Estratègies per al desenvolupament sostenible - Generalitat de ...

4.4. The three main approaches to measuring and analysing sustainability are: (a)accounts (providing data); (b) narrative assessments not based on indicators;(c) indicator-based assessments. These approaches differ in their potential for:transparency (ease of detecting value judgements and construction of theassessment);consistency over time (comparability of successive assessments);participation (the more technical the method, the less scope for participation);usefulness for decision-making (clarity with which performance and prioritiesare revealed).4.4.1. Accounts are constructions of raw data, converted to a common unit (suchas money, area or energy). Most cover highly important but small aspects ofsustainability. Generally speaking, they refer to one or a narrow set of indicatorsand include the system of national accounts (covering the market economy),the ecological footprint (covering resource consumption), and energy andmaterial accounts (covering physical exchanges between the economy andthe environment). The most comprehensive accounts sum many aspects ofthe economy, society and the environment into a single statement.The Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI), for example, starts with personalconsumption expenditure (taken from the national accounts). It then makesa series of adjustments to account for the negative effects of economic activityor factors that are ignored by the GDP (such as unequal income distribution,net foreign lending or borrowing, cost of consumer durables), social costs(crime, automobile accidents, commuting, family breakdown, loss of leisuretime, underemployment) and environmental costs (household pollutionabatement, water pollution, air pollution, noise pollution, loss of wetlands, lossof farmlands, depletion of non-renewable resources, long-term environmentaldamage, ozone depletion, loss of old-growth forests). Finally it adds somebenefits ignored by the GDP (value of housework and parenting, value ofvolunteer work, services of consumer durables, services of highways andstreets, net capital investment).Although accounts produce a strikingly clear picture of overall performance –or“genuine progress”– they do not reveal so clearly the main constituents of145