Indicators of Sustainability action

The field of sustainability has developed immensely over the past few decades. The awareness and action that precipitated this progress has accomplished a great deal, however one difficult aspect of sustainable improvement is that it can be hard to measure and quantify. However these measurements are still extremely important; they can validate actions taken, reveal areas in which methods have been ineffective, and identify how our efforts can be improved into the future.

Therefore, it is important that we employ sustainable indicators to measure the outcomes of environmental efforts. A sustainable indicator is a measurement that is quantitative in nature and informs the management of sustainability. Other types of indicators abound in our world, from the gas gauge in the car, to a mid-term report card, to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the country. These indicators point to an issue or condition with the purpose of demonstrating how well a system is working. They should also help forecast future problems and be instructive in solving them. While sustainable indicators encompass these traits, what makes them unique is that rather than examining one factor in isolation they encompass an interactive view of economy, society, and environment.

Sustainable Measures is a firm that consults to sustainable organizations using effective indicators to measure the organization’s development and progress. They compare GDP with an indicator called the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare or ISEW, an example that illustrates what a sustainable indicator is and why it is important. “Because GDP reflects only the amount of economic activity, regardless of the effect of that activity on the community’s social and environmental health, GDP can go up when overall community health goes down. For example, when there is a ten-car pileup on the highway, the GDP goes up because of the money spent on medical fees and repair costs. On the other hand, if ten people decide not to buy cars and instead walk to work, their health and wealth may increase but the GDP goes down.” The ISEW, alternatively, takes into account all of these factors, including air pollution, resource depletion, climate change, and income distribution.

A major sustainability indicator in effect right now is the Environmental Performance Index (EPI), which “ranks countries on performance indicators tracked across policy categories that cover both environmental public health and ecosystem vitality. These indicators provide a gauge at a national government scale of how close countries are to established environmental policy goals.” The EPI and the Environmental Sustainability Index, which came before it, were developed collaboratively by those at Yale University, Columbia University, the World Economic Forum, and the Joint Research Center of the European Commission. The EPI released a pilot report in 2006 and has released a report every two years since then. In the 2012 EPI report the United States was ranked 49^th. Hopefully we can strive to engage in some friendly competition with our global peers to increase our nation’s effectiveness regarding sustainability, aided by the knowledge that sustainability indicators can provide.

Written by: Abigail Fagan, class of 2014

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