From Adrian Shaw, Strathclyde Regional Council, Scotland
As your editorial of 3 June demonstrates, indicators, like any other branch of statistics, can be used to argue just about anything.
It would be a shame if this were used to undermine current work on sustainability indicators. Strathclyde Regional Council, for example, has published Strathclyde Sustainability Indicators which highlights, for the first time in a British local authority, a selection of sustainability issues including air quality, water quality, transportation, health and waste management.
In presenting this information one conclusion was clear: simple judgements on whether things are getting better or getting worse are not easily made. As no one has yet convincingly described what a sustainable society might be, let alone how we might achieve it, it was not possible to make easy judgements on progress towards this state, or the lack of it
We have been able to identify key issues that relate to sustainability, and to develop indicators to measure these, but I do not believe we can yet measure overall environmental health or “human sustainability”.
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