Measuring progress towards sustainable development: combining social, economic and environmental measures Maria Martinho, UNDESA/Division for Sustainable Development

Summary What’s out there to monitor SD? Indicators Summary measures Integrating the 3 dimensions of SD into an overall measure

Context Rio+20, HLPGS, post-2015 discussions Increasing interest in having sustainable development at the core of development – Need to monitor sustainable development to inform decision making – Need a monitoring framework: Reflecting the multidimensional nature of sustainable development, – but using simple user-friendly measures for policy makers Reflecting the inter-linkages across social, economic and environmental dimensions

What’s out there? CSD indicators – Mandated by the Commission on Sustainable Development – 3 rd review published in 2001 – 50 core indicators and other 46 supplementary indicators – Cover 15 themes: Poverty, Governance, Health, Education, Demographics, Natural hazards, Atmosphere, Land, Oceans, seas and coasts, Freshwater, Biodiversity, Economic development, Global economic partnership, Consumption and production patterns – A reference for countries to develop their indicators by adopting or adapting as they see fit MDG indicators – 60 indicators on several aspects of development – Reflect mainly social issues – economic and environmental issues poorly reflected – Many countries have adopted the MDG as part of their Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP) SNA, SEEA, satellite accounts – Data intensive Measures like HDI, GDP per capita, ecological footprint, environmental performance index – Attempt to summarize social, economic or environmental dimensions

Integrating and balancing the 3 dimensions Core social indicators Health Education etc Core economic indicators Income Employment etc Core environmental indicators GHG emissions Land degradation etc Social summary measure Economic summary measure Environmental summary measure Overall SD measure

Selection of indicators – On the basis of policy targets – Taking in consideration linkages across dimensions E.g. indicators on efficiency need to be balanced with indicators on consumption to monitor rebound effect – Cross-cutting areas should be considered in three dimensions so that the measures can give a realistic picture of the interlinkages E.g. energy – Energy access (social) – Clean energy (environmental) – Energy efficiency (economic)

Summary measures Summary measures for each dimension – Use existing measures like Human development index (social) GDP per capita (economic) Ecological footprint, environmental performance index (environmental) Or – Create indices combining the core set of indicators Health ind + social ind + … (social) GDP per capita + debt + employment + …(economic) GHG emissions + land degradation + … (environmental)

What can such measures show us? HDI versus Ecological footprint

A measure for SD Use the geometric mean of the three summary measures S = social measure (standardized) Eco = economic measure (standardized) Env = Environmental measure (standardized) Advantage: geometric mean gives a better assessment when all 3 dimensions improve in a balanced way 3 S × Eco × Env

A measure for SD Arithmetic mean – Both countries, X and Y, have the same mean (Env + S + Eco)/3 = 0.5 Geometric mean – Country X: 0.36 – Country Y: 0.49 Country EnvSEco X Y S × Eco × Env SD = S = social measure Eco = economic measure Env = Environmental measure Economic improvement at high environmental cost

An example Ecological footprint GDP per capitaHDI Arithmetic mean (Env+Eco+S)/3 SD measure (geometric mean) Rank arithm. mean Rank geom. mean Latvia5.616, Argentina2.612, Env = standardized 1/Ecol footprint Eco = standardized GDP per capita S = standardized HDI

An example Ecological footprint GDP per capitaHDI Arithmetic mean SD measure (geometric mean) Rank arithm. mean Rank geom. mean Latvia5.616, Argentina2.612, High GDP and HDI at considerable environmental cost More balanced across the 3 measures: better ranking

Conclusions Combining measures can help promote synergies in the three dimensions Use of geometric means can better reflected a balanced development across social, economic and environmental dimensions Next steps Identify good summary measures Identify core indicators