Estructura de poder y autoridad

Indicators have long been accepted as valuable tools for communicating complex processes, events or trends to a broad audience. The term “indicator” originates from the Latin verb “indicare”, which means “to proclaim or to point out” (Macgillivray and Zadek, 1995).

The term ‘indicator’ is defined in different ways. The Organisation for Economic Co- operation and Development (OECD) (OECD, 1994) states that an indicator is “a parameter or a value derived from parameters, which provides information about a phenomenon. The indicator has significance that extends beyond the properties directly associated with the parameter values. Indicators possess a synthetic meaning and are developed for a specific purpose”. Huang et al. (1998) describe indicators as pieces of information that disclose the condition of large systems and Afgan et al. (2000) state that indicators are the quantifying factors for the comparison between various states or structures of the system. Mayer (2008) defines indicators as variables that express one attribute of the state of a system, normally through experimental or estimated data. Macgillivray and Zadek (1995) state that indicators usually simplify and quantify complex events to enable or promote communication. The above definitions show that the main purpose of an indicator is to communicate complex information to a wide range of actors in a simplified manner suitable for decision-making purposes.

8

The development and use of the indicators to communicate information about sustainability started many decades ago. First, the indicators that addressed the economic, social and environmental progress on the national level started to emerge, followed by the development of local-level indicators and Local Agendas 21 (LA 21) after the World Sustainable Development Summit in Rio in 1992, as well as corporate- and industry specific-level indicator sets. Macgillivray and Zadek (1995) state that first economic indicators emerged after the standardisation of the system of national accounts (SNA) in 1947, and the Gross National Product (GNP, later Gross Domestic Product or GDP) was adopted as a major indicator of the economic progress. For a long time GDP has been the major indicator of economic development. It has been widely used by economists, policy makers and international agencies as a main scorecard of a nation’s economic wealth and well-being.

It is argued, however, that while GDP is a good economic indicator, it is inadequate as a sustainability indicator (Perdan and Azapagic, 2011). GDP is a gross sum of products and services bought and sold, which does not differentiate transactions that improve well-being from the ones that reduce it. GDP assumes that all monetary transactions add to social well-being without distinguishing costs from benefits, productive economic activities from destructive ones, or sustainable from unsustainable ones. For example, unnecessary spending due to preventable natural disasters, crime and accidents are counted the same as socially productive investments in healthcare, housing or transportation (Talberth et al., 2007). Pollution can be seen as a double benefit to the economy because GDP increases both through the production of toxic chemicals and through cleaning up operations. For instance, exploitation of fossil fuels and forestry would result in higher GDP without considering environmental degradation and the reduction in the real welfare of society in the longer term (Perdan and Azapagic, 2011). These and similar irregularities within GDP indicate that social and environmental aspects can hardly be represented by GDP. Thus, recently a variety of alternative economic indicators have been developed that attempt to integrate conventional economic measures such as GDP with social and environmental costs and benefits that usually lie outside the accounting framework. The most common are the Measure of Economic Welfare (MEW), Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW) and Genuine Progress

Chapter 2

9

Indicator (GPI) (Ness et al., 2007). These economic indicators take into account non- market social benefits and cost deductions associated with degradation and depletion of natural resources.

Various measures of social progress such as poverty, inequality and quality of living have been used in assessing social progress, however formal research into social indicators did not start until the middle 1960s. By the late 1980s, various organisations and international agencies were formed that attempted to establish social measures of progress (Macgillivray and Zadek, 1995). A number of social indicators have been developed that address gender, health, housing and other social issues. In 1990 the United Nations developed the Human Development Index (HDI), which has gained some credibility and acceptance, and is, perhaps, the closest social equivalent to GDP (Patterson, 2006). Social indicators are usually the most difficult ones to measure and assess quantitatively. They are often of qualitative nature and could be highly subjective (Jeswani et al., 2010).

Prototype environmental indicators and indices started to emerge in the 1970s in North America and Europe. In 1991 the OECD and the Canadian Government both revealed preliminary work on environmental indicator sets. The emphasis of this work was mostly on the human pressures on the environment, such as pollutants and atmospheric emissions. After the Earth Summit in 1992, a large number of international, national, local, corporate and industrial environmental indicators were developed and incorporated into sustainability assessment and reporting (Macgillivray and Zadek, 1995). Identifying an appropriate set of indicators and indices (composite indicators) has become an initial part of any sustainability evaluation process and subsequent reporting of the sustainability performance (Singh et al., 2012).

The concept of sustainable development implies that the three aspects of sustainability – economic, environmental and social have equal values and should be integrated in a rational and coordinated manner (Pastille, 2002a). Thus, when talking about measuring sustainability, it is important to carefully choose the set of three types of indicators to evaluate the progress of reaching the specific goals and targets in all areas. Therefore, a development of ‘sustainability indicators’ has become an

10

essential element of the recent international and national policies and strategies (Reed et al., 2006).

2.2. Characteristics, functions and criteria of the sustainability