The development of indicators and core indicators for sustainable development: a state of the art review Online publication date: Mon, 10-May-2004
by Luc Hens, Julie De Wit
International Journal of Sustainable Development (IJSD), Vol. 6, No. 4, 2003
Abstract: Experience with the establishment of indicators for sustainable development shows that it is scientifically feasible, most useful for communication with the public and a necessary navigation instrument to establish measures pertaining to the sustainability process objective. Usually, long lists of indicators were established to describe the complexity of sustainable development. More recently, these rather technical lists have been reduced to sets of core indicators. This paper compares the shortlists for the USA, the UK and Sweden, and shows that six indicators (GDP, greenhouse gas emissions, crime rate, employment, education level and life expectancy) are used by each of them. In spite of limitations related to the way the indicators are measured and the phasing out of specific national priorities, these commonly used measures might provide a backbone for other countries to develop their core indicator lists. This strategy is probably the most feasible as long as we have no widely accepted aggregated indicators.
Existing subscribers:
Go to Inderscience Online Journals to access the Full Text of this article.
If you are not a subscriber and you just want to read the full contents of this article, buy online access here.Complimentary Subscribers, Editors or Members of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Sustainable Development (IJSD):
Login with your Inderscience username and password:
Want to subscribe?
A subscription gives you complete access to all articles in the current issue, as well as to all articles in the previous three years (where applicable). See our Orders page to subscribe.
If you still need assistance, please email subs@inderscience.com
Our Blog 
Follow us on Twitter 
Visit us on Facebook