Friedrich Hinterberger and Elke Pirgmaier
with, Dr. Stefan Giljum,
Mag. Eva Burger, Mag. Lisa Bohunovsky
Sustainable Europe Research Institute (SERI)
Garnisongasse 7/21, A-1090 Wien, Austria
Fon: +43 1 969 07 28-19
Email:
Website: www.seri.at
Sustainable development – a concept developed enough to guide Cohesion Policy programmes?
Version: 15 December 2009
Revised for publication
Paper prepared for the Sixth European Conference on Evaluation of Cohesion Policy: “New Methods for cohesion Policy Evaluation: Promoting Accountability and Learning”
30 November – 1 December 2009 in Warsaw (http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/conferences/evaluation2009/)
INTRODUCTION. The recent policy context
During 2009 the world’s attention has been on the economic and financial crisis that started with the credit crunch in September 2008. The policy responses have been fast and, in many countries, unprecedented in scale. The implications are clear; a return to economic growth is desirable, almost regardless of cost.
This is not an unreasonable approach for policy makers to take. Rapidly rising unemployment causes large losses of welfare and, particularly in the developing world, poverty rates are again increasing. However, the narrow focus on a ‘return to growth’ has largely ignored previous problems with the growth paradigm.
This is unfortunate because the large quantities of money being channeled into national fiscal stimulus packages presented an opportunity to address some of these underlying issues while at the same time increasing economic welfare. Although there has been an environmental component in some of the packages in most cases this has been small and calls for a ‘Green New Deal’ have been largely ignored (OECD, 2009; Schratzenstaller, 2009; UNEP, 2009a and 2009b). Most of the Regional policy funds are still dedicated to traditional regional economic development schemes. For example, large conventional road transport schemes will contribute to a long-lasting increase in the pressure on the environment. Although most EU environment-related spending comes from the regional policy budget, it is still primarily dedicated to end-of-the pipe environmental protection.
The short-term policy responses have not led to any structural change ahead of a return to growth. One interpretation of this is that the environment and sustainable development are luxury goods that we can afford to pay service to when times are good but are not priorities when incomes come under pressure. However, this rather simplistic conclusion ignores the fact that there are strong two-way linkages between the economy and the environment and that each component cannot be viewed in isolation.
Sustainable development
The by far most used and well-known description of sustainable development originates from the Brundtland Commission’s report Our Common Future (1987). Therein, sustainable development is a development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
The limitations of this characterization are becoming more and more apparent. The Brundtland description fails to express the idea that there are biophysical limits within which humanity must operate and neglects the importance of social justice and equity that works for all people. An alternative presented by the Forum of the Future Sustainable takes these aspects into consideration. According to them, sustainable development can be understood as a dynamic process that enables all people to realize their potential and to improve their quality of life in ways which protect and enhance the planet’s life-support systems. This depiction makes clear that sustainable development is not simply about managing the environment more effectively and efficiently, while people pursue their business as usual. Quite the contrary, it is a social and economic project as much as an environmental project, with the objective of optimizing human wellbeing (Porritt, 2005).
Regional policy and Sustainable Development
Sustainable development needs engagement on various levels. The region as a spatial level is repeatedly addressed in relation to sustainability. Regions are big enough to already guarantee noticeable changes; as pilot regions they may become the triggers for large-scale developments; they are of wide political scope, and their relatively low degree of structural complexity allows for easy and quick decisions.
Sustainability has often been the solution for a number of – typically regional – problems. The support of the regional economy, the intensified use of renewable resources, and sustainable city planning and regional planning are possibilities to act against migration from rural areas and the decline of the regional economy and regional cultures. There is much to be said for focusing on the initiation of projects for a sustainable development on a regional level, and there are some good examples to prove how much can be moved in regions, while on an international level, the EU or in global processes each little step is battled over endlessly. A wonderful example can be found in the Austrian township of Steinbach an der Steyr which, in 1986, had reached a low point in its history before a motivated team around the new mayor started to walk a new way of clear visions and principles. Even if these visions did not spread far at the time, the idea was to increase economic, social, political, and ecological sustainability. Today, Steinbach an der Steyr is a thriving place of immigration, growing numbers of workplaces, and innovative businesses. Compared to other towns in the region, the Steinbach citizens’ future prospects are highly positive. Similarly, Local Agenda 21 projects have initiated a number of concrete measures on a community level, have motivated many people to more sustainability, and have been the basis for a lot of successful projects. Some regions have demonstrated that sustainable use and production of energy is possible and that it has diverse positive effects on the region. Regional projects – whether scientific, economic, political or cultural – can be adapted more easily to the actual environments of people involved. Research is too often concentrated on higher levels (national, EU-wide, global) and thus obliged to remain abstract. Regions, in contrast, may influence developments more directly and rapidly than (inter)national levels do. Actors and networks are visible, interdependencies are easier to grasp, decision processes are easier to follow and influence – the smaller scale facilitates a lot! These advantages may be of great advantage for the realization of sustainability.
Regional policy is one of the EU’s central fields of action and aims at a more harmonized development of the diverse European regions. However, the goals of social, ecological and institutional sustainability are often ignored. From 2007 onwards, half of the regional policy budget is being dedicated to the development of the new Member States of Central and Eastern Europe. Huge financial injections will result in structural interventions shaping the long-term development of these countries. Schepelmann (2005) has shown that regional policy could boost sustainable development in the EU. Like no other EU policy, it can set a framework for research, technological development and the creation of markets by connecting public and private drivers for sustainable development. Regional governments can not only use Cohesion Funds to increase the overall eco-efficiency of their industry, but also to create regional clusters of eco-innovation (Schepelmann, 2005). Priority areas for the development of regional transformation could be sustainable mobility, as well as energy and material efficiency (Schepelmann, 2009).
Why is measuring important?
“You can’t manage what you can’t measure”. Measuring environmental, economic and social impacts through appropriate indicators is the prerequisite for monitoring progress towards defined targets. What is not measured often gets ignored in policy processes.
Measuring the environmental impacts of consumption and production processes is well underway – many indicators offering different approaches (e.g. MIPS, footprints, etc.) already exist. However, measuring the social dimension of consumption and production is not as well developed, as indicators are either (1) focusing on societies as a whole (e.g. Human Development Index) or (2) focussing only on minimal standards (e.g. child labour). The latter is reminiscent of discussions from the 1970s, when emission and waste water standards were implemented in Europe's industries. In this way, it appears the debate regarding social indicators in the business sector is around 30 years behind the environmental debate but both dimensions need to be measured (Giljum et al., 2009a).
Global consumption of natural resources is increasing at an unprecedented pace, which is unsustainable from both an ecological and socio-economic standpoint. In order to make these interconnections clearer, it is of key importance that the real magnitude and distribution of worldwide resource use is quantified. Transformation towards a more sustainable world will not be possible without reducing human demand on natural resources through enhanced resource productivity. Resource use is also closely linked to questions of distributive justice – an important issue, alongside labour standards and social development. Giljum et al. (2009a and 2009b) indicate that using appropriate indicators to measure resource use and its environmental and economic impacts is also necessary for monitoring progress in relation to defined targets. Targets, in turn, can only be defined based on clear measurement systems and robust indicators. The EU traditionally sets binding targets in many policy areas; however, such targets often lack an analysis of resource use and resource productivity. To design appropriate policy responses that take these into account, various information is required. This includes, among other things, determining the main (economic and social) drivers for resource consumption; identifying the most resource intensive economic sectors; the contribution of different types of product consumption to overall environmental pressures; the quantification of potential increases in eco-efficiency and the costs involved, as well as the possibility of shifting environmental burden to other world regions through changes in international trade patterns.
In terms of quantifying resource consumption, the use of physical units of measurement is crucial given the numerous shortcomings, involved with using purely monetary approaches to measure the environmental consequences of human activities. Among others, these shortcomings include the fact that markets do not exist for many ecosystem services and that markets assume natural capital (such as ecosystems and resources) can be substituted by man-made capital (e.g. infrastructure, machines, etc.), which is not generally the case. As a response, alternative measurement systems have been developed, which use units of measurement other than money (these methods are also called “physical accounting” approaches). The most common units of measurement for resource use are weight units (kilograms, tonnes), energy units (joules, watts), area units (square metres, hectares) and units which reflect the negative environmental impacts of resource use on human health (e.g. healthy life years).
As measurements revealed, in the past 20 years Europe has achieved increased resource productivity (or eco-efficiency) in production and consumption processes. For each EURO, less and less energy and raw materials are required (this phenomenon is known as the ‘relative de-coupling’ of environmental pressures from economic growth). However, in many cases, increased efficiency has resulted in lower prices of products and services and in turn increased demand - a phenomenon known as the “rebound effect”. In the worst-case scenario, the related increase in production and consumption may more than offset the drop in demand from the original efficiency gain. The above mentioned “rebound effect,” in addition to an increase in average income, has led to increasing environmental pressures related to the consumption of products and services in Europe. Measuring resource use is important for communicating the issues of environmental responsibility to the broad public and to emphasize that each European can make his or her personal contribution. High quality data relating to the environmental pressures of production are also the empirical basis for the implementation of comprehensive product labeling, which assists consumers in selecting the most environmentally-benign products.
But global consumption does not only impact environmental, but also social systems. Beginning in the 1950s, enormous wealth creation in the western world led to high living standards for many people while several unsustainable side effects arose. The increase of wealth was not distributed equally, both within and between societies and nations, resulting in an ever-widening gap between rich and poor. At the same time, the increase of subjective wellbeing did not keep pace with the increase of wealth, meaning rich people did not get significantly happier above a certain threshold of material wealth. Global consumption is still increasing at an unprecedented pace. In order to ensure a sustainable future we need to redefine societal goals with a stronger focus on wellbeing and a broader understanding of quality of life. Increasing the use of social indicators in decision making will be necessary for achieving this (Giljum et al, 2009b).
To sum up, indicators create a sense of precision and attract interest, making them valuable tools to achieve targets. Giljum et al. (2009b) identified the following criteria why measurement is important:
· “You can’t manage what you can’t measure”
· Clear communication in an understandable way is key to reach target audiences.
· Targets can only be defined based on clear measurement systems and robust indicators.
· Policy makers demand solid information to design appropriate policy responses.
· Increasing efficiency is useful and required, but not sufficient.
· The use of physical units of measurement is a crucial requirement for addressing the resource use issue
For all those reasons, alternative measurement systems have been developed, which use units of measurement other than money (these methods are also called “physical accounting” approaches). These approaches to measuring sustainable development are reflected in the European sustainable development indicator systems, as well as those used by many Member States, where different issues are measured and reported in the most appropriate units.
Measuring quality of life– current developments
How do we measure progress? Does a stagnating or even decreasing economic power necessarily imply lower quality of life, well-being and happiness? Or do the negative effects of economic prosperity already exceed the aspect of the creation of prosperity?
Each reparation of any environmental damage, each hospitalization, etc. raises the GDP without directly contributing to the improvement of our life quality (at best in the sense of the reestablishment of the original situation). At the before mentioned conference of the Club of Rome for instance, Valentin Fuster, president of the World Heart Federation, thus a leading heart specialist, spoke up for an increase in health care instead of an increase in the treatment of diseases, the latter of which being harder to finance anyway.