The Analysis of Sustainability Indicators as Socially Constructed Policy Instruments: benefits and challenges of ‘interactive research’

Abstract

Sustainability indicator sets are increasingly being discussed on the policy level as fruitful contributions to the improvement of political decisionmaking and to the implementation of programs oriented towards the achievement of strategic goals of sustainable development. The vast number of different indicator type tools, their varying contexts of use and their differing objectives indicate that there is no simple answer to what sustainable indicator type tools should look like or could be used for. Instead, more than the final products (e.g. a specific indicators set), the analyses of the discourse on this topic reveal a lot of information. Thus, an innovative research approach is recommended focusing on understanding the production of social meaning and processes of social interaction within political-administrative systems. Firstly, there is a need to identify the development, purpose and use of sustainability indicator sets, which depend on the different interests of policy actors, their relationships and existing governance structures. Secondly, one should identify any reasons for the ineffective use of indicator sets where the goals of sustainability are concerned. The approach of 'interactive research' understood as a research process, in which 'researchers' and 'practitioners' develop knowledge for solving problems in a communicative, reflexive and collaborative way, facilitates this challenging research task. This paper critically examines the approach of interactive research and sheds some light on benefits as well as challenges of it via extracting the lessons learnt in an EU-funded project called 'Promoting Action for Sustainability through Indicators at the Local Level in Europe' (PASTILLE), which applied an interactive research approach.

Experiences of sustainability assessment: An awkward adolescence

“…Astleithner & Hamedinger, 2003;Birkin, 2000;Birkin, Edwards, & Woodward, 2005;Boyce 2000, Brown, 2007Dalal-Clayton & Sadler, 2005;Lamberton, 2005;Ness et al, 2007;O'Connor, 2006;Unerman, Bebbington, & O'Dwyer, 2007;van Asselt & Rijkens-Klomp, 2002;Weaver & Rotmans, 2006;). Such technologies can be seen as part of a wider set as society grapples with the challenges of global environmental and social change that sweep from climate change to resource depletion and effects of globalization.…”

Knowing and governing cities through urban indicators, city benchmarking and real-time dashboards

“…Indicator, benchmarking and dashboard initiatives implicitly assume a realist ontology and epistemology that supposes the existence of an external reality that operates independently of an observer and which can be objectively and accurately measured and tracked to reveal the world as it actually is through descriptive statistics and visual representations, such as graphs and maps (Astleithner & Hamedinger, 2003). They thus advance a particular way of knowing a city, that of visualized facts.…”

“…First, it is highly reductionist atomizing complex, contingent relationships into simplified, one-dimensional measures that cannot provide a full and multidimensional picture of the city, even when combined into composite indices (Astleithner and Hamedinger (2003). Second, it decontextualizes a city from history, its political economy, the wider set of social, economic and environmental relations that frame its development, and its hinterland and wider interconnections and interdependencies that stretches out over space and time (cities are open not closed systems; Craglia et al, 2004;Mori & Christodoulou, 2012).…”

Establishing sustainability indicators as an evolving process: experience from the island of Guernsey

“…Many authors have used social construction to argue that it is possible to adequately reflect the subjectivity of sustainable development through sustainability indicators (Morel Journel et al, 2003;Astleithner & Hamedinger, 2003;PASTILLE, 2002a). Rather than placing emphasis upon the actual indicators themselves, social construction is used to place emphasis upon the actual process of developing the sustainability indicators.…”