Measuring regional sustainability: lessons to be learned

“…Complexity of sustainability; No agreed or consistent approach to development of locally relevant tools; Complex measuring process; Contested nature of some sustainability tools; Existing tools not locally relevant; Lack of transparency in some sustainability tools; No practical tools that can be used to direct policy and decision making; Lack of ownership; Confusion with performance indicators; Undefined aggregation methods [4,[19][20][21][22] One issue for local actors (i.e., decision makers and other stakeholders including local community) is the complexity and usability of current sustainability reporting tools. As our understanding of sustainability and how to measure it increases, sustainability reporting mechanisms have become increasing complex (Figure 1), from simple indicator based reporting to complex indices based on statistical analysis of the indicators' interactions and impact on sustainability.…”

Section: Commitmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There are many reasons that local governments are not using sustainability reporting, including issues of capacity of local government [7][8][9][10][11], commitment to sustainability [7,[11][12][13][14], coordination of council departments, policy, tiers of government and agencies [7,[15][16][17], community support for sustainability [7,9,11,12,18] and specific issues related to sustainability reporting [19][20][21][22][23] (see Table 1). Local governments are overstretched and under resourced, particularly those in rural areas [7], and they lack the expertise, skills and knowledge to carry out sustainability initiatives including reporting [7,11].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sustainability Reporting: An Approach to Get the Right Mix of Theory and Practicality for Local Actors

Graymore

2014

Sustainability

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Many local government or regional plans have "a sustainable future for our community" as a goal. However, few local or regional governments have a sustainability reporting tool in place that enables them to understand how far along the pathway to sustainability their community is. There are a range of reasons for this, including current sustainability indicators and indices not matching the needs or capacity of local actors. This paper argues that a collaborative approach to developing sustainability reporting tools, that involves sustainability experts and local actors working together, will be more successful at developing a tool that has a theoretical basis with locally relevant indicators, which is practical for informed decision making. This process will also build the sustainability reporting capacity of local actors. This collaborative approach was tested in South West Victoria, Australia, resulting in a locally relevant, practical and theoretically sound sustainability reporting tool that met the needs of local actors. This outcome shows that a collaborative approach can overcome some of the barriers to sustainability reporting for local actors; however, further testing is required.

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“…The concept of sustainability such as defined by the Brundtland report, 1987, gave place to many studies related to regional sustainability (Giaoutzi andNijkamp, 1994, Gutman, 2007 or Wallis et al, 2007). In general, these studies have been excellent contributions to a better understanding of the concept but remained incomplete in what concerns the clarification of the measurement criteria for judging sustainable development.…”

Section: Introduction and Justificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sustainability in the trans-border regions? The case of Andalusia - Algarve

Domínguez

Noronha

Vaz

2015

IJGENVI

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The goal of this work is to detect the basic characteristics of the development of the southern border between Spain and Portugal.This trans-border area is described and analyzed comparing the region of Algarve, in The conclusions show that those indicators related to national governance systems are of utmost importance in the cluster classification. Furthermore, those municipalities with higher development levels are also less sustainable from the environmental point of viewthis is probably due to the fact that tourism supports the fragile socio-economic systems in many of such regions. Significantly, the clustering tendencies show that the Portuguese municipalities are tourism oriented (or less tourism oriented) and the Spanish ones are agribusiness (or less agribusiness oriented). Lastly, such geographic structures seem to have its roots in long term paths of development.

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Measuring regional sustainability: lessons to be learned

Cited by 19 publications

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Embedded value systems in sustainability assessment tools and their implications

Embedded value systems in sustainability assessment tools and their implications

Sustainability Reporting: An Approach to Get the Right Mix of Theory and Practicality for Local Actors

Sustainability in the trans-border regions? The case of Andalusia - Algarve

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