Archive:Monitoring sustainable development in the European Union
This Statistics Explained article is outdated and has been archived - for recent articles on sustainable development see here.
- Published in Sigma - The Bulletin of European Statistics, 2010/01
Sustainable development (SD) is a fundamental and overarching objective of the European Union (EU) and monitoring progress towards this goal is a central part of the EU’s SD strategy. Therefore, Eurostat, together with the Member States, has developed a set of sustainable development indicators, which is used in the assessment of whether Europe is on a sustainable path. Agriculture, forestry and fisheries are not treated as separate themes, but cut across many of them.
Introduction
Sustainable development can be defined as meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It is a vision of progress that links economic development, protection of the environment and social justice, and therefore concerns all citizens of the EU, and indeed the whole world.
The EU’s sustainable development strategy sets out a single, coherent approach on how the EU will more effectively live up to its commitment to meet the challenges of sustainable development. Reporting progress towards agreed goals is an integral part of the strategy.
‘To measure progress we have, together with other European Commission services and the national statistical institutes in the Member States, developed around 140 indicators, which are divided into 10 themes covering the many dimensions of sustainable development,’ said Nikolaus Wurm, then Head of Eurostat’s Key Indicators for European Policy Unit.
The themes comprise socioeconomic development, climate change and energy, sustainable consumption and production, natural resources, sustainable transport, public health, social inclusion, demographic change, global partnership and good governance. Data mostly come from other Eurostat units, but also from outside sources, such as other European Commission services, international organisations and scientific bodies. Data providers within Eurostat also provide methodology, definitions and metadata. Eurostat has the responsibility to provide guidance for the use and analysis of the indicators as well as information as to how the indicators had been selected. ‘Our unit does not collect any data. We reuse what others have collected. Our reasoning is that the specialist units understand issues in their area better than us and can better judge if data are timely and of high enough quality to be used for the sustainable development indicators,’ said Graham Lock in Mr Wurm’s unit.
‘One of the indicators we use to assess management of renewable natural resources is “fish catches taken from stocks outside safe biological limits”. This indicator comes from the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea and aims at measuring whether fish can replenish themselves. But the indicator combines statistics on catches with expert opinion on biological limits and is therefore not perfectly objective. This makes it essential that users are provided with the necessary information on quality,’ Mr Lock continued.
All indicators have a quality profile
‘The objective is for all of our sustainable development indicators to have a quality profile, including those that stem from sources outside the European statistical system,’ said Vincent Tronet, head of section in the unit.
‘The quality profile does not only include information on timeliness, accuracy, comparability and relevance, but also information on how the indicator could be improved as well as the development towards this goal,’ he continued.
There are three classes of indicators. The first includes about 130 indicators which are produced and published, covering issues such as agricultural subsidies, organic farming, what people eat and the size of the fishing fleet of the EU Member States.
The second includes indicators which Eurostat and the Member States agree would be useful to have and feasible to develop. An example of an indicator ‘under development’ linked to sustainable agriculture, would be the percentage of land which risks soil erosion. These indicators are researched by Mr Wurm’s team together with specialists in other Eurostat units, Commission directorates-general, universities and other organisations. Currently a ‘soil erosion indicator’ is being developed and tested by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre.
The third group includes those indicators which could be developed in the future, ranging from effective fishing capacity and quotas, pesticide residues in food to sales of Fairtrade and share of eco-labelled products.
There is a section on Eurostat’s website where indicators and other material related to sustainable development can be found. Every two years a special monitoring report is published, which gives an objective picture of what Europe has achieved in recent years. The report, along with reports from Member States, is the basis for the European Commission’s assessment of the implementation of the SD strategy and is regularly discussed by the Heads of State or Government at the December European Council.
More precise indicators
In the future Eurostat does not wish to develop more indicators, just more precise ones.
‘Today we use some “proxy” indicators, which do not reflect exactly what we wish. This is due to the lack of comparable and high-quality data. To monitor fishing capacity, for instance, we use the size of the fishing fleet, which is not optimal, but it is the best indicator that exists at the moment,’ said Mr Wurm.