Report of the Working Group on Statistics for Sustainable Development

1. Report of the Working Group on Statistics for Sustainable Development Conference of European Statisticians 56th Plenary Session June 10-12, 2008 Paris Robert Smith Statistics Canada

2. Background to the WGSSD • Origin • Decision by the CES at 2005 seminar on the measurement of sustainable development • Mandate • Explore conceptually driven approaches to the measurement of sustainable development, in particular the capital approach • Identify commonalities among existing indicator sets • Propose a small set of indicators for international comparison coherent with conceptual approach and existing sets • Functioning • WG meetings attended by some 48 countries and institutions • 5 face-to-face meetings from April 2006 to March 2008 • Steering Committee provided governance and continuity between meetings

3. Core concepts • Sustainable development is about improving human well-being • Some wanted to emphasize well-being of future generations • Others argued that sustainable development requires attention to both current and future well-being • Debate remains unresolved • Sustainable development indicators must adhere to the principles of official statistics • Sustainable development is, in the end, a global issue, but responsibility for achieving it rests mainly with nation states • Therefore, national indicator sets are essential

4. Commonalities among existing indicator sets • Analyzed sets from 22 countries and 2 international organisations • Number of indicators ranged from 187 to 12, with an average of 70 • 27 indicators were considered “common”; that is, appeared in 10 or more sets • Greenhouse gas emissions, educational attainment and GDP per capita were the most common • Only a few countries adopted an explicit conceptual framework • Most countries chose indicators that aligned with a national sustainable development policy strategy • Indicators were most often selected through broad stakeholder engagement • Statistical offices not always the responsible agency

5. Capital approach • No conceptual approach other than capital emerged • Capital approach proved robust • Financial, produced, human, natural and social capital are all relevant to sustainable development • Some elements of capital better understood than others, but a sound overall framework • More relevant to the future-oriented view of sustainable development • In theory, possible to define a single indicator of change in national wealth that is sufficient to measure sustainable development • In practice, problems of valuation and the existence of “critical” forms of capital prevent this, so both physical and monetary indicators required • A set of 30 capital indicators sufficient to measure sustainable development; 15 stock indicators and 15 flow indicators

6. Capital indicators

7. Comparison of practice and theory • More overlap between common policy-based indicators and capital indicators than expected • Just five common policy-based indicators did not align easily with capital-based indicators • GDP per capita • Official development assistance • Organic farming • Freight transport by mode • Passenger transport by mode • The aggregate monetary wealth indicators found in the capital approach are not found in policy-based sets • There are nearly no “social” indicators among common policy-based indicators • Suggests that nations have very different ideas about how social variables figure in sustainable development

8. Proposed small set of indicators

9. Future work • Despite the group’s good work, questions still remain on the capital approach • Measurement of total national wealth • Conceptual and methodological uncertainties • Physical indicators of capital, especially critical capital • Are the proposed indicators the best available? • Social capital • Concepts must be better defined before more definitive indicators can be proposed