Unit 4:

Sustainable
Development Indicators
A. J. PUNEWALE
 NEED FOR INDICATORS
 A concerted effort to enhance habitability of our planet is
unlikely to succeed unless we know “where we are” and “where
we want to go.”
 To answer these questions, we must first consider exactly what
we include in the term “environment.”
 If we restrict our definition to overly simplified definitions, such
as the amount of specified pollutant in the air, we have very little
difficulty in measuring the environment.
 However, as we broaden our definition to include all physical
components, or all the physical and biological, or all the physical,
biological and cultural ones, environment becomes exponentially
more difficult to describe (William A. Thomas, 1972).
 This is really a paraphrase of the Chinese proverb that says, “if
you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.”
 But we do want to know where we are and where we want to
go. To do that, we must have accurate data—a map of some
sort. To get accurate information,
 If we restrict our definition to, for example, the amount of a
specified pollutant in the air, we have little difficulty in
measuring the environment, as mentioned by Thomas.
 However, as we broaden our definition to include all the
physical, biological, and cultural components, it becomes
exponentially more difficult to describe.
 We are good at measuring physical and chemical phenomena,
but once we try to rationally assess the biological, social, and
cultural aspects of the environment, we have serious problems.
 To quantify quality, we need some indicators. Laudable attempts
have been made to compile lists of sustainable indicators
(IISDnet, 1995).
 However, the results are often voluminous and not very well
focused.
 The problem with many of these compilations is that they are
highly co-linear ; all are related to each other.
 It is hard to find indicators that measure one dimension and not
another.
 For example, does the rise in US fuel consumption over the past
decade indicate a trend towards less efficient vehicles, a higher
number of vehicles, longer driving times, or combination of
these factors?
 Now combine this one indicator with another that measures
changes in urban air quality and the causes and effects become
even harder to disentangle.
Benefits of Environmental Protection & Sustainable Development
 Emil Salim, a former Indonesian minister for population and
environment, claimed that he needed environmental benefit data to
support his ministry’s concerns at government meetings because he
was tired of being told that his approach was too costly.
 At that time, he was in no position to assess the real benefits of
environmental protection and sustainable development, because
the measurements did not exist.
 So he demanded environmental scientists, to develop indicators
that he could use to compare the losses in environmental
resources against national productivity in monetary terms.
 When something that might be environmentally sound is
proposed, we are told it is too expensive without looking at the
benefit side of the equation.
 We see a major focus on the cost of a proposal in terms of its
effect on the GDP, which can be fairly accurately estimated.
 But sustainable development requires more; it requires the
estimation of the economic costs and benefits of sustainability.
 Obtaining Accurate Data
 Environmental indicators gained popularity in the early 1970s
after the formation of the US Council on Environmental Quality
(CEQ).
 The CEQ’s purpose was, and still is, to inform the American people
about the quality of their environment.
 The CEQ and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) invested
a great deal of money in hiring scientists to under take theoretical
and practical research on indicators, that would allow them to
methodically gauge air and water quality
 This type of research petered out in the early to mid-1980s, when
the CEQ and the EPA realized that they were not getting accurate or
useful analyses and therefore could not make insightful
comparisons.
 Environmental Measurements
 Some categories of pollution are not difficult to measure. It is fairly
easy to characterize water pollution by variously using 20, 30, 40, or
80 parameters.
 For instance, in the US, drinking water must be tested for 86
chemicals that must be assessed and have standards to be met.
 If the 86 chemicals were to change uniformly in the same direction
each time the water is tested, it would be easy to judge whether the
water quality is safe or not.
 Some water and air pollutants are harder to measure than others.
When dealing with water, we have to contend with factors like loss
of terrestrial systems and habitat, eutrophication, loss of breeding
grounds, and coastal pollution.
 Then there is also loss of intrinsic or cultural value, loss of
recreational capacity, loss of solitude, or simply loss of aesthetic
pleasure.
 When examining air resources we have to factor in effects like loss
of visibility and damage to human health.
 Environmental Indicators
 What are environmental indices? (An index is a ratio or other
number derived from a series of observations and used as a
measure; Webster’s New International Dictionary, 1961).
 We need them because national governments and international
agencies need to know how the environment is affected by
development, what can be done about it, and how much
remediating the damages will cost.
 It is interesting to put the costs of environmental protection into
meaningful numbers.
 Recently the US has been spending about 7% of GDP for defense and
about 2% for environmental protection.
 The latter is not small in dollar terms, but is it large enough?
 The 2% figure represents the combined expenditures of the
government and the private sector.
 How Best to Describe the Environment
 There are three major types of issues that require indicators;
1. Type I, Brown Issues.
 Brown indicators deal with conventional pollution issues (urban,
rural, industry, agriculture, mining, forestry, etc).
 These are measured in terms of emissions in tons per day.
 We can set emission standards & then look at cost of meeting them.

2. Type II, Green Issues.

 Green indicators have to deal with broader environmental and
ecological issues (biological diversity, soil and land conservation,
aquatic ecosystems).

3. Type III, Red Issues.

 Red indicators have to deal with environmental policies,
institutions, and legislation.
 Creation of indicators for these types of issues relies upon the
ingenuity of the analysts.
 As mentioned above we can often use total emissions as proxies for
some of the brown and green issues, but often it is necessary to use
ambient concentrations.
 Emissions do not kill people directly.
 It is the ambient concentrations of the emissions (again the brown
approach) that kill or harm people and damage the environment.
 So instead of using “tons per day” when discussing air or water
quality, we should be assessing “micrograms per cubic meter” (or
milligrams per liter for water quality).
 We can set ambient standards and then look at the cost of meeting
them.
 For the green and red issues, it is more traditional to create
indicators of impacts, using physical parameters.
 What we are really interested in is not the ambient concentrations
per se, but their impact once they are transported and diffused
throughout the environment.
 What we are ultimately interested in is mortality, morbidity, and
economic and ecosystem damage.
 Some of these factors can be measured in terms of performance
standards.
 We can map the spread of ambient pollutants, and then we can
look at the impacts in terms of human health and ecosystem
damages.
 Metrics of Measurement
1. Nominal scales
• The simplest type of measurement is nominal measurement,
which essentially involves separating and classifying the objects
to be measured into distinct categories and then counting the
members of each category.
• Bird species could be an example of categories used to classify
observations on a bird watching trip.
• For each species, we can assign some arbitrary tag (e.g. species 1
or species A2531).
• The tag itself, which could be a number, word, or any identifying
mark, has value only in its function as a label (i.e., species 2 is not
“greater” than species 1, even though there may be more
individuals of species 2).
• Once different classes are formed, we can count the number of
members of any particular class.
• We can also use nominal scales of measurement in regression
analysis.
2. Ordinal scales
• The next level of measurement is ordinal – the ordering of classes
and individuals.
• With this type of measurement, objects are assigned to classes, and
the classes are ranked with respect to one another ; or alternatively,
the objects themselves can be ranked directly (i.e., each class has
only one member).
• For instance, students in a class can be ranked according to their
test scores (e.g., student 1, student 2, etc.).
3. Interval and ratio scales
• The highest level of measurement is the interval or ratio scale. The
two are similar except that a ratio scale requires the meaningful
definition of a non-arbitrary zero-point.
• Temperature, for instance, is an interval scale.
• We can observe the difference between cool and warm
temperatures, and can measure the magnitude of that difference.
• But it is not a ratio scale, because, 40° is not twice 20°.
• Kelvin temperature does represent a ratio scale, because definition
of absolute zero temperature is minus 273° Kelvin.
• Income is usually considered a ratio scale, because it has a non-
arbitrary origin of zero dollars.
 STATISTICAL PROCEDURES
• Statistics is the interpretation or manipulation of data.
• Statistics allows us to make inferences about large numbers,
when direct observation is expensive or impossible.
1. Population and Sampling
The relationship between population and sampling is important
because we will be able to measure a population of things, such as
the temperature at all points on the earth’s surface, directly.
But we can take samples from the population and thus simplify
our data gathering and analysis, by applying various statistical
concepts and rules.
These rules enable us to make inferences about whole population
without measuring each individual item.
 STATISTICAL PROCEDURES
2. Graphical Analysis of Statistical Data
An extremely important task when communicating the results
of any quantitative study is determining how to present the
data.
It is usually impossible to communicate all of the data at once in
one table.
Also too many tables make it hard to assess underlying trends.
A graph can illustrate a wealth of information quickly and
efficiently, without requiring a long list of numbers.
 AGGREGATING INDICATORS
There are three common methods for weighting indicators:
“natural” weighting, “expert” or “citizen” weighting, and
weighting based on economic benefits.
“Expert” and “citizen” weighting schemes are derived from the
opinions of either the experts or citizens on the relative
importance of different indicators in an aggregate index.
For example, an indicator for quality of life can be aggregated from
per capita income, health care access, educational level, green
space, and so on by surveying experts or citizens on the relative
importance of each indicator
 AGGREGATING INDICATORS
 There are three common methods for weighting indicators: “natural”
weighting, “expert” or “citizen” weighting, and weighting based on
economic benefits.
 In natural weighing, number of weights are based on objective
scientific laws, called as “natural” weights.
 For instance, different greenhouse gases vary in their effectiveness at
trapping heat within the atmosphere.
 We can formulate an aggregate index that measures climate forcing
(i.e., heat flux per unit area) based on ambient concentration of a no.
of different greenhouse gases by their heat-trapping effectiveness.
 “Expert” and “citizen” weighting schemes are derived from the
opinions of either the experts or citizens on the relative importance of
different indicators in an aggregate index.
 AGGREGATING INDICATORS
 For example, an indicator for quality of life can be aggregated from
per capita income, health care access, educational level, green space,
and so on by surveying experts or citizens on the relative importance
of each indicator.
 The advantage of employing economic benefits is that it can pull
together indicators that do not have a common “natural” or physical
basis, while veering away from the subjectivity of either experts or
citizens.
 However, it does require a methodology for translating a given
indicator into financial terms, which may involve some subjectivity
concerning the value of a human life.
 For instance. Figure 4-3 shows how economic indices can be used and
how some simple ones relate to each other.
 AGGREGATING INDICATORS
It creates a set of logical relationships.
The economic benefits from sustainable development are
greater than the economic damage averted, which is greater
than the cost of remediation (Fig 4.3).
But if assessing economic benefits and costs proves difficult,
measuring the cost of remediation will likely be easier.
This follows because, generally, economic benefits are hard to
measure, and economic damage, “medium-to-hard.”
If this relationship holds true in a particular case, then
calculating the cost of remediation is often easier.
 USE OF PRINCIPAL COMPONENT ANALYSIS
To get around the problem of multi-co-linearity—the fact that
different components of an index are highly correlated with
each other—we can use “principal component analysis”.
Principal component analysis combines and modifies the data
from interdependent categories such that a new set of mutually
independent categories arises.
Once we take out all the cross-correlations from the data, we
can work with a new set of variables.
In 1994, ADB (Asian Development Bank) and the Government of
Norway co-financed a study executed by Harvard University’s
Environmental Systems Program to develop a set of indices to
monitor environmental changes among ADB developing
member countries (Rogers et al., 1997).
 USE OF PRINCIPAL COMPONENT ANALYSIS
At that time, approximately 30% of ADB’s loans were for
environmental and socially sustainable issues, amounting to
$2 billion to $3 billion per year.
The question was how to assess the environmental quality of
ADB developing member countries with such different
ecological conditions as the PRC and the Marshall Islands.
To do this, a large database consisting of 79 environmental
indices in 146 countries was examined, which uncovered
several difficulties.
The list ended up with data for 33 indices covering only 17
countries.
 USE OF PRINCIPAL COMPONENT ANALYSIS
The indices were highly multi co-linear ; i.e., when measuring
one dimension they also measured a little bit of another
dimension.
We rotated the axis upon which all of the indices were
measured until we got 33 indices that were entirely
independent of each other and expressed as linear functions of
the original indices.
It was found that the first four principal components (the first
four new indices) explained about 70% of the total variance in
the database.
 USE OF PRINCIPAL COMPONENT ANALYSIS
This is data reduction, started with 33 indices and boiled them
down to just 4; and those 4 indices were composed of pieces of
the original 33.
The first principal component had many air pollution
indicators embedded in it;
In a similar fashion, the second was devoted to deforestation
and soil degradation;
The third related to biodiversity and endangered species; and
the fourth dealt with water quality.
 THREE ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY INDICES
In assessing the current and potential future states of the
environment in the developing member countries of ADB, three
comprehensive environmental quality indices based upon the
four principal components were found to be especially useful:
1. Cost of remediation,
2. Environmental elasticity, and
3. Environmental diamond.
  Cost of Remediation
The cost of remediation (COR) is the cost of moving the present
state of the environment to an acceptable level based on a set
of predetermined standards.
The concept entails three steps:
a) Assessment of the existing environmental emissions and
degradation,
b) Establishment of a set of environmental standards, and
c) Estimation of the aggregated costs of achieving these
environmental standards.
Most countries in the world have already adopted the water
quality standards of the World Health Organization (WHO), the
European Union (EU), or EPA.
  Cost of Remediation
Much uniformity exists in national standards.
So if urban air quality is at 600 micrograms per cubic meter and
we want it to be down to 60 micrograms per cubic meter, we
can calculate the cost of remediation.
See Box 4-3 for air, water, and land pollution targets.
  Cost of Remediation
To estimate the COR, we estimate the aggregate cost of meeting
the environmental standards.
This is a monetary unit that can be an effective counterweight
to traditional economic indicators such as GDP.
The COR of different components of the environment may be
added or subtracted freely.
The COR avoids the problem of weighting environmental
indices.
These are numbers that we can work with on a spreadsheet and
are responsive to what Indonesian minister Emil Salim was
seeking—a measure of environmental losses in economic
terms.
  Cost of Remediation
Table 4-2 shows that the major COR in the PRC is for land.
There is tremendous soil erosion, partly due to the poor
quality of the soil and partly because of over-farming (Chinese
have been farming the same soil for more than 3,000 years).
Conventional wisdom might say that the main problem of the
PRC is air pollution, but the air is relatively inexpensive to clean
up.
Remediation of the land is by far the most important and
expensive task.
  Environmental elasticity
The second comprehensive index is called Environmental
Elasticity and is akin to the price and income elasticities used in
economics.
The principal merits of environmental elasticity are its
dynamics.
Using data from two points in time on two axes, it captures
environmental changes with respect to economic trends,
making environmental elasticity a trend indicator as opposed
to a state indicator.
The cost of remediation tells the state of the environment;
environmental elasticity tells the direction of the trends.
Box 4-4 summarizes the definition.
If we set up a chart with environmental aggregates and economic
aggregates as two variables, it is possible to track rate of economic
and environmental changes and the percentage of change, as
suggested in Figure 4-8.
Quadrant I indicates a positive environmental change relative to a
positive economic change.
Sri Lanka is an example of country achieved Quadrant I status.
This is a healthy balance: both an improving economy and
environment.
Quadrant IV shows an improving economy, while environmental
quality is declining. This are rapidly developing nations, e.g. PRC.
Quadrant II shows an improving environment and an economic
downturn, e.g. Russia, Threatened with bankruptcy, after break up
of the Soviet Union, Russia closed down many of its factories.
Finally, Quadrant III shows that it is possible to have both negative
environmental change and negative economic growth.
 Development Diamonds and Environmental Diamonds
Development diamonds and environmental diamonds, shown in
Figure 4-9, are graphs that illustrate a country’s or region’s
relative performance with respect to four indicators.
These indicators should be independent from each other.
It was introduced by the World Bank (2004).
The development diamond is especially useful in showing a
particular country’s performance with respect to a regional
average.
The first step in constructing a development diamond is to
determine the regional average for each of the four indicators.
The axes on the diamond plot are then scaled according to the
percentage of the regional value.
The regional average diamond is then plotted with four equal
sides with the vertices at 100% on each axis.
 Development Diamonds and Environmental Diamonds
Each indicator is then plotted for the hypothetical country as a
percentage of the regional average.
If all the indicators are “good” indicators (e.g., concerning
access to safe water, life expectancy, etc.), then a diamond
larger than the regional average signifies a country that is
performing much better than its neighbors.
From the figure, we see that the hypothetical country is
performing better than average in terms of schooling and GDP
per capita, but worse than average for access to safe drinking
water and life expectancy.
The usefulness of the development diamond approach is the
ability to quickly assess the performance of a given country
with respect to a regional average (Figure 4-10).