Transcript Metrics and Indicators of sustainability

Metrics and Indicators of
sustainability
Key questions
 What are they? How do we find or develop
them?
 Which indicators hold up to disciplinary
standards?
 How do we validate methods?
 How do we know when a system is flexible
enough?
To begin with
 Some indicators have clear units and some are
complex e.g. CO2, quality of life
 Disciplines may approach indicators differently
 Indicators may be temporal or scale-dependent
 We can use a budget or thresholds as a way to
place indicators in a sustainability framework
Sample questions we grapple with
 Which indicators would help to evaluate the social impact of
business decision-making?
 How do we talk about indicators of ecosystem services that are
“hidden”?
 In what ways do Tibetan villagers value endemic plants?
 How do we measure the effects of land use on a river system?
 Are there system dynamics that are fundamentally unsustainable?
 How do we justify telling people to change?
Conclusions
 Sustainability is multi-scalar
 One size doesn’t fit all
 Indicators easiest to find when they’re targeted towards
particular problems
 Problem definition is important
 We need to unpack questions -- e.g. how do we sustain
rivers, how do we sustain salmon, how do we sustain
critical life stages of salmon?