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.

While 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.

Contents
1 Metrics and indices
1.1 The "Daly Rules"
1.2 The Natural Step/System Conditions of Sustainability
1.3 Ecological Footprint Analysis
1.4 Anthropologists Cultural Approach
1.5 Global Reporting Initiative
1.6 Energy, Emergy and Sustainability Index (SI)
1.7 Environmental Sustainability Index
1.8 International Institute for Sustainable Development Sample Policy Framework
1.9 Sustainability Dashboard
1.10 The World Business Council for Sustainable Development approach
1.11 Life Cycle Assessment
1.12 Sustainable Enterprise Approach
1.13 The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change
1.14 Sustainable Livelihoods Approach
1.15 UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) Types of Sustainability
1.16 "Development sustainability" approaches
2 External links
3 References

Metrics and indices

Various ways of operationalizing or measuring sustainability have been developed. During the last 10
years 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 the
requirement, 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
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
World 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); and—Sustainability 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 with
physical 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
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 Robèrt. Robèrt
coordinated a consensus process to define and operationalize sustainability. At the core of the process
lies a consensus on what Robèrt 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 of substances extracted from the Earth's crust, or substances produced by
society; that does not degrade the environment and 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 the
amount 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
Sustainability Reporting Guidelines". The GRI uses ecological footprint analysis and became
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-
General’s 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 the
accounting 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 the
term, "embodied energy". The numerator is NOT "energy yield ratio", which is a different
concept.[8]

Writers 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 the
Center 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 Framework
which 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

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 productivity
improvements 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 creates
lasting competitiveness of a firm.
3. There is now a critical mass of enabling technologies in eco-innovations that make integrated
approaches to sustainable development economically viable.
4. Since many of the costs of what economists call ‘environmental externalities’ are passed on to
governments, in the long-term sustainable development strategies can provide multiple benefits
to 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 higher
economic growth than business as usual, while at the same time reducing pressures on the
environment 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 University

The Erb Institute at the Ross School of Business at The University of Michigan
The William Davidson Institute at the Ross School of Business at The University of Michigan
The Center for Sustainable Enterprise at the University of North Carolina, Chapel-Hill
The Center for Sustainable Enterprise at the Stuart School of Business at the Illinois Institute of
Technology
The Community Enterprise System by NABARD-XIMB Sustainability Trust]] at Center for Case
Research- Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar

The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change

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 cooperation
that affect three types of sustainability:

Institutional sustainability. Can a strengthened institutional structure continue to deliver the

results 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. Institutional
sustainability can also be linked to the concept of social sustainability, which asks how the
interventions can be sustained by social structures and institutions;

Economic and financial sustainability. Can the results of technical cooperation continue to
yield 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 crops
are not resolved. Similarly, economic, as distinct from financial, sustainability may be at risk if
the end users continue to depend on heavily subsidized activities and inputs.

Ecological sustainability. Are the benefits to be generated by the technical cooperation likely to
lead to a deterioration in the physical environment, thus indirectly contributing to a fall in
production, 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 of
energy 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
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 in
design and implementation. Build on their initiatives and demands. Get them to monitor the
project and periodically evaluate it for results.
2. Capacity building and training. Training stakeholders to take over should begin from the start of
any project and continue throughout. The right approach should both motivate and transfer skills
to 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 have
better 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 an
understanding of local decision-making systems, gender divisions and cultural preferences.
7. Technology. All outside equipment must be selected with careful consideration given to the local
finance available for maintenance and replacement. Cultural acceptability and the local capacity
to maintain equipment and buy spare parts are vital.
8. Environment. Poor rural communities that depend on natural resources should be involved in
identifying and managing environmental risks. Urban communities should identify and manage
waste disposal and pollution risks.
9. External political and economic factors. In a weak economy, projects should not be too
complicated, ambitious or expensive.
10. Realistic duration. A short project may be inadequate for solving entrenched problems in a
sustainable way, particularly when behavioural and institutional changes are intended. A long
project, 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.cfm
http://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.
 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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