Indicators of sustainable development for catchment management in South Africa - Review of indicators from around the world

Abstract

Indicators are the ideal means by which progress towards sustainable development can be measured. However, most indicator initiatives throughout the world have been aimed at state-of-the-environment reporting, with relatively few aimed at developing sectoral indicators. This paper provides the results of a review to establish trends in the development of indicators that assi st in integrated water resource management. Twenty-one organisations from around the world were approached with regard to whether they had developed indicators of sustainable development for catchment management. Of these, only five organisations had developed, or were in the process of developing, indicator sets that were available for review. These included the Fraser Basin Council (Canada), the Murray-Darling Basin Commission (Australia), the Tennessee Valley Authority (USA), the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the World Resources Institute. All of these indicator sets were developed using an issuesbased approach.

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