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Austria
First Substantive Annual Report
UN-CSD Indicators
of Sustainable Development Testing Report of Austria
November 1997
Preliminary remarks
This report is part of Austria’s testing of the working list of UN
indicators of sustainable development. It is the first substantial step
of our testing procedure and therefore not complete or finalized
concerning different aspects.
It has not been possible to translate all tables into English by now.
Nevertheless we decided to attach them as general information on our
further work.
We hope our report will be a useful contribution to the testing of
ISDs.
In the name of the core working group
Ingeborg Fiala
CONTENTS
SECTION
ONE
SECTION TWO
List of indicators:
Chapter
3: Combating poverty
- Unemployment rate
- Ratio of average female wage to male wage
Chapter
5: Demographic dynamics and sustainability
- Population growth rate
- Net migration rate
- Total fertility rate
- Maximal population density
Chapter
36: Promoting education, public awareness and training (including
gender issues) Women per hundred men in the labour force
Chapter
6: Protecting and promoting human health
- Life expectancy at birth
- Infant mortality rate
- Total national health expenditure related to GNP
Chapter
7: Promoting sustainable human settlement development (including
traffic and transport)
- Consumption of fossil fuel by motor vehicle transport
- Percent of population in urban areas
- Floor area per person
- Infrastructure expenditure per capita - Expenditure on noise
abatement
Chapter
2: International cooperation to accelerate sustainable development
- GDP per capita
- Investment share in GDP
- Environmentally adjusted GDP
Chapter
4: Changing consumption patterns
- Annual energy consumption per unit GDP
- Proven mineral and fossil fuel energy reserves
- Lifetime of fossil energy reserves
- Intensity of material use
- Share of manufacturing value-added in GDP
- Consumption of renewable energy resources
Chapter
33: Financial resources and mechanisms
- Total ODA given or received as a percentage of GNP
- Environmental protection expenditures as a percentage of GDP
Chapter
34: Transfer of environmentally sound technology, cooperation and
capacity-building
- Foreign direct investments
- Share of environmentally sound goods imports and exports
Chapter
18: Protection of the quality and supply of freshwater resources
- Annual withdrawals of ground and surface water
- Domestic consumption of water per capita
- Groundwater recharge rate
- Concentration of faecal coliforms in freshwater
- Biochemical oxygen demand in water bodies
- Waste-water treatment
- Density of hydrological networks
- Expenditure on waste water management
Chapter
10: Integrated approach to the planning and management of land
resources
- Land use change
- Land condition change
Chapter
13: Managing fragile ecosystems: Sustainable mountain development
- Population dynamics in mountain areas
Chapter
21: Conservation of biological diversity
- Threatened species as a percent of total native species
- Protected area as a percent of total area
Chapter
16: Environmentally sound management of biotechnology
- Number of applications for deliberate releases of GMOs(LMOs) and
number
of actual deliberate releases of GMOs (LMOs) including products
- Existence of national biosafety regulations or guidelines
Chapter
9: Protection of the atmosphere
- Emissions of greenhouse gases
- Emissions of sulphur oxides
- Emissions on nitrogen oxides
- Consumption of ozone depleting substances
- Ambient concentrations of pollutants in urban areas
- Expenditure on air pollution abatement
Chapter
21: Environmentally sound management of solid wastes and
sewage-related issues
- Generation of industrial and municipal solid waste
- Expenditure on waste management
- Rate of waste recycling and reuse
Chapter
20: Environmentally sound management of hazardous wastes
- Generation of hazardous wastes
- Imports and exports of hazardous wastes
Chapter
35: Science for sustainable development
- Expenditure on research and experimental development as a
percentage of GDP
Chapter
40: Information for decision-making
- Main telephone lines per 100 inhabitants
- Programmes for national environmental statistics
Attachment A-1 , Attachment
A-2, Attachment
A-3 to Chapter
16
Interim Report on Testing UN-CSD Indicators of Sustainable
Development in Austria
1. Reasons why Austria has decided to participate in the pilot phase
of testing:
Considerable statistical data on social, environmental and economic
issues have been collected in Austria, some of them already over a long
period of time. They are published in various reports but until now a
coherent reporting covering all aspects of sustainability is missing in
Austria. We also have gained experience on indicators by participating
in the related efforts of OECD, EUROSTAT or the European Environmental
Agency.
Austria is convinced that ISDs will help to make reports for different
fora related to sustainable development more substantial and even better
understandable.
Austria wants to test whether the indicators are usable and easily
understandable yet by providing a basis for a meaningful assessment of
progress towards sustainable development reflecting the interlinkages
between different aspects of sustainable development. We expect that
testing ISDs will be a good opportunity to collect experiences about
interlinkages between different sectors. So it could help proof
assumptions about correlations between different quantities or find
connections.
It seems a very important aspect that the used ISDs are suitable to
watch trends and perhaps to be a base for prognosis.
Besides Austria wants to test whether the system of ISDs is appropriate
to adjust political goals and targets from it especially because a
change from sectorial view to a broader, more general approach seems to
be very important.
The list of ISDs should be tested also with respect to its suitability
to show the reasons for national problems and to report on national and
global development to the public.
Besides we will test the cost-effectiveness of the indicators.
2. The way how Austria wants to do the testing:
The Austrian Central Statistical Office and the Federal Environmental
Agency administer most of the necessary data. Therefore Unit 7 of the
Ministry of the Environment, Youth and Family Affairs' executive
department will co-ordinate the testing with substantial support of
these institutions. Unit 7 will also be responsible for the
intergovernmental co-ordination of the work on testing ISDs in the
Austrian CSD-Committee.
As a matter of course experiences gained by already existing works from
OECD, EEA and other organisations will be incorporated in the testing
work as far as possible.
When looking through the working list of ISDs it is obvious even now
that the degree of specification will be different between various
chapters and indicators. Due to the specific circumstances of Austria's
localisation, landscape, and so forth, the grade of relevance and
importance for national reporting on sustainable development is specific
for some issues.
The issues transport, energy and tourism are of highest priority in view
of Austria. As they do not relate to special chapters we will test with
care whether they can be covered sufficiently with the indicators in the
working list. If necessary from our point of view we will propose
contributions to existing chapters.
The Austrian Central Statistical Office proposed a system of
environmental indicators giving data from 1970 to 1995 which shows some
of the Austrian priorities and specifics. (This list is available as a
hard copy on request from the Austrian Focal Point.
For further information please contact Austria's focal point:
Ms. Ingeborg Fiala
Ministry of the Environment, Youth and Family Affairs/Executive
Department/Unit 7
Stubenbastei 5, A-1010 Wien, Austria
Tel.: (43-1) 51522-2545/ (43-1) 51522-2549
Fax: (43-1) 51522-7548
E-mail: ingeborg.fiala@bmu.gv.at
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