CHARACTERIZING AND MEASURING SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
Sustainable development has broad appeal and little specificity, but some combination of development and environment as well as equity is found in many attempts to describe it. However, proponents of sustainable development differ in their emphases on what is to be sustained, what is to be developed...
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Published in | Annual review of environment and resources Vol. 28; no. 1; pp. 559 - 586 |
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Main Authors | , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
Palo Alto, CA 94303-0139
Annual Reviews
01.01.2003
4139 El Camino Way, P.O. Box 10139 USA |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | Sustainable development has broad appeal and little specificity, but some
combination of development and environment as well as equity is found in many
attempts to describe it. However, proponents of sustainable development differ
in their emphases on what is to be sustained, what is to be developed, how to
link environment and development, and for how long a time. Despite the
persistent definitional ambiguities associated with sustainable development,
much work (over 500 efforts) has been devoted to developing quantitative
indicators of sustainable development. The emphasis on sustainability
indicators has multiple motivations that include decision making and
management, advocacy, participation and consensus building, and research and
analysis. We select a dozen prominent examples and use this review to highlight
their similarities and differences in definition of sustainable development,
motivation, process, and technical methods. We conclude that there are no
indicator sets that are universally accepted, backed by compelling theory,
rigorous data collection and analysis, and influential in policy. This is due
to the ambiguity of sustainable development, the plurality of purpose in
characterizing and measuring sustainable development, and the confusion of
terminology, data, and methods of measurement. A major step in reducing such
confusion would be the acceptance of distinctions in terminology, data, and
methods. Toward this end, we propose an analytical framework that clearly
distinguishes among goals, indicators, targets, trends, driving forces, and
policy responses. We also highlight the need for continued research on scale,
aggregation, critical limits, and thresholds. |
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Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-2 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-1 content type line 23 ObjectType-Article-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 |
ISSN: | 1543-5938 1545-2050 |
DOI: | 10.1146/annurev.energy.28.050302.105551 |