Sustainable Development is a relatively new social goal to enter mainstream political and economic debate. Measuring helps decision-makers and the public to define a social goal, to link it to clear objectives and targets and to assess its progress. In the mid 1990s therefore, the Wallace Global Fund sought expert collaboration to devise suitable indicators for measuring the progress of sustainable development. The Consultative Group on Sustainable Development Indicators (CG) was duly established in 1996, to work towards a consensus on global and national sustainability indicators.

Since then, the Forum's academic partners have designed an easily understood communication tool - the so-called 'dashboard' metaphor. The framework has been discussed widely among scientists and academics, indicator experts and practitioners, senior policy makers and business executives - and is refined constantly. During 2000 it was made functional by using 46 indicators to compose the three main clusters for more than 100 countries. Aggregation algorithm and graphic presentation software have been developed.

Data on each component indicator, as well as on the three cluster indices and the overall sustainability index, are presented in an animated version of the Dashboard.  Data of any one country and any one indicator and index can be compared to that of any other country.  Simultaneous presentation of the policy performance of two or three countries is possible and for each pair of indicators the correlation is displayed. This means that both synergies and potential conflicts can be readily identified.

Update:

The "Dashboard of Sustainability" was launched at the UN Headquarters in New York in April 2001 during the 9th Session of the Commission for Sustainable Development. Two additional functions, covering trend analysis and distance-to-target analysis, were revealed during the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg (August 26-Sept. 4 2002).


Main academic partner:

The International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) - www.iisd.org

Forum members involved:

MISTRA Foundation (project patron), Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt,  Deutsche Bank/WYRE, and Luso-American Development Foundation More details by email from:  Peter Hardi, Senior Fellow and Program Director, IISD