New Instrument Will Help Public Visualize, Track Progress Towards Sustainable Development

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

New Instrument Will Help Public Visualize, Track Progress Towards Sustainable Development

NEW YORK, NEW YORK, Apr. 24 -/E-Wire/-- The prototype of a new tool to help policy makers and the public visualize and track progress towards sustainable development will be unveiled today at United Nations headquarters. "The Dashboard of Sustainability" is a unique new way to present indicators of sustainable development - as gauges similar to the control panel of an aircraft or car. The instrument turns a complex array of economic, social and environmental performance indicators into a simple graphic representation of a country's current position relative to an agreed consensus about sustainability.

The product of a six year international project led by the Canadian-based International Institute for Sustainable Development, the prototype will be demonstrated April 24 during the 9th session of the U.N. Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD-9), meeting at the U.N. in New York.

The prototype presents the performance of three countries (Finland, the Philippines, and South Africa) on a set of 57 indicators of sustainable development currently being tested by the CSD. Data for other nations, obtained from the U.N. Statistical Division, the World Bank, the OECD and other international agencies, have also been included in the prototype.

The goal is to enable quick assessment of the weak and strong points of a nation's performance. On-going data updates will facilitate tracking of trends over time. On completion of testing, the Dashboard will be freely available for download from the Internet. The data clusters can also be modified according to the end-users' specific needs.

For each indicator, performance can be displayed relative to a nation's level of income (thus providing a way to reflect the different circumstances of developed and developing countries).

View the Dashboard here . Peter Hardi, who heads the project for the IISD, said the Dashboard serves a valuable function by drawing attention to interconnections between many activities, problems and solutions in the field of sustainability.

"The challenge of sustainability reporting is to cluster all the relevant information on various issues and demonstrate the connections between seemingly disparate factors," he said. "Because it shows the relationships between the different aspects of development - economic, social and environmental - the Dashboard is an essential tool for national policy making."

"The Dashboard is an imaginative approach that makes complex information about the economy, society and the environment more easily understandable," said IISD President David Runnalls.

"It provides a tool to signal what is significant and to go deeper into the underlying causes. Like the instrumentation of an aircraft, the Dashboard offers a visual signal of progress towards sustainable development, and warnings of problems."

Runnalls cautioned, however, that the tool can offer results only as good as the data input. "The quality of data on all aspects of sustainable development still needs considerable improvement," he said. "Widespread adoption of the Dashboard and supporting data systems would give governments and the public clear signals of how well they are performing in meeting their goals."

Hardi said the Institute and its consultative team - drawn from 12 leading global institutions - is inviting experts, particularly in the developing world, to participate in future discussion, development and testing of the software.

Mr. Hardi said next steps in the project are to: * Invite all testing countries to check how the Dashboard works with data in their own national context;

* Show changes to the indicators over time;

* Further develop and complement the database, particularly in developing countries;

* Create a functional Internet connection to national documents and datasets; and

* Create an association between the Dashboard indicators with international news, negotiations and other developments in each country.

"Our grand vision is that this will become the tool of choice for everybody who wants to work with indicators, including government decision makers, NGOs, academics, students, journalists and the public," he said.

The Dashboard project is funded by the Bellagio Forum for Sustainable Development, Sweden's Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research (MISTRA) and Deutsche Bank's Global Head, Sustainable Development. For more information please call [REDACTED-PHONE], [REDACTED-PHONE] or [REDACTED-PHONE] to schedule a time. A demonstration of the prototype during CSD-9 will take place April 24, 1.15 to 2.45 p.m., UN Secretariat, Conf. Rm. A.

International Institute for Sustainable Development

http://www.iisd.org/cgsdi/dashboard_dsply.htm

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