Green technologies.  Healthy communities.  Smart growth.  Many people can agree on aspects of a sustainable future… in general.  But how can we be sure we’re getting there? How should our businesses and policymaking bodies measure progress and evaluate investments to encourage environmentally sound, socially just and economically successful development?  How do we weigh one policy path against another, or compare progress among communities?  For example:

•    Is economic progress best measured by the number of jobs created… by inner city income levels…. by the dollars that are re-circulated in our communities… or maybe all these? 
•    What environmental measures – from carbon emissions to groundwater quality – do we need to track? 
•    How do we devise measurements of something as subtle as  human well-being, from housing affordability to environmental health? 

Measurements matter.  In the business world, “triple bottom line” thinking has given rise to the socially responsible investment industry, corporate shareholder resolutions to improve performance, and industry standards such as the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED system for construction, EnergyStar for efficient appliances, and organic certification for food. Basic to the fight against global warming is the measurement and rapid reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, with presidential candidates now debating cuts from 80% to 90% by 2050.

Communities, too, can track economic, environmental and social progress, to measure what matters to their citizens and weigh the effectiveness of policy choices  Sustainable development indicator systems are a tool in growing use by hundreds of governments including major cities, regions, and states, and the civic organizations that help them set direction.

Santa Monica, California tunes its environmental plans by the city’s “ecological footprint,” the overall demand for natural resources that arises from the city’s lifestyle and specific environmental performance measures, giving itself letter grades for outcomes and for effort.

Burlington, Vermont framed its master plan as the Legacy Project, bringing together new approaches to community development that would leave a positive legacy that could be measured.  Measurable economic development targets included jobs created in areas of poverty and reduction in social indicators of poverty such as infant mortality.
 
Measures of progress can provide a basis for community reporting to set a policy agenda with broad buy-in, as the Long Island Index does.  They can provide a basis for scenario development to bring alternative futures into focus, as the Georgia Basin Futures Project has done in British Columbia.  Some function on a global scale to compare nations’ progress, such as the CIESIN/Yale Environmental Sustainability Index.   Other, more “folksy” local systems serve as grist for weekly news and feature stories, as illustrated by the popular Sightline Institute’s work in telling the story of Seattle’s efforts at sustainable development.  

Sustainable Hudson Valley has helped to incubate a regional effort to develop meaningful measures of sustainability in terms of environmental integrity, economic well-being and quality of life.  Our board and staff have been involved in two regional conferences: “Environmental Indicators: Making Meaning of Our Measures”, produced with the Hudson River Environmental Society in 2005; and the U.S. Society for Ecological Economics’ annual conference in New York City in 2007.  Our future work in this area will focus on creating a replicable, scalable communications platform that can accommodate the research and analysis of diverse partners. We believe that open access to information can help move communities in fresh directions and allow collective wisdom to emerge.