Thermostat or thermometer? A Finnish perspective on the overloaded role of sustainability indicators in societal transition

Abstract

Various expectations are placed on national‐level sustainability indicators. Ideally, they should serve as efficient tools for transformations, leading societies to sustainable paths by creating a comprehensive, reliable, timely, and easy‐to‐understand picture of the key ecological, socio‐cultural, and economic trends. Most, if not all, indicator initiatives so far have been unable to meet such grandiose expectations. This has evoked criticism of and scepticism towards the indicator approach, but has also motivated improvement of indicator sets and knowledge brokerage processes. This article discusses the role of sustainability indicators in societal transition by examining the experiences gained from the preparation and launch of a sustainable development indicator set specifically aimed at supporting national‐level policymaking in Finland. It is concluded that better recognition of the tensions between attempts to improve the quality of indicators and attempts to enhance their use in policy is key to meeting the expectations placed upon sustainability indicators.

Toward a sustainable development indicators system for small municipalities

“…This broad scope of scientific investigations demonstrates the capillarity of the theme. Other studies work on sustainability assessment of infrastructure projects in urban transport systems (Mansourianfar & Haghshenas, 2018); local sustainability measures (Lynch & Mosbah, 2017); sustainability performance indicators (Egilmez, Gumus, & Kucukvar, 2015), urban environmental sustainability performance (Tao et al, 2019), sustainability benchmarking for smart megacities (Shmelev & Shmeleva, 2019), and smart sustainable city indicators (Huovila, Bosch, & Airaksinen, 2019); evaluate the sustainability performance of an entire urban system (Deng, Peng, & Tang, 2019); local perspectives on the overloaded role of sustainability indicators in the transition of society (Lyytimäki, 2019); and finally, evaluation of the economic, social, and environmental dimensions of sustainable development indicators (Strezov, Evans, & Evans, 2017 (Zeemering, 2017, p. 137).…”

Goal-Driven or Data-Driven? Inventory of Sustainability Indicator Initiatives in Rural Canada

“…The former has been observed in cases like Portuguese municipalities that have embedded SIs into sustainability planning guided by European Union frameworks [13], and Dutch jurisdictions that have used a community capital-based process called the Sustainability Balance to monitor regional sustainability [42,44]. However, this direct policy use is rare in practice [18], and even when this occurs it is difficult to measure the ultimate impacts on SD outcomes. In a recent meta-analysis, Ramos [6] identified ongoing knowledge gaps in institutionalizing SIs into governance and understanding how they may be used differently across community or cultural contexts.…”

“…Finally, we examined case documents to determine the role of the initiatives in local governance. This assessment was informed by theories of shared decision-making, public participation, and collaborative and multi-level governance [19][20][21]51,54], insights on regional collaboration in rural Canada [23,24], and SI literature [11,16,18]. Using QSR Nvivo™ software, we assessed case documents based on the following criteria: This analysis was organized according to the above approach, which guided our identification of key stocks based on the indicators used across the 39 SI initiatives, rather than evaluating the state of local indicators based on benchmarks.…”

“…Informed by Arnstein's ladder of participation [55], Himmelmann's continuum of collaboration [56], and collaborative and multi-level governance theories [20,53], we delineate a range of collaborative practices, considering whether multi-stakeholder engagement efforts featured genuine collaboration versus more shallow interactions like networking or information-sharing, and the level of meaningful public participation. Finally, we articulate different forms of SI use, borrowing from Hezri and Dovers' typology [16] and subsequent discussions on instrumental and conceptual SI use [3,18], as shown in Figure 14.…”

“…Researchers debate how stakeholders should use SIs to support sustainability transitions and influence governance at local, national, and global scales [11][12][13][14]. Some have contended that SIs must be adopted by policy-makers in an instrumental fashion to have tangible impact [15,16]; others argue that they should play more indirect roles like facilitating multi-stakeholder dialogue [11,17,18]. These debates relate to alternative perspectives on governance that highlight the complexity of sustainability challenges and call for collaboration between state and non-state actors at multiple scales [19][20][21].…”