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Indicators of Sustainable Development for Scotland
INTRODUCTION
The Scottish Executive is committed to sustainable development - it has been a central element of our Programmes for Government and its key role was reaffirmed in Parliament on 9 January 2002.
In order to ensure that our programmes are implemented sustainably we need to be able to measure our progress in the longer term. Delivering our range of programmes involves a huge range of actors and we must have a clear set of indicators to guide us towards sustainability. If each of our programmes is measured against these indicators then we can be confident that we are moving towards our goal across the Executive as a whole.
In May 2001 we launched our consultation,
Checking for Change, asking for views on ways in which we could best measure progress towards sustainable development using indicators. We received many valuable contributions which led us to conclude that our indicators must be able to:
reflect Scottish circumstances and, in particular, the distinctive Scottish priorities of resource use, energy and travel.
be able to be compared with other indicator systems as used in other parts of the United Kingdom, Europe and at world level. For example, our matrix of indicators can be compared to the UK headline indicators.
be applied practically at a local level.
Consequently, in April 2002 we published
Meeting the Needs…Priorities, Actions and Targets for Sustainable Development in Scotland, which sets out our approach to sustainable development. It sets out our vision for a sustainable Scotland and identifies resource use, energy and travel as the three key Scottish priorities. Our vision is wider than this, however. Sustainable development is also about social and environmental justice. And we have clearly set out programmes on health, education, crime and transport which are central to our sustainable development approach. In addition,
Meeting the Needs… lists the 24 indicators that we have adopted to enable us to measure our progress towards sustainability.
This report describes the indicators in detail. For each indicator we have provided information about where we are now, based upon the latest figures available at the time of publication. We have given a description of the relevance of the indicator, identified trends, looked where possible at the differences between urban and rural areas in Scotland and given a brief summary of the main actions we are taking to achieve our targets.
For some indicators we have already set targets and for others new targets have been set since
Meeting the Needs… was published. For some we intend to set targets in light of further policy and scientific work but for others it is more appropriate to monitor the trend than set a target. This is a developing process and we will review the usefulness of the indicators in 2003. We will regularly report on their status and add to them if and when additional measures are necessary.
We are confident that the initial indicator set described in this report provides a framework which allows us to focus our action on the concerns of today while considering the needs of tomorrow.
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