From natural resources and environmental accounting to construction of indicators for sustainable development [An article from: Ecological Economics]

This digital document is a journal article from Ecological Economics, published by Elsevier in 2007. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
Norway has a long history in trying to develop management tools for sustainable development. From the early development of natural resources accounts in the 1980s, through discussions of the usefulness of indices like ''green GDP'' to efforts of developing sustainable development indicators, experiences have been gained. The paper seeks to both describe the landscape and discussions associated with the key terms, and to communicate some lessons drawn from the Norwegian experiences. The conclusion focuses on the fact that whatever information is collected and organised to support the relevant decision-making processes, the final outcome should always be judged in terms of its impacts on policy processes. Thus, we issue a warning against large-scale development of information systems, without due regard to the final utilisation of the output.