Table 1-1-1 Major International Actions toward a Sustainable Society

Year	Name of the Treaty, Conference, or Documents and Publication	Notes (location, etc.)
1972	United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, Stockholm Declaration	Location: Stockholm, Sweden
The Limits to Growth	By: The Club of Rome
1980	The Global 2000 Report to the President	By: The government of the United States
1987	Our Common Future	By: The United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development
1992	The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Earth Summit)
The Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, “Agenda 21”
The Convention on Biological Diversity
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change	Location: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
1997	The 3rd Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
“Kyoto Protocol”	Location: Kyoto City, Kyoto
2000	The United Nations Millennium Summit
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)	Location: New York, USA
2002	World Summit on Sustainable Development
(Johannesburg Summit)	Location: Johannesburg, South Africa
The 6th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity	Location: The Hague, Netherlands
2008	G8 Hokkaido Toyako Summit	Location: Toyako-cho, Hokkaido
2010	10th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity	Location: Nagoya City, Aichi

Source: Ministry of the Environment

the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the United Nations have discussed development of indicators for measuring sustainability and quality of life, which has become an international trend (Table 1-1-2).

Under the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), since 1990 the degree of human development has been measured by using the Human Development Index (HDI), which is a composite indicator that gives weight to and calculates individual values for income, life expectancy, literacy rate and schooling and education standards.

The “Genuine Savings” indicator developed by the World Bank in 1998 is a sustainability indicator that builds on the concepts of green national accounts, which take into account investments in human capital, depletion of natural resources and damage caused by pollution and carbon dioxide emissions. If genuine savings are negative, it means that there is a reduction of overall wealth, and that the current level of consumption is not sustainable.

The OECD has been publishing “Society at a Glance – OECD Social Indicators,” “OECD Key Environmental Indicators,” “Economic Policy Reforms: Going for Growth,” and other various indicators related to the environment, the economy, and society to evaluate the status of progress of international society. These indicator sets have become widespread around the world as the basic indicators for measuring development.

In addition, at World Forums hosted by the OECD with the cooperation of the World Bank, the EU, the United Nations, and other organizations, efforts have been taken to measure society’s progress and human development. In Istanbul, Turkey, the second forum was held, and the “Istanbul Declaration (2007)” was signed. This declaration proposed recommendations for developing indicators in order to measure society’s progress.

There are movements to reconsider GDP, which has been used to measure the scale of economic activities. Even if GDP indicates a country's income, it sometimes presents movement that differs from the degree of life satisfaction that people actually feel, due to factors such as that the status of household income is not sufficiently linked to GDP, that elements such as the quality of services and goods considered necessary for measuring human well-being are not included, that it is difficult to grasp housework and leisure that have not been commercialized, and that GDP focuses on short-term economic activity and does not emphasize long-term accumulation of capital such as natural resources and human capital.

The “Beyond GDP Conference,” which comprises the European Commission, European Parliament, the Club of Rome, the OECD, and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), is trying to define indicators that are optimal for measuring society’s progress. This conference has discussed in order to have such indicators utilized in the public’s decision-making and in policy-making. In 2009 the conference’s results were published and five key actions for improving indicators to measure society’s progress were announced as below:

1. Complementing GDP with environmental and social indicators

2. Near real-time information for decision-making

3. More accurate reporting on distribution and inequalities

4. Developing a European Sustainable Development Score-