Environmental indicators : monitoring the state of our environment - article

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Key Statistics - article, December 2001, p. 9-12

Environmental indicators have been recognised as important tools in the measurement and monitoring of the impact of human activities on the natural environment. In particular, indicators are increasingly being used to provide the environmental statistics needed to monitor the trends in the environment and to manage natural resources. This article looks at what the indicators are, the international development of sustainable development indicators and the development of indicators in New Zealand. Statistics New Zealand has been developing a set of socioeconomic indicators which are intended to show the underlying social and economic driving forces behind environmental pressure and the change in pressure over time.

Environmental indicators: monitoring the state of our environment¹

Humans rely on the natural environment for their survival and well-being. However, as the human population increases and lifestyle preferences change, the natural environment is under increasing pressure from human activities.
 

The immediate impact of human pressures on the environment is often not well understood and it is difficult to know how to manage these pressures in the absence of sound social, economic and environmental information on which to base decisions.

Over the past decade, environmental indicators have been recognised as important tools in the measurement and monitoring of the impact of human activities on the natural environment. In particular, indicators are increasingly being used to provide the environmental statistics needed to monitor the trends in the environment and to manage natural resources.
 

What are indicators? 

Indicators are physical, chemical, biological or socio-economic parameters that represent the key elements of a complex system.² Environmental indicators are reactive to changes in the environment and will show trends or sudden changes in a particular environmental condition.
 

Indicators simplify data into readily usable information and can be used to communicate complex trends and events. Indicators are often measured on an annual basis and usually in physical as opposed to monetary units. An example of an indicator of water quality is the nitrate concentration in groundwater.
 

Among other functions, environmental indicators can be used to predict future impacts and assist in reporting on the state of the environment. Indicators can be used not only to assess the direction of change, but also to assess the magnitude of change in environmental performance.
 

In the past, environmental indicators have generally been used to assess the change in a specific environmental condition, such as water quality. More recently, however, the international trend has been towards the development of indicators of sustainable development, which seek to monitor and measure the interaction between society, the economy and the natural environment. An example of traditional versus sustainable development indicators is provided in Table 1:

International development of sustainable development indicators: the World Summit and Agenda 21 

Although the terms ‘sustainability’ and ‘sustainable development’ had been used prior to 1992, it wasn’t until the Earth Summit Conference held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 that the concept of sustainable development gained acceptance and momentum in the environmental arena³. The conference was a result of a rising awareness of the interactions between the economy, social structures and the environment as the world increasingly faced development constraints.
 

The Earth Summit Conference gave rise to 27 general principles for achieving sustainable development. The plan for actioning these principles was also created in the form of Agenda 21.
 

During the Earth Summit Conference, it was recognised that continual monitoring and measurement is required to assess how countries are progressing towards meeting sustainable development targets and objectives. In particular, indicators were noted as important tools to measure environmental, social and economic performance. This recognition was made explicit in Agenda 21, in which it was proposed that all countries develop a set of sustainable development indicators to measure their performance against targets and objectives.
 

Agenda 21 was also specific in promoting an integrated and harmonised approach to the compilation of sustainable development indicators through the establishment of a core set of indicators that could be adapted to suit a specific country or region.

Since 1992, the United Nations Commission of Sustainable Development and the United Nations Environment Programme have been developing a key set of sustainable development indicators at an international level to be adapted on a country by country basis.
 

Whereas traditional indicators of economic, social or environmental progress measure change in one part of a community, sustainable development indicators measure the interactions between society, the economy and the environment. As a result, sustainable development indicators reflect the interconnected nature of the different components of the environment.
 

Development of indicators in New Zealand 

In 1995, following the 1992 Earth Summit Conference, New Zealand’s Ministry for the Environment released the Environment 2010 Strategy, which outlined the Government’s strategy on the environment. This document provided the basis for the development of environmental indicators in New Zealand by specifying the importance of environmental statistics in understanding the effects of economic activities on the environment. It also identified the need for indicators to build up and expand the environmental information base.
 

Since 1995, work on the development of indicators has progressed, and this year a committee, representing a number of government departments, has begun to develop a core set of sustainable development indicators for New Zealand.
 

These indicators are being developed as part of New Zealand’s preparation for the World Summit on Sustainable Development to be held in Johannesburg in 2002. It is proposed that New Zealand will present a core framework of indicators at the conference in association with the proposed State of the Nation Report.

The work on indicators of sustainable development is expected to draw together existing work that has been undertaken across a range of New Zealand agencies. Indicators of social well-being, measuring the nation’s progress of some key social goals and areas of well-being, have recently been developed and released by the Ministry of Social Development.
 

The Ministry for the Environment has also developed a set of environmental indicators as part of their Environmental Performance Indicators programme in order to help assess the state of the natural environment and to monitor the outcome of environmental policies and key legislation.
 

Statistics New Zealand: socioeconomic indicators 

Since the beginning of 2000, Statistics New Zealand has been developing a set of socioeconomic indicators to complement the environmental indicators being developed by the Ministry for the Environment as part of their Environmental Performance Indicators programme.
 

The initial set of socio-economic indicators were released in March 2001 and the Stage Two indicators are now in the process of being finalised and will be available in March 2002. The Stage Two indicators can be viewed on the Statistics New Zealand web page at www.stats.govt.nz.
 

The socio-economic indicators are intended to show the underlying social and economic driving forces behind environmental pressure and the change in pressure over time. An example of how a socio-economic indicator can be used to depict trends is illustrated in Table 2. This table shows home heating fuel type used by dwellings as a percentage of total dwellings and indicates that the percentage of dwellings using electricity, wood and coal as a home heating fuel has remained relatively constant between 1986 and 1996. The effectiveness of a new policy to reduce the use of non-renewable fuel could be indicated by a decrease in the percentage of dwellings using coal and gas.
 

Whereas the Ministry for the Environment indicators will show the direct impact of human activity with the environment, the socio-economic indicators will provide information on the cause of those changes.
 

Socio-economic indicators can be used independently as measures for reporting on the socio-economic impacts on the New Zealand environment. However, to measure and report on New Zealand’s overall sustainability and policy performance, the socio-economic indicators should be used in combination with the environmental indicators developed by the Ministry for the Environment.
 

In combination, socio-economic and environmental performance indicators create the foundation for an integrated reporting system. Such a system can measure and report on sustainable development, provide data for environmental accounts, or report on individual trends and policy performance for a variety of socio-economic or environmental issues and policies.
 

Framework for socio-economic indicators 

The socio-economic indicators have been developed using the Pressure-State-Response framework (PSR), an internationally recognised framework that is based on the linkages between human activities (pressure), the state of the environment and the societal and economic response to environmental change.
 

This framework has been used by a number of international organisations for the compilation of sustainable development indicators, such as the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development. It has also been used by the Ministry for the Environment for the development of the environmental indicators. Statistics New Zealand adopted the PSR framework in order to maintain consistency with the framework used by Ministry for the Environment and because the PSR is an internationally recognised framework.
 

The socio-economic indicators are categorised using the 14 environmental strands used by the Ministry for the Environment. These strands are air; biodiversity; climate change; energy; freshwater; land; marine environment; Mäori; amenity; ozone; toxic contaminants and contaminated sites; transport; waste; and pests, weeds and diseases.
 

Each indicator has been selected using a set of criteria that ranks the indicator according to whether it is policy relevant, measurable, analytically valid, cost effective, environmentally informative, and simple and easily understood. Example of environmental indicators comprising the ‘air’ strand: 

 

Linkages of indicators 

The indicators being developed by Statistics New Zealand are linked to a number of projects being undertaken, both within and outside of Statistics New Zealand. As mentioned previously, it is intended that the socio-economic indicators be linked with the Environmental Performance Indicators Programme of the Ministry for the Environment so that the indirect pressures causing environmental change can be monitored. It is also possible that the socioeconomic indicators will be used in the development of the sustainable development indicators.
 

Statistics New Zealand is also developing natural resource accounts that will be linked with the indicator projects. Natural resource accounts describe the total available stock of a given natural resource at a point of time and the supply and use of the resource in economic activity.
 

The information supplied by the natural resource accounts can be used for a number of the proposed socio-economic and environmental indicators. For example, the fish stock and flow accounts will supply the data required for the ‘consumption of fish’ indicator. Because the accounts are to be developed on an annual basis, the resource accounts will be a regular and reliable source of indicator information.
 

Indicators have an important role to play in the filling of information gaps related to the environment. While specific environmental indicators have an essential role in monitoring specific environmental pressures, states, and/or responses, the future of indicators lies in the development of indicators for sustainable development.
 

References 

Australian Antarctic Division (30 October 2001) http://www-aadc.aad.gov.au/soe/indicators.asp.

Leibman D and El-Eini A (Sep/Oct 1996). The Sustainability Movement: Rhetoric or Reality. http://www.sustainable.doe.gov/articles/rhetoric.shtml.

Sustainable Measures (November 2001). http://www.sustainablemeasures.com/Indicators/TraditionalVsSustainable.html.

Footnotes

¹ This article was prepared by Vanessa Hooker of the Environment Statistics Division of Statistics New Zealand.
² Australian Antarctic Division (30 October 2001). http://www-aadc.aad.gov.au/soe/indicators.asp.
³ Leibman D and El-Eini A (Sep/Oct 1996). The Sustainability Movement: Rhetoric or Reality, http://www.sustainable.doe.gov/articles/rhetoric.shtml.

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