions of the Indicators Working Group were published in March 1996 in a report, Indicators of Sustainable Development for the United Kingdom.
WHAT DO WE MEAN BY SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT?
The starting point for developing indicators in the United Kingdom began with the Brundtland Report definition of sustainable development. In the UK Strategy, the definition was interpreted as the process of reconciling two basic aspirations of society:
It is difficult to determine what level of activity is truly sustainable over the long term and whether a nation is moving in a more sustainable direction. In developing the indicators, therefore, the UK Indicators Working Group concentrated on showing trends rather than absolute levels. Although where targets or guidelines exist, the trends are related to those targets.
THE INDICATOR FRAMEWORK
There is no shortage of ideas for selecting indicators. The UK Indicators Working Group developed over 300 initially. In order to work with a more manageable number, a systematic approach was adopted. Key issues and objectives in the UK Strategy were identified and categorized into 21 'families', relating to the economy, transport use, leisure and tourism, overseas trade, energy use, land use, forestry, fish and water resources, climate change, ozone layer depletion, air, water and soil quality, landscape, wildlife and habitats, waste, minerals extraction, and radioactivity.
For each family of issues, objectives were identified to make the development process more sustainable. Relevant indicators could then be selected to monitor the achievement of these objectives. A version of the 'pressure-state-response' model, developed by the OECD for considering environmental indicators, was used. It was adapted, however, to reflect the fact that sustainable development issues would be addressed, rather than just environmental issues.
THE INDICATOR MODEL
Many sectors of the economy generate wealth and welfare for all of us to enjoy. Nevertheless, economic activity can create pressures on the environment through the consumption of natural resources and the output of pollutants and waste. The quality of the environment, in turn, affects our welfare. Government, enterprises, individuals or international bodies (the actors), respond to changes in the 'state' of the economy and the environment. This is accomplished through behavioural or policy changes which either directly affect the environment or alter the pressures on it from economic development.
Indicators, relating to the 'state' of the environment, were considered (e.g. concentrations of pollutants or numbers of wildlife species, stocks of natural resources like fish or forests). Indicators relating to the 'state' of economic development were also considered (e.g. levels of unemployment and the rate of inflation). Trends going back to around 1970 were identified to emphasize the long-term nature of sustainable development and to help iron out distortions caused by short-term fluctuations. Figure 1 is an example of an environmental 'state' indicator showing trends in fish stocks since 1970.
The main activities or 'pressures' causing the state to change, through the impacts of human activities, were then considered (e.g. emissions of pollutants to the atmosphere or consumption of fossil fuels). An effort was made to relate these pressures to the benefit or welfare generated by the activity. These pressure indicators are also being used to determine the relationship between the environment and development which lies at the heart of sustainable development.
Figure 2 shows the trends in UK electricity generation (the economic benefit) since 1970 against emissions of sulphur dioxide from power generation (the environmental cost). Electricity generation has continued to rise to meet demand, whereas sulphur dioxide emissions have declined rapidly since 1970. The UK has become substantially more 'sulphur efficient' in its power generating activities. The ratio of emissions to electricity generated is now nearly half of what it was in 1970. However, this indicator gives only part of the story. The real benefit received from electricity generation is not electricity itself, but the energy capacity available to heat and light our homes and to power equipment which enhances quality of life. Ideally, the objective is to maximize that benefit, while minimizing the energy input and pollutant output. There are other indicators in the set which show energy consumption. In the future, all these indictors will be combined into one single indicator.
Indicators of society's 'responses' to the state of the environment and the pressures upon it, need to be considered. These response indicators are measures of individual or collective actions to protect the environment (e.g. the recycling or reuse of materials). Response indicators are the most difficult to quantify. They often relate to the regulatory or administrative process. There may be several responses to a particular issue and, therefore, it is difficult to determine the best or most appropriate response indicator. In many cases, the effects of these diverse responses should materialize as an overall improvement in an associated pressure or state indicator, as shown in the example (Figure 2).
An interesting issue related to responses is the costs associated with pollution abatement. Protecting the environment can cause additional costs to industry, sometimes limiting economic activity. There is always a question about how much can be spent on protecting the environment. This question is at the heart of the sustainable development debate and suggests that a better 'cost-benefit' analysis should be developed. Statistically, however, expenditure on environmental protection is very hard to define and quantify. How much of the expenditure on constructing a new power station or chemical plant, for example, is linked to protecting the environment? The Department of the Environment recently published the results of a survey designed to test the practicality of quantifying this problem.
Another interesting issue is price. One way of conserving stocks of limited resources, such as energy, is to increase the price. But increasing prices raises industry's costs and the cost to the consumer, arguably reducing individual welfare. Price increases are highly unpopular. Fuel prices are no higher now, in real terms, than they were twenty years ago, while, over the same period, real disposable income has risen on average by around 60 per cent. Figure 3 illustrates the changes in the real cost of transport in the UK since 1970. Such indicators can help to inform the debate about key issues concerning public transport fares and the costs of motoring.
TOO MANY INDICATORS?
If the overall number of indicators is to be reduced, there must be some fairly high level aggregation. Sometimes, however, important underlying trends may be masked. An obvious example is energy consumption.
One of the most widely used high level indicators of energy use is the so-called 'energy ratio'. It is the ratio of total energy consumed to GDP. This is illustrated in Figure 4.
In real terms, GDP in the United Kingdom has increased by over 60 per cent since 1970, while energy consumption has remained fairly constant. Thus the overall picture is fairly reassuring. At first, it appears that the economy in the United Kingdom has become far more energy efficient over the last 25 years. When the overall energy ratio is broken down by broad sectors, however, some very different trends emerge. The main energy savings in the UK, shown in Figure 5, have been in the manufacturing industry, particularly during the 1970s and early 1980s.
Part of this change is explained by structural changes in the economy, from heavy to light industry, but most of it is due to real efficiency gains from improved process design.
In the domestic sector, which accounts for about one-quarter of total UK energy consumption, energy-efficient improvements arising from better building design and home insulation have been countered by increased use of central heating systems and luxury electrical goods, such as dishwashers and hi-fi systems. Figure 6 shows that energy consumption per household in the UK has not changed over the last twenty years. However, the number of households continues to increase due to social factors, leading to a reduction in the average number of people per household.
Transport is the other major energy consumer, accounting for one-third of total energy use in the United Kingdom. Road passenger transport accounts for around 20 per cent of energy used. Over the last twenty years, the UK has become no more energy efficient in terms of fuel consumption per passenger-miles travelled, despite considerable gains in fuel efficiency for individual vehicles. This is illustrated in Figure 7. There are many reasons for this situation, including: increased car ownership coupled with a fall in the average number of passengers per trip; the increasing dominance of private, rather than public, transport, and; increased traffic congestion.
IMPACT OF INDICATORS
If indicators are to be used by a wide audience and, perhaps, even help to influence people's behaviour, then they need not only to be understood, but must have some relevance, so that people may feel they, personally, have a part to play in helping to change an unsustainable trend. One way of increasing the impact of the indicators is to present the indicators in a form that people can easily understand. As mentioned earlier, they should not be presented at a highly aggregated level. They should relate to concepts which people can easily understand. By breaking down high-level indicators in this way, individual companies and firms may be provided with the means to compare their performance with the sector norm. Moreover, this may provide a stimulus to increase environmental efficiency.
Indicators were also presented in units which are very familiar to people. For example, in order to aggregate energy consumption from different fuels, statistics are normally expressed in terms of million tonnes of oil equivalent (MTOE). However, these units are not very meaningful to the public. So, an additional indicator on household energy consumption in kilowatt hours per household was presented. In this way, an individual householder could compare energy consumption with the national norm in terms of units. Utility companies should be required to present this information to the customer in their electricity and gas bills. Similarly, passenger travel is presented in terms of the average number of miles per person per year instead of the normally published national totals given as billions of vehicle kilometres. When these kind of indicators were launched, they showed that each man, woman and child in the UK travels around 6,500 miles by car each year, compared with 600 by bus or coach and 400 by rail.
LOCAL INDICATORS
There are now also a large number of local initiatives to develop indicators in the United Kingdom. Local authorities, under the auspices of the Local Agenda 21 initiative from the Rio conference, are developing indicators for their own local areas. Interestingly, many are choosing a grassroots approach by asking local communities which issues and indicators are the most important and relevant to them. They hope that this will encourage local communities to take ownership and, hence, be prepared to respond to the indicators they have selected.
The only problem with this approach, of course, is that it can lead to each individual authority developing their own indicators in their own way. To determine water quality, a local community might develop indicators to see if there are salmon in their local river, or frogs in their local ponds. These indicators may be highly relevant to local people, but they cannot be aggregated to give a regional or national picture. Moreover, it is not clear how such indicators relate to national or regional norms or how they can be used to compare the achievements of one area with another which has similar characteristics. Many authorities are understandably wary of the development of further sets of performance indicators. Undoubtedly, it would add value to the whole exercise if the authorities, themselves, were able to learn from one another by comparing their performance in this way. Hopefully, a core of widely used indicators will emerge from the national set, which will be evaluated at the local level by all or most authorities. These indicators, however, would continue to reflect particular local circumstances.
ENVIRONMENTAL ACCOUNTING
Environmental accounting, conducted by the Office for National Statistics, is closely linked with the work on indicators. Just as the national accounts underpin many of the key economic indicators, the environmental accounts will help to add rigour to the indicator exercise by underpinning the selection of key issues to highlight in the indicator set. Currently, the accounts are being developed in physical terms (e.g. volumes of pollutants produced and stocks of natural resources consumed) rather than in monetary values. Generating an adjusted or 'green' GDP (where GDP is adjusted for depletion of the stock of natural resources and change in environmental quality) is still a long way off.
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE ?
The UK indicators, published in March 1996, are a preliminary set, designed to provoke debate and discussion. As part of the consultation process, the Department of the Environment hosted a one-day seminar in London in November 1996, bringing together experts from local authorities, the business community, non-governmental organizations, academia, and indicator experts from abroad. This seminar raised several issues for further consideration, the main ones being:
Expert groups will be set up to consider the issues raised in the seminar and other comments that have been received. They will also consider particular subsets of the indicators in more detail. The intention is to publish a revised and updated set of indicators in 1998.
The United Kingdom has also volunteered to test a selection of indicators from the menu of indicators drawn up by the UN Commission on Sustainable Development. This is a useful endeavour to help refine some of the UK indicators. The UK work on indicators should also influence the international debate on sustainable development indicators.
REFERENCES
HMSO (1994) Sustainable Development: The UK Strategy. [ISBN 0-10-124262-X]
HMSO (1996) Digest of Environmental Statistics: No. 18. [ISBN 0-11-753297-5]
HMSO (1996) Indicators of Sustainable Development for the United Kingdom. [ISBN 0-11- 753174-X]
HMSO ( 1996) Environmental Protection Expenditure by Industry. A Survey of environmental protection expenditure by extraction, manufacturing, energy and water supply industries in the UK. [ISBN 0-11- 753300-9]