The Importance of Environmental Indicators
Assessing environmental situations requires sound information, including information derived from environmental indicators. Indicators are particularly important because they represent an aggregation of pertinent information fitted into a measurable parameter. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) defines an environmental indicator as:
“…a parameter, or a value derived from parameters, that points to, provides information about and/or describes the state of the environment, and has a significance extending beyond that directly associated with any given parametric value.”
The OECD terminology points to two major functions of indicators:
- Indicators reduce the number of measurements and parameters that normally would be required to give an exact presentation of a situation.
- Indicators simplify the communication process by which the results of measurement are provided to the user.
Source: OECD Environmental Indicators: development, measurement and use (2003)
The Qualities of Environmental Indicators
Good environmental indicators should:
- provide a representative picture of environmental conditions, pressures on the environment or society’s responses;
- be simple, easy to interpret and able to show trends over time;
- be responsive to changes in the environment and related human activities;
- have a threshold or reference value against which to compare it, so that users can assess the significance of the values associated with it;
- be theoretically well founded in technical and scientific terms;
- be readily available or made available at a reasonable cost/benefit ratio.