COUNTRY
Canada

WHAT IT IS
Principles to measure and assess progress toward sustainable development. These principles serve as guidelines for the whole of the assessment process including the choice and design of indicators, their interpretation and communication of the result. They are interrelated and should be applied as a complete set.

ORIGIN
These principles are the result of the work of an international group of measurement practitioners and researchers from five continents gathered by the International Institute for Sustai¬nable Development – IISD in 1996 at the Rockefeller Foundation´s Study and Conference Center in Bellagio, Italy, aiming to synthesize insights on the main aspects related to sustainability assessment.

OBJECTIVE
The principles were developed both to start sustainable development assessment processes and to evaluate existing processes in any institution, from local communities and companies to international institutions.

CONTENT
There are 10 Bellagio principles, and they cover all stages of the sustainability measurement indicators development process. Principle 1 deals with the starting point of any assessment - establishing a vision of sustainable development and clear goals that provide a practical definition of that vision in terms that are meaningful for the decision-making unit in question. Principles 2 through 5 include the content of any assessment, Principles 6 through 8 deal with key issues of the process of assessment, while Principles 9 and 10 deal with the necessity for establishing a continuing capacity for assessment.

The principles that guide the stages of the sustainable development measurement process and their content are as follows:

1. Guiding Vision and Goals 
Assessment of progress toward sustainable development should be guided by a clear vision of sustainable development and goals that define that vision.

2. Holistic Perspective
Assessment of progress toward sustainable development should:

• include review of the whole system as well as its parts;
• consider the well-being of social, ecological, and economic sub-systems, their state as well as the direction and rate of change of that state, of their component parts, and the interaction between parts;
• consider both positive and negative consequences of human activity, in a way that reflects the costs and benefits for human and ecological systems, in monetary and non-monetary terms.

3. Essential Elements
Assessment of progress toward sustainable development should:

•consider equity and disparity within the current population and between present and future generations, dealing with such concerns as resource use, over-consumption and poverty, human rights, and access to services, as appropriate;
•consider the ecological conditions on which life depends;
• consider economic development and other, non-market activities that contribute to human/social well-being.

4. Adequate Scope
Assessment of progress toward sustainable development should:

• adopt a time horizon long enough to capture both human and ecosystem time scales, thus responding to needs of future generations as well as the current ones to short-term decision-making;
• define the space of study large enough to include not only local but also long distance impacts on people and ecosystems;
• build on historic and current conditions to anticipate future conditions - where we want to go, where we could go.

5. Practical Focus
Assessment of progress toward sustainable development should be based on:

• an explicit set of categories or an organizing framework that links vision and goals to indicators and assessment criteria;
• a limited number of key issues for analysis;
• a limited number of indicators or indicator combinations to provide a clearer signal of progress;
• standardizing measurement wherever possible to permit comparison
• comparing indicator values to targets, reference values, ranges, thresholds, or direction of trends, as appropriate.

 
6. Openness
Assessment of progress toward sustainable development should:

• make the methods and data that are used accessible to all;
• make explicit all judgments, assumptions, and uncertainties in data and interpretations.

7. Effective Communication
Assessment of progress toward sustainable development should:

 

• be designed to address the needs of the audience and set of users;
• draw from indicators and other tools that are stimulating and serve to engage decision-makers;
• aim, from the outset, for simplicity in structure and use of clear and plain language.

8. Broad Participation
Assessment of progress toward sustainable development should:

 • obtain broad representation of key grass-roots, professional, technical; and social groups , including youth, women, and indigenous people - to ensure recognition of diverse and changing values;
• ensure the participation of decision-makers to secure a firm link to adopted policies and resulting action.

9. Ongoing Assessment
Assessment of progress toward sustainable development should:

 
• develop a capacity for repeated measurement to determine trends;
• be iterative, adaptive, and responsive to change and uncertainty because systems are complex and change frequently;
• adjust goals, frameworks, and indicators as new insights are gained;
• promote development of collective learning and feedback to decision-making.

10. Institutional Capacity 
Continuity of assessing progress toward sustainable development should be assured by:

 
• clearly assigning responsibility and providing ongoing support in the decision-making process;
• providing institutional capacity for data collection, maintenance, and documentation;
• supporting development of local assessment capacity.

 

Source: Adapted from Brunvoll et al. (2002).

RESULTS
Even though everyone acknowledges the key role played by indicators in measuring sustainable development, it is difficult to foresee any way to measure sustainable development that is widely accepted and complies with the ten Bellagio principles. In the words of Universidade de São Paulo professor José Eli Veiga: “Establishing these ten principles may have been too high an aspiration. However, even if only the fifth criterion is used as a reference point – Practical focus: Assessments should be based on an explicit set of categories that links vision and goals to indicators – one must admit that there are still conceptual and operational differences and constraints preventing it from being accomplished”. José Eli Veiga

REFERENCE
www.ead.fea.usp.br/Semead/9semead/resultado_semead/trabalhosPDF/331.pdf
www.iisd.org/mesure/compendium