What value do indicators such as quality of life indices have in the promotion of sustainable develo

Added: (Sun May 23 2010)

Pressbox (Press Release) - We need indicators “To make rational policy choices based on predicted or observed impacts......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” (Rogers et al, 2008) pg 106&108.
The level of quality of life is different from one country to another due to do not all people enjoy equal access to basic needs. For example, quality of life comprehends take care of your health which is pretty related with what you breathe, drink, eat. This means having quality of air, water, and animals-plants. In most developing countries households are the key living unit, those who determine and control production, consumption and decision making and it is also the key for sustainable development policy.
Sustainable Development is based on the triple approach which means equilibrium between economic, social and environmental needs. Indicators generally reflect the positive or negative consequences of the policies and practices inside a country. Human Development Index is one of the most completed indicators for this. This indicator focus on long and healthy life, the access to knowledge and a decent standard of living. However, if there is a failure in the analysis and view of the household and family within a holistic manner, indicators and policy are fail in accurateness and validity.
Households in developing countries are usually different than in developed countries because it is an extended family which includes grandparents, unmarried aunts and uncles, even married with their offspring, etc. In my opinion, this is mainly due to economic necessity, but also culture affects this process of gaining products and services in every country. Indicators and sustainable development are linked in the manner that they offer a balance in the level of development of each country but also if the proposed politics to support SD have been implemented.
Furthermore, We need 'ambient standards' to prove that we are being sustainable. There must be standards, so all people will apply the same concept. Knowing the indicator’s measures could be understood from different points of view. For anti-development supporters is just a fallacy, a subjective term that only measures how much subjugated is that country to Western development rules. On the other hand, these measures required responsibility and criticism against the construction of sustainability indicators for countries with lack of access to technology to participate and transfer to sustainable technologies, cultural aspects which could create tensions between human goals.
In general, this measures have been “useful” to divide the world in developed, developing (Third World), and medium human development nations (Potter, Binns, Elliot, & Smith, 2004) but again it is important to identify indicators such as Human Development Index (HDI) which, according to Potter et al. is a “summary of data collected but not a comprehensive measure of development” pg. 11 but still, they work to indicate trends over time.
Indicators are quantifiable and useful in program monitoring and evaluation. They help us address critical issues, understand and measure progress of sustainable development. Indicators are a useful tool to help show how well a “system” is working or if it is sustainable. Indicators can help us establish standards as well as justify certain priorities for action. For example an indicator for monitoring and evaluating nutrition can reveal a country’s nutrition situation which can provide view of the different causes of malnutrition. Another example of an indicator is a report card. It shows you whether a student is doing well enough to go to the next grade or if extra help is needed. This provides information to help prevent or solve problems, hopefully before they become too severe, which can help us develop in a more sustainable manner. If anything, indicators may be the base to generate discussions which is also a step in the right direction.

Obvious indicators for development included in the HDI are literacy, infant mortality rate, disease prevalence and population growth while the HDR accounts for percentage of population with electricity, percent forest cover to developed areas, Co2 Emissions, Crime, Justice, homicide, prison population, discrimination, time and energy spent rearing children, water quality, children’s weight and natural, social and produced capital. Traditional economic indicators include GDP, aid portion of GDP, debt portion of GDP and the currency value. Used together these are a more robust indicator of the general state of a society but are not enough when undertaking development using the Triple Bottom Line approach (economy, environment & social justice).

The HDI does attempt a 360 degree view of development but is by no means complete or always appropriate. There are obvious weaknesses including:
• the inability to measure “life experience” as part of education, despite the fact that in many agricultural societies this is at least as necessary as literacy.
• amount of household income spent on gambling (a huge problem in many poor societies).
• low level malnutrition- a “well fed” society with access to rice and potatoes is not hungry but has an inadequate protein intake.
• the lack of accurate weighing of cultural traditions and drivers.
These are all component shortfalls of the index. The greatest weakness is that “the HDI might look scientific and the formulae used to create the final average might look complex but that is no reason to accept the weighting scheme that it uses, because it is just as ad hoc as any other” (Biswas & Caliendo, 2004)).
These are not reasons to discard the HDI. It is the best tool for the moment. If it is used in a fair and consistent manner it can continue to provide a backdrop for measuring TBL development going forward.


The usefulness in measuring true welfare/quality of life comes from the idea that these more subjective indicators can uncover some of the disparities in welfare that are often overlooked when solely relying on information that is more statistical/quantifiable in nature.
The indicator of quality of life is an important measurement for people, profit and the planet. The connection between quality of life and environmental sustainability was first evaluated by the United Nations at the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in 1972. Since then, this concept is continually evolving. Later in 1987 the World Commission on Environment and Development defended the term “sustainable development” as ‘development that can meet the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (Rogers, 2008 Pg 42).

Quality of life as a measurement is the foundation of sustainability, for it is the present overall quality of life and the future quality of life of all humans that incentivizes sustainable practices in the environment. Roger’s uses a quote, ‘Sustainable development is an approach that will permit continuing improvements in the quality of life with a lower intensity of resource use, thereby leaving behind for future generations an undiminished or even enhanced stock of natural resources and other assets’ (PG 44). Thus, it is necessary to continuously improve quality of life of all persons while minimizing resource use in order for future generations to have similar benefits from the environment.

Quality of life measurements, among other things, can give countries a view of the magnitude of nuclear weapons and the potential destroying of quality of life. Nuclear weapons do not only threaten people’s lives and heath, making them either dead or disabled, but the weapons also destroy the environment. War ruins quality of life for present and future generations by destroying the environment. Rogers notes that the International Court of Justice (ICOI) in its opinion of the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons states that ‘ the environment …represents the living space, the quality of life, and the very health of human beings including generations unborn” (pg 185).

Quality of life as an indicator is more than a measure of economic well being. It is crucially tied to the environment. As the UN stated, “Indeed, important components of human freedoms—and crucial ingredients of our quality of life—are thoroughly dependent on the integrity of the environment, involving the air we breathe, the water we drink, the epidemiological surroundings in which we live…” (United Nations Development Programme 2007/2008 pg 43).

Quality of life is valuable because it looks at more than just economical means for sustainable development such as the GDP does. It looks at natural resource management such as “access to water and sanitation, air quality, ecological fragility, natural disasters, property rights, and access to environmental information” (Rogers, 2008 pg 333).

Quality of life can be achieved by managing the material flows in a conservative manner. As Rogers notes, Japan has a high quality of life with a very low throughput of materials because of efficiency and miniaturization. Rogers states, “This, in turn, results in a high standard of living” (pg 93). By contrast, a small country like the Netherlands is inefficient consuming much materials and energy.

Quality of life is an important indicator for profits, for income can affect quality of lives. Rogers talks about how income affects social quality of life by the correlation between being poor domestic violence and alcoholism. This can be further linked to people in developing countries who cannot afford to eat. Profit can affect the quality of lives of the population. There is an oxymoron that says money isn’t everything, it is comparable to oxygen. Obviously humans cannot live without air.

The World Bank (WB) links environmental protection and poverty using quality of life as an indicator. The WB desires to disprove the Kuznets Curve, “which says that when a country reaches $6,000 per capita per annum, then it can worry about the environment” (pg 333). Rogers notes that it is important to first build up the economy and improve quality of life before a country can actually afford to invest in institutes for environmental policies. Using quality of life as an indicator is important for a country before it can invest in an EPA institution in their country to continue to regulate use of the environment.

Quality of life is a value to the indicator of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) which is published by the US Department of Commerce. The CPI might not be an accurate indicator of standards of living if it does not take into account “environmental depreciation and reduced quality of life” (Rogers, 2008 Pg 301).

Quality of life is an important instrument because the GDP and GNP are not ideal indicators of national development without quality of life because GDP and GNP only look at market activities and neglects to include, "improvements of quality of life..., deterioration of environment..., (and)depletion of stock of natural resources" (Rogers, 2008 pg 302). Just because a bunch of money was made does not accurately portray the national development costs that were taken perhaps a loss of investment in human capital or taking too many resources out of the environment occurred with an increase of GNP and GDP.


It will be difficult to measure sustainable development without economic indicators which helps in assessing economic, environmental, and social development. The disciple of economics is the most advanced in providing such quantifiable and reproducible indicators. The indicators provide clear, simple, and reliable measurement of progress or lack of it in a given economy. For example, aggregated indicators capture elements of sustainable development. Most aggregate indicators are used for raising public awareness and receive notable attention in the media (Indicators of Sustainable development, P 43). The economic measures fulfill three basic criteria that help in sustainability. First, they cover the issues that are relevant for sustainable development. Second, they provide critical information not available from other core indicators. Third, they can be calculated by most countries with data that is either readily available or could be made available within reasonable time and costs (Pg 9). Using the economic measures in many cases (project) will rule out a large number of redundant variables, allowing the planner to focus upon fewer and more relevant ones (Rogers et al P 132). Ultimately the economic measures have to lead to economic benefits. The advantage of the 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.
Quality of life indices are essential tools to promote sustainable development – they connote statements of SD values and justify calls to action. For action, sustainability has economic, environmental, and social components, so measuring all three components is necessary to accurately gauge a program’s success. Economic components are relatively easy to measure, but other components are more challenging. As noted by Clarke and Lawn (2008), “Aggregate income accounts, such as per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or per capita Gross State Product (GSP) at the sub-national, were not designed to measure well-being... Yet from their inception, income accounts have assumed this role both in the economic literature and in public debate” (pp. 864-65).

The Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) is one of various indices that have been developed to provide a more holistic assessment of sustainable development projects. The GPI starts with a country’s GDP measurement, but then factors in many goods and services not included in the GDP, such as “volunteerism, costs of household pollution abatement, and the cost of noise pollution” (Rogers et al., 2009, p. 303). A recent report of the GPI for the state of Victoria, Australia even included the “cost of family breakdown, calculated by multiplying the approximate number of dysfunctional families (based on divorce numbers) by the estimated cost per family breakdown” (Clarke & Lawn, 2008, p. 867). GPI growth typically occurs much slower than GDP growth. For example, in the Victoria report, the GPI increased just under 22% from the period 1986-2003. The GSP increased approximately 45% over that same period (id).
The GPI is a useful means of promoting sustainable development because it demonstrates that wealth and well-being do not always correlate. The GPI analysts in Victoria ultimately determined that “a lower rate of growth is beneficial to sustainable well-being and is a relationship that could be intensified if more was done in both Victoria and Australia generally to narrow the gap between the rich and the poor; increase resource use efficiency; encourage better rather than more productions; and endeavour to keep renewable natural capital stocks and critical ecosystems intact” (Clarke & Lawn, 2008, p. 871).
The Human Development Indicator (HDI) is another alternative to the GDP used by the UNDP to assess a country’s sustainability. The HDI incorporates measurements of “life expectancy at birth, two thirds of the adult literacy rate plus one third of the mean years of schooling, and income” (Rogers et al., 2008, p. 121). The measurements of HDI and GDP are strongly correlated, and this has led some to question if HDI is really a useful alternative to GDP. As noted in the text, “In the end, “the HDI” is a wonderful system that pretty much reproduces GDP per capita, and it does that because of the highly interdependent nature of the sub-indices.
The HDI and GPI are just two multiple indicators that have been formulated to provide a “quality of life” measurement that is more reliable than the GDP. However, the intangible nature of happiness and contentment are very difficult to quantify. As discussed in an earlier module, Bhutan has probably come the closest on a national level with its Gross National Happiness index. Yet, despite the challenges inherent in measuring “quality of life”, the need for a more comprehensive means of measurement in order to assess sustainability projects was succinctly articulated in a recent NY Times article title: “G.D.P. R.I.P.” (Zencey, Aug. 9, 2009).
There are drawbacks to the indices in promoting SD. Per Rogers, Jalal and Boyd (2006., p. 312), large amounts of data and analysis are required. In addition, per Henderson, Lickerman & Flynn (2000), “the most pressing methodological debate over new measures of wealth, progress, and human development has concerned the extent to which money coefficients and macroeconomic models can capture broad new areas of concern: human rights, health, education, environmental, and overall quality of life.”

Indicators that focus on development of human capital and resources may prove to be a most important variable in assessing real wealth, whether nominal or not. Developed nations received 80% of their total wealth from human resources while developing only 59% (Rogers et al 2008). This is a reflection of skills that serve to meet current market demands and knowledge flexible enough to create, adapt to, and meet future market needs (Roger et al 2008). “Quality of life” index is based on a unique methodology that links the results of subjective life-satisfaction surveys to the objective determinants of quality of life across countries. The survey uses nine quality of life factors to determine a nation's score. They are: Health, family life, community life, material well being, Job security Political freedom, Gender equality (QLI,2005). The importance of quality of life indicators is that it goes beyond GDP and represents a broader view of the ways in which societies are moving ahead and regressing. These measurements show where society actually is and the choices it needs to make to get where it wants to be. Since it is people who are burdened with the responsibilities of life itself, empowering people will ultimately lead to more sustainable behaviors personally, than demanding more sustainability from human institutions. Involving the people with sustainable development is an important aspect. Showing them what is happening and what needs to be done to be more sustainable will open more doors for support and resources.
The Human Development Index (HDI) is a composite statistic used as an index to rank countries by level of "human development". According to Encyclopedia of Public Health- Human development can be viewed as the process of achieving an optimum level of health and well-being. It includes physical, biological, mental, emotional, social, educational, economic, and cultural components. Only some of these are expressed in the Human Development Index, a composite scale that has three dimensions: life expectancy at birth, adult literacy rate and mean years of schooling, and income as measured by real gross domestic product per capita. Like all one-dimensional scales that attempt to measure multiple complex variables, it is flawed by inherent inaccuracies, but it is nonetheless a useful comparative measure of the well-being of a population.
Another good example of measuring human capital are those that measure literacy rates, jobless rates, school enrollments, entrepreneurial activity and more. These focus on the heart of a society, its people. It is people, by the way, who are responsible for the creation, management, and ultimately the actions of institutions. So in terms of sustainable development, people will need to be better developed so that the institutions they form become more sustainable. Rogers also mentioned savings. “Saving allows for investment in all aspects of development infrastructure. Unfortunately, there is a need to distinguish between the conventional views of savings in national economic accounting and calculated ”genuine savings” rates, which take social and environmental issues into consideration” (Rogers, 2008). It is very useful to use these measures and indicators because it allows citizens and communities to know what is going on. Measuring and weighing the indicators puts it on paper/graph, and shows how important something is such as the environmental indicators and what should be done.
An indicator is characterized as an observable variable assumed to indicate another variable. A quality of life indicator is one that allows one to estimate degrees of well-being. And since the well-being of people is related to the concept of sustainable development, it is fair to say that such indicators are very useful in trying to predict the measure of success or failure of any development project. Predictions are vital in determining the future of the concept of sustainability, which is why indicators like the quality of life indicator could play a major role. Since Indicators help to demystify the concept of sustainability by putting forward measurable data that can be compared against others so that trends could be seen and links established. As noted by Shultink (Shultink, 2000) when derived from effective baseline indicators, indices may be used to define the spatial and temporal distribution of economically viable production opportunities and may be expressed in derived indices that realistically describe basic production opportunities and guide the selection of feasible, long-term development strategies.

It is essential that indicators selected or used give a true picture of the quality of life indices such as the environment vis-à-vis the economic and social realities of exploiting the earth’s resources. This impacts directly the decision-making processes in government and helps present a picture of the limits of consumption and exploitation possible if the environment is to be preserved and the welfare of the population maximized within acceptable limits. Thus, improving the way we measure progress can be an important leverage point in designing policies and taking action compatible with sustainable development. What have we learned from the design and use of indicator systems at the national level that can inform their more effective application in the future? (International Institute for Sustainable Development, 2005).

Additionally, given the need for global level cooperative action on many sustainable development issues, agreement on a framework, goals and indicators would be helpful. (Pintér.et al, 2005, p V). According to Pinters, Parris and Kates, SD could be interpreted to mean the maintenance of aggregate stocks, inventories or qualities of economic, social, ecological or institutional assets over time. However, operationally, this works only if we have information on these stocks, inventories and qualities, their substitutability and safe limits to their depletion. Indicators can provide this information, and thus they were often used to collectively define key aspects of sustainability in specific contexts (Pintér et al, 2005, p 2). Thus, indicators help decision-makers in selection strategic options for future development.

In summary, indicators have value as a basis for assessment by providing information on conditions and trends of sustainable development. Secondly, as a basis of such assessments, indicators can provide input to policy formulation processes. Thirdly, by presenting several data in one number that commonly is more simple to interpret than complex statistics, they can facilitate communication between different groups, for example between experts and non-experts (Segnestam, 2002, p 3). As noted by Rogers, Jalal, and Boyd, (Roger et al 2009, p312) UNDP’s Human Development index is now widely used as an indicator of improvement of social, economic, and environmental conditions around the world. Other popular livelihood indictors include the Gross Domestic Product, the Gross National Product, and the Genuine Progress Indicator.

References
International Institute for Sustainable Development , SD indictors: Proposals for a Way Forward ( Accessed 22 March 2010)
http://www.iisd.org/measure/principles/progress/way_forward.asp

Pintér, L., Hardi, P., & Bartelmus, P., (2005), “Sustainable Development Indicators: Proposals for a Way Forward”, United Nations Division for Sustainable Development (UN-DSD)

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