Yet standard indicators are often narrow and measure economic change without accounting for negative impacts, such as environmental degradation. Promoting more sustained development will require indicators that successfully balance macro issues against community concerns.
Information also needs to be easily accessible.
They show that there is potential for better, fully comprehensive indicators to signpost paths to more sustainable development policies. If it can be counted it tends to count. Indicators are vital policy tools, allowing change to be clearly measured whilst providing information on which decisions can be based. Policy is currently guided by purely macro indicators such as Gross National Product which take no account of sustainability or the social impacts of economic activity. To feed usefully into policy, suggests the report, a more integrated approach is needed linking local concerns with expert knowledge.