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Sustainability metrics and indices

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Sustainable development indicators (SDI) have the potential to turn the generic concept of

sustainability into action. Though there are disagreements among those from different disciplines (and

influenced by different political beliefs about the nature of the good society), these disciplines and

international organizations have each offered measures or indicators of how to measure the concept.

hile sustainability indicators, indices and reporting systems gained growing popularity in both the

public and private sectors, their effectiveness in influencing actual policy and practices often remains

limited.

Contents1 Metrics and indices

1.1 The "Daly Rules"1.2 The Natural Step/System Conditions of Sustainability1.3 Ecological Footprint Analysis1.4 Anthropologists Cultural Approach1.5 Global Reporting Initiative1.6 Energy, Emergy and Sustainability Index (SI)1.7 Environmental Sustainability Index1.8 International Institute for Sustainable Development Sample Policy Framework1.9 Sustainability Dashboard1.10 The World Business Council for Sustainable Development approach1.11 Life Cycle Assessment1.12 Sustainable Enterprise Approach1.13 The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change1.14 Sustainable Livelihoods Approach1.15 UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) Types of Sustainability1.16 "Development sustainability" approaches

2 External links3 References

Metrics and indices

arious ways of operationalizing or measuring sustainability have been developed. During the last 10

ears there has been an expansion of interest in SDI systems, both in industrialized and, albeit to a

lesser extent, in developing countries. SDIs are seen as useful in a wide range of settings, by a wide

range of actors: international and intergovernmental bodies; national governments and government

departments; economic sectors; administrators of geographic or ecological regions; communities;

nongovernmental organizations; and the private sector.

SDI processes are underpinned and driven by the increasing need for improved quality and regularly

produced information with better spatial and temporal resolution. Accompanying this need is therequirement, brought in part by the information revolution, to better differentiate between information

that matters in any given policy context versus information that is of secondary importance or

irrelevant.

A large and still growing number of attempts to create aggregate measures of various aspects of


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sustainability created a stable of indices that provide a more nuanced perspective on development than

economic aggregates such as GDP. Some of the most prominent of these include the Human

Development Index (HDI) of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP); the Environmental

Sustainability Index (ESI) and the pilot Environmental Performance Index (EPI) reported under the

orld Economic Forum(WEF); or the Genuine Progress Index (GPI) calculated at the national or sub-

national level. Parallel to these initiatives, political interest in producing a green GDP that would take at

least the cost of pollution and natural capital depletion into account has grown, even if implementation

is held back by the reluctance of policymakers and statistical services arising mostly from a concern

about conceptual and technical challenges.

At the heart of the debate over different indicators are not only different disciplinary approaches but

also different views of development. Some indicators reflect the ideology of globalization and

urbanization that seek to define and measure progress on whether different countries or cultures agree

to accept industrial technologies in their eco-systems.[1] Other approaches, like those that start from

international treaties on cultural rights of indigenous peoples to maintain traditional cultures, measure

the ability of those cultures to maintain their traditions within their eco-systems at whatever level of

productivity they choose.

The Lempert-Nguyen indicator, devised in 2008 for practitioners, starts with the standards for

sustainable development that have been agreed on by the international community and then looks at

whether the international organizations like UNDP and other development actors are applying these

principles or not in their projects and in their work as a whole.[2]

In using sustainability indicators, it is important to distinguish between three types of sustainability that

are often mentioned in international development: -- Sustainability of a culture (human system) within

its resources and environment; -- Sustainability of a specific stream of benefits or productivity (usually

just an economic measure); andSustainability of a particular institution or project without additional

assistance (institutionalization of an input).

The following list is not exhaustive but contains the major points of view:

The "Daly Rules"

University of Maryland School of Public Policy professor and former Chief Economist for the World

Bank Herman E. Daly (working from theory initially developed by Romanian economist Nicholas

Georgescu-Roegen and laid out in his 1971 opus "The Entropy Law and the Economic Process")

suggests the following three operational rules defining the condition of ecological (thermodynamic)

sustainability:

1. Renewable resources such as fish, soil, and groundwater must be used no faster than the rate at

which they regenerate.2. Nonrenewable resources such as minerals and fossil fuels must be used no faster than renewable

substitutes for them can be put into place.3. Pollution and wastes must be emitted no faster than natural systems can absorb them, recycle

them, or render them harmless.

Some commentators have argued that the "Daly Rules," being based on ecological theory and the Laws

of Thermodynamics, should perhaps be considered implicit or foundational for the many other systems

that are advocated, and are thus the most straightforward system for operationalization of the Bruntland

Definition. In this view, the Bruntland Definition and the Daly Rules can be seen as complementary

Bruntland provides the ethical goal of non-depletion of natural capital, Daly details parsimoniously how

this ethic is operationalized in physical terms. The system is rationally complete, and in agreement withphysical laws. Other definitions may thus be superfluous, or mere glosses on the immutable

thermodynamic reality.[3]

This being said, there are numerous other definitions and systems of operationalization for


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sustainability, and there has been competition for influence between them, with the unfortunate result

that, in the minds of some observers at least, sustainability has no agreed-upon definition.

The Natural Step/System Conditions of Sustainability

Following the Brundtland Commission's report, one of the first initiatives to bring scientific principles

to the assessment of sustainability was by Swedish cancer scientist Karl-Henrik Robrt. Robrtcoordinated a consensus process to define and operationalize sustainability. At the core of the process

lies a consensus on what Robrt came to call the natural step framework. The framework is based on a

definition of sustainability, described as the system conditions of sustainability (as derived from System

theory). In the natural step framework, a sustainable society is one which does not systematically

increase concentrations ofsubstances extracted from the Earth's crust, or substances produced by

society; that does not degrade the environmentand in which people have the capacity to meet their

needs worldwide.[4]

Ecological Footprint Analysis

Ecological footprint analysis, based on the biological concept of carrying capacity, is an estimate of theamount of land area a human population, given prevailing technology, would need if the current

resource consumption and pollution by the population is matched by the sustainable (renewable)

resource production and waste assimilation by such a land area. The algorithms of the ecological

footprint model have, on the one hand, been used in combination with the emergy methodology (S.

Zhao, Z. Li and W. Li 2005), and a sustainability index has been derived from the latter. They have

also been combined with an index of quality of life (Marks et al., 2006), and the outcome christened

the "(Un)Happy Planet Index" (HPI) shows data for 178 nations.

One of the striking conclusions to emerge from ecological footprint analyses is that it would be

necessary to have 4 or 5 back-up planets engaged in nothing but agriculture for all those alive today to

live a western lifestyle.

The basis of footprint analysis is the IPAT Equation that, itself, can be considered a metric.

Anthropologists Cultural Approach

Though sustainable development has become a concept that biologists and ecologists have measured

from an eco-system point of view and that the business community has measured from a perspective of

energy and resource efficiencies and consumption, the discipline of anthropology is itself founded on

the concept of sustainability of human groups within ecological systems. At the basis of the definition

of culture is whether a human group is able to transmit its values and continue several aspects of that

lifestyle for at least three generations. The measurement of culture, by anthropologists, is itself a

measure of sustainability and it is also one that has been codified by international agreements and

treaties like the Rio Declaration of 1992 and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of

Indigenous Peoples to maintain a cultural group's choice of lifestyles within their lands and ecosystems.

Terralingua, an organization of anthropologists and linguists working to protect biocultural diversity,

with a focus on language, has devised a sert of measures with UNESCO for measuring the survivability

of languages and cultures in given eco-systems.[5]

The Lempert-Nguyen indicator of sustainable development, developed in 2008 by David Lempert and

Hue Nguyen is one that incorporates and integrates these cultural principles with international law. [6]

Global Reporting Initiative

In 1997 the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) was started as a multi-stakeholder process and

independent institution whose mission has been "to develop and disseminate globally applicable

Sustainability Reporting Guidelines". The GRI uses ecological footprint analysis and became


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independent in 2002. It is an official collaborating centre of the United Nations Environment

Programme (UNEP) and during the tenure of Kofi Annan, it cooperated with the UN Secretary-

Generals Global Compact.

Energy, Emergy and Sustainability Index (SI)

In 1956 Dr. H.T. Odum of the University of Florida coined the term Emergy and devised theaccounting system of embodied energy. In 1997, systems ecologists M.T.Brown and S.Ulgiati

published their formulation of a quantitative sustainability index (SI) as a ratio of the emergy (spelled

with an "m", i.e. "embodied energy", not simply "energy") yield ratio (EYR) to the environmental

loading ratio (ELR). Brown and Ulgiati also called the sustainability index the "Emergy Sustainability

Index" (ESI), "an index that accounts for yield, renewability, and environmental load. It is the

incremental emergy yield compared to the environmental load".[7]

NOTE: The numerator is called "emergy" and is spelled with an "m". It is an abbreviation of theterm, "embodied energy". The numerator is NOT "energy yield ratio", which is a different

concept.[8]

riters like Leone (2005) and Yi et al. have also recently suggested that the emergy sustainability index

has significant utility. In particular, Leone notes that while the GRI measures behavior, it fails to

calculate supply constraints which the emergy methodology aims to calculate.

Environmental Sustainability Index

In 2004, a joint initiative of the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy (YCELP) and theCenter for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) of Columbia University, in

collaboration with the World Economic Forum and the Directorate-General Joint Research Centre

(European Commission) also attempted to construct an Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI).[9]

This was formally released in Davos, Switzerland, at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum

(WEF) on 28 January 2005. The report on this index made a comparison of the WEF ESI to other

sustainability indicators such as the Ecological footprint Index. However there was no mention of the

emergy sustainability index.

International Institute for Sustainable Development Sample Policy Framework

In 1996 the International Institute for Sustainable Development developed a Sample Policy Frameworkwhich proposed that a sustainability index "would give decision-makers tools to rate policies and

programs against each other" (1996, p. 9). Ravi Jain (2005) [10] argued that, "The ability to analyze

different alternatives or to assess progress towards sustainability will then depend on establishing

measurable entities or metrics used for sustainability."

Sustainability Dashboard

The International Institute for Sustainable Development (http://www.iisd.org/) has produced a

"Dashboard of Sustainability (http://www.iisd.org/cgsdi/dashboard.asp) ", "a free, non-commercial

software package that illustrates the complex relationships among economic, social and environmental

issues". This is based on Sustainable Development Indicators

(http://www.iisd.org/pdf/2005/measure_indicators_sd_way_forward.pdf) Prepared for the United

Nations Division for Sustainable Development (UN-DSD)DECEMBER 2005.

The World Business Council for Sustainable Development approach


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The World Business Council for Sustainable Development, founded in 1995, has formulated the

business case for sustainable development and argues that "sustainable development is good for

business and business is good for sustainable development". This view is also maintained by

proponents of the concept of industrial ecology. The theory of industrial ecology declares that industry

should be viewed as a series of interlocking man-made ecosystems interfacing with the natural global

ecosystem.

According to some economists, it is possible for the concepts of sustainable development and

competitiveness to merge if enacted wisely, so that there is not an inevitable trade-off.[11] This merger

is motivated by the following six observations (Hargroves & Smith 2005):

1. Throughout the economy there are widespread untapped potential resource productivityimprovements to be made to be coupled with effective design.

2. There has been a significant shift in understanding over the last three decades of what createslasting competitiveness of a firm.

3. There is now a critical mass of enabling technologies in eco-innovations that make integratedapproaches to sustainable development economically viable.

4. Since many of the costs of what economists call environmental externalities are passed on togovernments, in the long-term sustainable development strategies can provide multiple benefitsto the tax payer.

5. There is a growing understanding of the multiple benefits of valuing social and natural capital,for both moral and economic reasons, and including them in measures of national well-being.

6. There is mounting evidence to show that a transition to a sustainable economy, if done wisely,may not harm economic growth significantly, in fact it could even help it. Recent research by ex-Wuppertal Institute member Joachim Spangenberg, working with neo-classical economists,shows that the transition, if focused on improving resource productivity, will lead to highereconomic growth than business as usual, while at the same time reducing pressures on theenvironment and enhancing employment.

Life Cycle Assessment

Life Cycle Assessment is a "composite measure of sustainability." It analyses the environmental

performance of products and services through all phases of their life cycle: extracting and processing

raw materials; manufacturing, transportation and distribution; use, re-use, maintenance; recycling, and

final disposal.[12]

Sustainable Enterprise Approach

Building on the work of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, businesses began to

see the needs of environmental and social systems as opportunities for business development and,ultimately, profit. This approach has manifested itself in two key areas of strategic intent: Sustainable

Innovation and Bottom of the Pyramid business strategies. Now, as businesses have begun the shift

toward sustainable enterprise, many business schools are leading the research and education of the next

generation of business leaders. Some key players are:

The Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise at Cornell UniversityThe Erb Institute at the Ross School of Business at The University of MichiganThe William Davidson Institute at the Ross School of Business at The University of MichiganThe Center for Sustainable Enterprise at the University of North Carolina, Chapel-HillThe Center for Sustainable Enterprise at the Stuart School of Business at the Illinois Institute ofTechnology

The Community Enterprise System by NABARD-XIMB Sustainability Trust]] at Center for CaseResearch- Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar

The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change


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This report, commissioned by former UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown (now UK Prime

Minister), on the economics of global climate change, estimated that 1% of GDP will now need to be

invested to save 20% of GDP, because of failures to date by most global market sectors to integrate

sustainability in the metrics they have governed with. The main points of the Review are described in

an article by Godard.[13] This article also brings a discussion about the report that goes beyond the

well-publicised results.

Sustainable Livelihoods Approach

See also: Inclusive business and Worldchanging

Another application of the term sustainability has been in the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach,

developed from conceptual work by Amartya Sen, and the UK's Institute for Development Studies

http://www.ids.ac.uk. This was championed by the UK's Department for International

Development(DFID), UNDP, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) as well as NGOs such as

CARE, OXFAM and the African Institute for Community-Driven Development, Khanya-aicdd

http://www.khanya-aicdd.org. Key concepts include the Sustainable Livelihoods (SL) Framework, a

holistic way of understanding livelihoods, the SL principles, as well as six governance issues developed

by Khanya-aicdd.[14] A wide range of information resources on Sustainable Livelihoods Approaches

can be found at Livelihoods Connect http://www.livelihoods.org

Some analysts view this measure with caution because they believe that it has a tendency to take one

part of the footprint analysis and IPAT equation (productivity) and to focus on the sustainability of

economic returns to an economic sector rather than on the sustainability of the entire population or

culture.

UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) Types of Sustainability

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has identified considerations for technical cooperationthat affect three types of sustainability:

Institutional sustainability. Can a strengthened institutional structure continue to deliver theresults of technical cooperation to end users? The results may not be sustainable if, for example,the planning authority that depends on the technical cooperation loses access to top management,or is not provided with adequate resources after the technical cooperation ends. Institutionalsustainability can also be linked to the concept of social sustainability, which asks how theinterventions can be sustained by social structures and institutions;

Economic and financial sustainability. Can the results of technical cooperation continue toyield an economic benefit after the technical cooperation is withdrawn? For example, the benefits

from the introduction of new crops may not be sustained if the constraints to marketing the cropsare not resolved. Similarly, economic, as distinct from financial, sustainability may be at risk ifthe end users continue to depend on heavily subsidized activities and inputs.

Ecological sustainability. Are the benefits to be generated by the technical cooperation likely tolead to a deterioration in the physical environment, thus indirectly contributing to a fall inproduction, or well-being of the groups targeted and their society?

Some ecologists have emphasised a fourth type of sustainability:

Energetic sustainability. This type of sustainability is often concerned with the production ofenergy and mineral resources. Some researchers have pointed to trends which document the

limits of production. See Hubbert peak for example.

"Development sustainability" approaches

Sustainability is obviously relevant to international development projects. A definition of development


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sustainability is "the continuation of benefits after major assistance from the donor has been completed"

(Australian Agency for International Development 2000). Ensuring that development projects are

sustainable can reduce the likelihood of them collapsing after they have just finished; it also reduces the

financial cost of development projects and the subsequent social problems, such as dependence of the

stakeholders on external donors and their resources. All development assistance, apart from temporary

emergency and humanitarian relief efforts, should be designed and implemented with the aim of

achieving sustainable benefits. There are ten key factors that influence development sustainability.

1. Participation and ownership. Get the stakeholders (men and women) to genuinely participate indesign and implementation. Build on their initiatives and demands. Get them to monitor theproject and periodically evaluate it for results.

2. Capacity building and training. Training stakeholders to take over should begin from the start ofany project and continue throughout. The right approach should both motivate and transfer skillsto people.

3. Government policies. Development projects should be aligned with local government policies.4. Financial. In some countries and sectors, financial sustainability is difficult in the medium term.

Training in local fundraising is a possibility, as is identifying links with the private sector,charging for use, and encouraging policy reforms.

5. Management and organization. Activities that integrate with or add to local structures may havebetter prospects for sustainability than those which establish new or parallel structures.

6. Social, gender and culture. The introduction of new ideas, technologies and skills requires anunderstanding of local decision-making systems, gender divisions and cultural preferences.

7. Technology. All outside equipment must be selected with careful consideration given to the localfinance available for maintenance and replacement. Cultural acceptability and the local capacityto maintain equipment and buy spare parts are vital.

8. Environment. Poor rural communities that depend on natural resources should be involved inidentifying and managing environmental risks. Urban communities should identify and managewaste disposal and pollution risks.

9. External political and economic factors. In a weak economy, projects should not be toocomplicated, ambitious or expensive.

10. Realistic duration. A short project may be inadequate for solving entrenched problems in asustainable way, particularly when behavioural and institutional changes are intended. A longproject, may on the other hand, promote dependence.

The definition of sustainability as "the continuation of benefits after major assistance from the donor

has been completed" (Australian Agency for International Development 2000) is echoed by other

definitions (World Bank, USAID). The concept has however evolved as it has become of interest to

non grant-making institutions. Sustainability in development refers to processes and relative increases

in local capacity and performance while foreign assistance decreases or shifts (not necessarily

disappears). The objective of sustainable development is open to various interpretations.[15]

External links

http://www.childsurvival.com/documents/CSTS/sustainability.cfmhttp://www.ximb.ac.in/~navajyoti/index.htm

References

1. ^ Boulanger, P. M. (2008) Sustainable development indicators: a scientific challenge, a democratic issue.

S.A.P.I.EN.S.1 (1) (http://sapiens.revues.org/index166.html)

2. ^ A Sustainable Development Indicator for NGOs and International Organizations, International Journal of

Sustainable Societies, 1:1, 2008. Use link: http://inderscience.metapress.com/app/home/contribution.asp?

referrer=parent&backto=issue,3,6;journal,1,1;linkingpublicationresults,1:121226,1

3. ^ Womersley, Michael: A Peculiarly American Green: Religion and Environmental Policy in the United

States, 2002, Dissertation, University of Maryland School of Public Policy. pg.19-21

4. ^ TNS Canada System Conditions (http://www.naturalstep.ca/system-conditions.html) . Retrieved on: 20078-

07-15.


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may apply. See Terms of Use for details.Wikipedia is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profitorganization.

5. ^ [1] (http://www.terralingua.org/html/home.html)

6. ^ A Sustainable Development Indicator for NGOs and International Organizations, International Journal of

Sustainable Societies, 1:1, 2008. Use link http://inderscience.metapress.com/app/home/contribution.asp?

referrer=parent&backto=issue,3,6;journal,1,1;linkingpublicationresults,1:121226,1

7. ^ Brown, M.T. and S. Ulgiati.1999. Emergy evaluation of natural capital and biosphere services. AMBIO.

Vol.28 No.6, Sept. 1999.

8. ^ Ulgiati, S. and M.T. Brown. 1999. Emergy accounting of human-dominated, large scale ecosystems. In

Jorgensen and Kay (eds.) Thermodynamics and Ecology. Elsevier.9. ^ Environmental Sustainability Index (http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/es/esi/index.html) (2005) Yale Center

for Environmental Law and Policy Yale University, New Haven and Yale University Center for International

Earth Science Information Network Columbia University

10. ^ Jain, Ravi; Sustainability: metrics, specific indicators and preference index, Clean Technologies and

Environmental Policy (Journal), May 2005, pg. 71-72

11. ^ Esty, D. C., Porter, M. E., Industrial Ecology and Competitiveness: Strategic Implications for the Firm,

Journal of Industrial Ecology Winter 1998, Vol. 2, No. 1: 35-43.

12. ^

]

http://www.canadianarchitect.com/asf/perspectives_sustainibility/measures_of_sustainablity/measures_of_sustainablity_lca.htm

Measures of sustainability]. Canadian Architect. Retrieved on: June 30, 2007.

13. ^ Godard, O. (2008) The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change: contents, insights and

assessment of the critical debate. S.A.P.I.EN.S.1 (1) (http://sapiens.revues.org/index240.html)

14. ^ Khanya-aicdd (http://www.khanya-aicdd.org/site_files/index.asp?pid=55)

15. ^ Vivien, F. D. (2008) Sustainable development: An overview of economic proposals. S.A.P.I.EN.S.1 (2)

(http://sapiens.revues.org/index227.html)

[2] (http://www.ximb.ac.in/~navajyoti/index.htm)

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