You are here: Home > Orientation Hall > Modules > VII > Indicators

D. Developing sustainable development indicators

The concept of sustainable development in the modern world represents a new evolving paradigm with challenges and opportunities. In the past, national development plans were focused only on economic advantage and issue of integration of environmental consideration was considered as barrier to economic development. This lopsided approach led to growth of environmental degradation and development activities were proven unsustainable. The United Nations conference on Human environment held at Stockholm in 1972, conference recognized that environmental conservation and economic development are not antagonistic but mutually complementary.

The integration of environmental consideration into development planning right from policy, strategy formulation to program/project implementation and monitoring thereby adopting holistic and participatory approach was increasingly realized imperative to ensure sustainable development. It was emphasized in the World commission on Environment and Development (1986), Earth summit (1992), Millennium summit (2000) and World summit for Sustainable Development (2002). In this line, Environmental Assessment (EA) has been well accepted as a reliable planning and decision-making tool in global scale. It is considered helpful to achieve the goal of long-term viable, environmentally sound, economically beneficial and socially acceptable sustainable development.

The crux of EA lies on successful integration of environmental consideration into development planning. The integration of principles of environmental management with elements of sustainable development involves several steps. The environmental consideration requires availability of factual environmental database, assessment of trend of natural resource base, analysis of root causes of problems, environmental accounting including cost benefit analysis, review of relevant environmental legislations and formulation of sustainable development indicators. The integration step involves translation of technical environmental information into simple economic terms so that significances of environmental impacts of a plan/project and alternatives are easily comprehend by even non technical decision making top executives: including president, minister, legislator/member of parliament, ministerial secretary and advisors. It has to be decided confidently whether a proposed project/plan be approved, rejected or approved with certain modifications with respect to ensure an environment friendly and sustainable development practice. This can be done easily by using certain established indicators to ensure that the plans adhere to the requirements of sustainable development practices.

(Click below to jump to the topic)

Parameters of sustainable development
Modalities of environmental assessment
Types of indicators
Practical uses of indicators
Composite environmental indicators
Sustainable development indicators

Next