Background to the First SCOPE Indicators Project
The most difficult
challenge facing policy-makers is to decide on the future directions
of society and the economy in the face of often-conflicting requirements
for short-term political success, economic growth, social progress and
environmental sustainability. The wrong decisions can bear heavy consequences,
increase human suffering, and even precipitate crises. Improving the
basis for sound decision-making, integrating many complex issues while
providing simple signals that a busy decision-maker can understand,
is a high priority. At a time when modern information technologies increase
the flow of information but not our ability to absorb it, we need tools
that condense and digest information for rapid assimilation, while making
it possible to explore issues further as needed. This is the goal of
indicators.
Agenda 21, approved by governments at Rio de Janeiro
in 1992, acknowledges that “commonly used indicators such as GNP
and measurement of individual source or pollution flows do not provide
adequate indications of sustainability”. The problem with attempts
to monitor and evaluate progress towards sustainable development is
not the lack of available indicators but their multiplicity and their
interdependence. Given the divergent views on indicators, the challenge
following Rio was to reach a consensus on a suitable set of indicators
that can adequately reflect the wide range of concerns encompassed by
sustainable development.
In response to this call, in 1995 the UN Commission
on Sustainable Development (CSD) approved a five-year Work Programme
on Indicators of Sustainable Development (1995-2000) to make these accessible
to decision-makers at the national level. At the same time, it was foreseen
that indicators used in national policies could also be used in the
national reports to the CSD and other intergovernmental bodies.
One of the outcomes
of this effort was a project undertaken by SCOPE that resulted in a
synthesis volume, SCOPE 58 “Sustainability Indicators”.
This book was published and distributed to all delegations at the UN
General Assembly Special Session in 1997, as well as being available
commercially.