Final report - Integrated Land Management Bureau

9.1 KEY MESSAGES
Conclusion- Key messages
1) Human well-being involves more than economic or material factors; it
includes other factors such as health, education, culture and social
processes. These factors interact with each other in complex feedback
loops. Selection of indicators should reflect this broad definition of human
well-being.
2) To reflect the theories of human well-being, indicators can be framed in an
“indicator framework” that is either selected or synthesized from the
literature. There are many conceptual indicator frameworks currently in
use by both practitioners and academics. None of the nine frameworks
reviewed is recommended to be adopted “as is” for the North and Central
Coasts; thus the set of recommended HWB components is a synthesis of
the nine indicator frameworks based on dominant themes across all
frameworks. There is no single “right” way to develop a monitoring
framework.
3) Selecting the criteria (“screening questions”) is nearly as important as the
selection of the indicators themselves. It would be unfortunate if selected
indicators don’t work because the criteria have not been carefully
considered in advance, or if the criteria are debated after the fact.
Involving community members and stakeholders in the development of
criteria could be an important step in establishing buy-in for the indicators.
4) There are serious limitations in the use of existing data for the North and
Central Coast because the boundaries of the plan areas don’t closely match
the boundaries of the existing sources, and because of the small
populations in the plan areas that make data sets too small for meaningful
comparisons over time.
5) Despite higher costs of community-level primary data collection, it offers
more reliable data that can be compared over time than most existing
sources of data.
6) While many sources of existing data are available annually, compiling
them annually is unlikely to reveal meaningful trends. Compiling existing
data every three to five years (and averaging across the years) is likely
enough to show trends in most indicators, even if they are available
annually.
7) The advantage of this literature-driven (“expert driven”) approach for
indicator selection is that it ensures a theoretical basis, but it lacks local
perspective and community knowledge that may improve the selection of
indicators. The most efficient and effective indicator selection processes
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