Sustainability Indicators: Measuring the Immeasurable

Rating:
Summary: Measuring progress toward sustainability
Review: The sustainability of business and economic activity has become a major issue for global business and for government at all levels. But there is no universally accepted definition of 'sustainability' and measurement of progress toward sustainability is still more art than science. What is measured, how it is measured, what range of indicators are appropriate, how one values the present in relation to the future and how one arrives at a final judgement where ecological, social and economic indicators move in different directions, are all matters of intense debate.

This book, which is specifically identified as 'work in progress', makes a valuable contribution by teasing out the questions, alternative definitions and the underlying mental models that inform them. The authors list and discuss various approaches that have been taken to developing useful indicators.

They then develop in some detail a systemic approach to developing sustainability indicators for a project, based on the idea of Systemic Sustainability Analysis (see key points below). Essentially, the method proposed is systemic, seeks to identify and encompass multiple perspectives and is developed for a specific purpose in measuring sustainability of a specific project or situation. While it is proposed as a method that has very general application, it emphatically is not a 'general theory' of sustainability - i.e. a set of rules and measures that can be applied to all situations. It will be interesting to see the successor, which is due to be published in May 2003.

I suggest that the reader should go to Chapter 7 after reading the Foreword and before tackling the main text. It provides an excellent overview of the issues in dealing with indicators.

My only disappointment is that there is no mention of The Natural Step, the body that uses an approach that seeks (in my opinion very successfully) to provide an approach that is systemic, offers 'simplicity without reductionism', and derives four broad parameters against which to judge movement toward or away from sustainability. There is also no mention of the 'triple bottom line', varieties of which have recently achieved popularity as a surrogate for measuring sustainability. I expect that will be covered in the succeeding book.