To many policy makers, policy advisers and scientists it is clear: indicators play a crucial role in measuring success in policy making and implementation and also in identifying obstacles to policy measures. However, for measuring progress in greening society and making it more inclusive, there are challenges in selecting the appropriate indicators for what are still relatively new goals. Other than the challenge of identifying the most suitable indicators and promoting Green Economy Indicators, one has ‘the agony of choice’ among thousands of potential indicators.
In the European-funded FP7 project Network for Green Economy Indicators (NETGREEN), a consortium of six institutions, led by Ecologic Institute, have developed a systematic and consistent overview of the existing efforts to measure sustainable development and the transformation to a green economy. The project team not only created a databank of indicators, but has also made them accessible via an interactive online tool. Using this tool, which can be found under measuring-progress.eu, the user can identify suitable indicators for their own needs with the help of various search mechanisms. To create a user-friendly tool while maintaining scientific depth, three different search mechanisms were developed including full text, topic, and keywords. All indicators are presented with information on data quality, possible misinterpretations, geographical scale and related considerations, and can be filtered according to one or more of these criteria the user also can save a selection of preferred indicators. The combination of selected indicators is displayed according to the extent to which they are a measure of Green Economy goals: ‘Environmental Sustainability’, ‘Social Justice’, ‘Quality of Life’, ‘Economic Sustainability and Resilience’ and ‘Effective Governance’.
For example, if the user is interested in indicators which focuses on Eco-innovation, “Eco-innovation” can simply typed in the keyword search field. On the initial page, This results in the following indicators:
- Innovation Union Scoreboard
- Global Innovation Index
- Green Competitiveness Index
- Green Patents, Index 1990=100
- Global Cleantech Innovation Index
All indicators displayed now can be filtered according to their data quality assessment, frequency of updates, geographical scale, methodological transparency, indicator source and cost of accessing data. Furthermore the results can be narrowed down by adding another keyword as a filter.
Since not all potential terms are included as a keyword in the databank, the user can also simply type “Eco-innovation” in the fulltext search, which results in the same indicators. In cases where the user is interested in indicators associated with a broader topic or field, the topic search can be used. In this case, the user chooses among the five themes comprising Green Economy: Effective governance, Economic Sustainability and Resilience, Quality of Life, Social Justice and Environmental Sustainability. By selecting one of the themes, subtopics will appear which can be selected. As with the keyword search, multiple topics can be selected. The tool will then proposed appropriate indicators sorted by their combined relevance to the selected topics.
By creating this tool, NETGREEN also serves as a focal point for the dialogue on the measurement of the Green Economy with the intent of advancing this discussion with the support of a communication tool that promotes the understanding of the landscape of indicators, their specific uses and interpretations. To foster the debate on the appropriate use of indicators on Green Growth, the Green Economy and Beyond GDP, the tool is also shared with journalists who can use it for their research, publications and broadcasts.
Hence the tool is not only of importance for governmental and nongovernmental, national, regional and international organisations, but is also useful to the media in that it promotes an understanding of the associated data. Members of the public who may be skeptical of general assertions on progress being made in greening society are another audience for the NETGREEN indicators. Let's take Germany for example, a country with a strong green movement. Who would have believed, for example, that despite its high level of environmental awareness, the amount of waste produced per person has been rising steadily since 2006? During the same period, countries like Croatia, Estonia and Cyprus have reduced their waste generation tremendously. The Tool of the NETGREEN tool provides evidence to verify a country's progressing addressing social, economic and environmental challenges through policy making and regulatory mechanisms.
Green Economy indicators are useful for another highly important field: the implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which consist of 17 goals and 169 targets. Since these SDGs are meant to be applied in all countries, a political process is necessary to identify the most urgent national challenges and the respective indicators for each country.
Since the ‘Green Economy’ takes a rather broad approach, there are many perceptions and definitions of what it is or should be, – which have also surfaced during the NETGREEN project. However, the advantage of having such a holistic, some would say unwieldy, concept, is that most of the targets associated with each of the SDGs are included in the NETGREEN databank of Green Economy Indicators.
The databank and the interactive ‘search engine for indicators’ is freely available. Furthermore, the project team is open to feedback and proposals for new projects or synergies with complementary undertakings such as studies and planning processes where related indicators will be identified and/or implemented. Generally, the number of indicators and the keywords that can be used to identify indicators can be extended in the measuring-progress tool.
National and regional strategies for a Green Economy in Europe, including best practices, the SDGs link and the measuring-progress tool will be addressed in an upcoming a conference in Brussels on the 15th of October. Registration is open and the event is free of charge.
Conference details are available from here.
For more information contact Marius Hasenheit, Ecologic Institute: marius.hasenheit [at] ecologic.eu (marius[dot]hasenheit[at]ecologic[dot]eu)