Over the past ten years, indicators have gained in importance and have been used for a wide range of purposes. In a number of OECD countries, indicators are increasingly used in planning, clarifying policy objectives and priorities, budgeting, assessing performance, and communicating with the public. The Conference noted the importance of developing frameworks as well as indicators in order to examine the interactions of economic, environmental and social issues. One approach is to extend the national accounts system to incorporate both environmental and social accounting. This complements and builds on physical accounts by adding a valuation dimension.
Many measurement problems remain to be solved and new developments are needed.
There was also interest in reduced and balanced sets of indicators that provide signals on key dimensions of sustainable development to policy-makers and the general public. There was general agreement that sets of indicators reflecting key trends and policy variables are useful to respond to common policy goals, and to demands for simplified indicator lists. Core sets provide a base of comparable information to which countries can add to suit their circumstances. Core sets can also be adapted for different purposes, ranging from tracking performance against plans to budgetary information. There is also some convergence towards a core set of agri-environment indicators.