Abstract
Countries still lack adequate metrics to monitor environmental sustainability across a range of relevant environmental and resource issues. The Strong Environmental Sustainability Index (SESI), which is based on the Environmental Sustainability Gap (ESGAP) framework, is intended to fill this gap. SESI is the result of aggregating 21 indicators across different dimensions. Each of the underlying indicators is related to the functions of natural capital and normalised using science-based targets. SESI uses the geometric mean to aggregate in order to reflect the limited substitutability between the functions of natural capital.The results of the index, which is computed for 28 European countries, show that several functions of natural capital are impaired in Europe. Countries tend to perform worse in indicators related to pollution and ecosystem health, compared to indicators that describe the provision of natural resources, and human health and welfare. Because the results are sensitive to assumptions in the normalisation, weighting and aggregation processes, the relevant choices have been aligned with the theoretical underpinnings of the ESGAP framework. SESI responds to the demands of the ‘Beyond GDP’ community on the need for a single environmental sustainability metric that can complement GDP in its (mis-)use as a headline indicator for development.
Highlights
Metrics are a key part of environmental governance
It is remarkable that countries still lack meaningful metrics that allow them to measure their environmental sustainability performance from a strong sustainability perspective
Strong Environmental Sustainability Index (SESI) is based on the Environmental Sustainability Gap (ESGAP) framework, which builds on key concepts such as strong sustainability, critical natural capital, environmental functions and science-based reference values
Summary
Metrics are a key part of environmental governance Among their key uses are provision of information on the state of the environment, identification of key factors behind environmental problems, compari son of different countries’ performance over time, monitoring the effects of policies and progress towards their objectives, and raising awareness on environmental issues (EEA, 1999). The recent Global Environmental Outlook report (UN Environment, 2019) concluded that current paths of economic development will lead to unprecedented hardship for billions of people, as the most basic systems that support human life on Earth start to unravel. From this outlook, it is clear that the current development model is far from being environmentally sustainable. Unless policy targets and best performers represent environmental sustainability conditions (as currently frequently they do not), a mea surement gap remains
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