Environmental Indicators a la carte; classification of major indices

BRAMBILA, A; FLOMBAUM, P

Buenos Aries

Congreso; Argentina y Ambiente 2015; 2015

Sociedad Argentina de Ciencia y Tecnología Ambiental

Human activities are responsible for changes in the environment which may impair ecosystems for the sustainable provision of goods and services. The use of natural resources such as land, water, and wild populations has often jeopardized the continuity of the exploitation of these same resources. In addition, industrialization has led to global changes in natural cycles. Growing concern for human effects on the environment led to a definition of sustainable development based on three pillars: economic, social and environmental; despite much ongoing controversy.As an alternative to quantify environmental well-being, some organizations developed indicators. Indicators are tools used to simplify the measurement of complex systems. An environmental indicator is system of variables that can measure progress towards a ?target?. The diversity of natural contexts and organizations led to a variety of indicators that differ at scales and purposes. Here, we compared environmental indicators. Our general objective is to describe an international set of major indicators to understand their diversity, and to provide information for the development of new indicator systems where there are none. To accomplish this objective we first created a common classification scheme to allow comparison of focus areas. We summarized the heterogeneity in their intended goals, organization, scale, level of synthesis, and other important factors.  Lastly, we developed a reference framework for groups that want to develop an indicator system/index.We selected 14 relevant sets of environmental indicators from international (UN), governmental (e.g. USA, Argentina, etc) and NGO?s (WWF, etc), classified their variables by categorical theme (see below) and with the Pressure-State-Response framework.  Additionally, we described the organizational and goal-oriented characteristics of each set.  Finally, we came up with a list of common, simplified indicators and patterns that could serve as a first step towards developing a system from environmental data.  Our results show that indices can range from 5 to 266 variables. They focus 35% on issues of contamination, 27% on the biotic environment, 22% on natural resources, 9% on issues of human welfare, and 6% on related socioeconomic indicators.  Indices predominantly describe the environmental state rather than pressures or responses (34 and 18%, respectively). Also we identified that national-governmental indices that tend to not be aggregated into a single summary value, and are generally broad in thematic scope and exhaustive in the amount of data they consider.  In contrast, independent-international indices are often aggregated to produce a single number.  These indexes are generally more indicative in terms of the number of variables considered, and are not necessarily broadly focused.  For example the Living Planet Index, focuses specifically on the biotic aspects of the environment (i.e. status of wildlife populations).      What this classification system allows us to do is compare these diverse indexes that have developed independently and will also allow whoever wants to make an indicator set to have a comprehensive understanding of them before undertaking the task.