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Belgium
1. Context
In order to contribute to the implementation of Chapter
40 of Agenda 21 at the international level, Belgium has helped the
efforts of the CSD to develop and adopt a work program on ISDs. As a
first step towards this objective, Belgium hosted in 1995 an
International Workshop on Indicators of Sustainable Development
organised with the Government of Costa Rica, UNEP and SCOPE (Scientific
Committee on Problems of the Environment).
Consensus was reached, during this first Workshop, on the principle
of a Working List of ISDs (from which countries could select the
indicators that they may use in their national policies, according to
their own problems, policies and targets) and on the need of a set of
methodology sheets to design and explain each of these indicators. These
principles and list have been adopted by the third and fourth sessions
of the Commission on Sustainable Development in April 1995 and 1996. In
November of 1996, Belgium hosted a second international workshop aiming
at structuring and launching the test of indicators. This workshop
succeeded in harmonising methodological approaches for the test and
produced a set of guidelines to implement the test.
In the meantime, Belgium had decided to become a "testing
country" in the CSD Program on Indicators of Sustainable
Development. The decision was taken on the 4th of June 1996 by the
Inter-ministerial Conference on the Environment (ICE), chaired by the
Federal State Secretary for Environment and composed of the three
Regional Ministers of Environment and the Federal Minister of Science.
2. Testing of Environmental ISDs
As the ICE is in this way responsible for the testing of the
environmental part of the Working List, it can be regarded as the
national coordination mechanism for the testing of environmental ISDs.
ICE has established a Working Group which is in charge of the
implementation of the test, i.e., reporting on the existing information
systems and evaluation of the adequacy/usefulness of methodology sheets
of the CSD regarding environmental ISDs for Belgium. This Working Group
is mainly composed of representatives from the Regional and Federal
Environment Ministries. Being the sustainable development international
focal point of Belgium, the Federal Planning Bureau (FPB) takes also
part to this Group; it provides and assists the participants with all
available information regarding the CSD process on indicators, the
guidelines for testing, scientific advice, etc. Moreover, FPB has to
report the progress made in Belgium to the CSD.
As Belgium has several levels of power (the Federal and the 5
Federated levels: the Flemish Community and the Flemish Region which
have been merged, the Walloon Region, the Brussels Capital City Region,
the French-speaking Community and the German-speaking Community), the
first task of this working group was to identify for each indicator
whether the matter covered by the indicator is under federal and/or
regional responsibilities. Then, the group compared the CSD Working List
to information available in Belgium. The availability of the data may
vary from one region to the other, as well as the way to compute the
indicator. The group concluded that data are, in principle, immediately
available for 21 of the 57 environmental indicators of sustainable
development, and that five indicators aren't connected to Belgian
features.
The ICE has then decided, on 12 November 1996, that Belgium was to
start the testing with the in-depth analysis and filling-in of the
methodology sheets of three indicators: domestic consumption of water
per capita, use of agricultural pesticides, and household waste disposed
per capita. As it seems to be the case in many testing countries, the
national testing has started very slowly in Belgium. At this moment,
only two indicators (domestic consumption of water per capita, and use
of agricultural pesticides) have been duly analysed, discussed and
reported with the help of the methodology sheets. One of them (use of
agricultural pesticides) was treated by a sub-group of experts
specialised in this field (pesticides). The main comments made in these
two reports concerned the methodology followed to build the indicator,
as well as the relevance, qualities and defaults of each indicator,
according to Belgian and international points of view respectively. The
use of indicators for decision-makers was also discussed in these
reports.
First conclusions can be drawn from these comments:
- With regard to the methodology sheets, the Environmental ISDs
working group agreed on the basis of this first experience that
these sheets approach could help our country to measure sustainable
development needs and focus national attention on improving the
availability of data for the implementation of Agenda 21, if
sufficient means are provided to the testing process. Comparisons
were also made with the indicators compiled by OECD and Eurostat.
- Regarding the relevance of the two indicators that received
complete comments, the conclusions are that they can bring a
significant information at the international level as global
evaluation and comparison tool, but they aren't precise enough to
pilot the national policies and strategies. Amendments to these two
sheets and changes to these indicators were proposed to improve
their significance for national purposes.
- For all questions concerning the implementation of the test, the
process is more time-consuming than anticipated. The fact that in
Belgium, data for some indicators are organised differently in
different Regions of the country improves their adequacy to Regional
needs but also increases very much the time required and obstacles
to the coordination of the national testing of ISDs.
Regarding institutional support and capacity building, the process
isn't advanced enough at this moment to discuss in details this kind of
needs. Some additional capacities have been provided for in the context
of a Science Policy Program, as described below.
3. Testing of Social, Economic and Institutional ISDs and research
efforts at the federal level
Some research programs, among which ones the ambitious research
program launched in the middle of 1997 by the Federal Minister for
Science Policy, have provided a framework and some means for the testing
of Social and Economic ISDs of the CSD’s Working List, in particular,
and for the development of sustainable development indicators in
general:
- Regarding Social and Economic ISDs of the CSD’s Working List,
the first step consisted (as has been done for the Environmental
ISDs) in defining the level of authorities (Federal and/or Regional)
which is primarily responsible for each of these ISDs in Belgium and
in determining their availability in data. This step is almost
completed. It will be followed by the assessment of the scientific
and political relevance of each of these ISDs in the context of
sustainable development planning.
- Regarding other sustainable development indicators, two other
important projects on sustainable development indicators are also
financed by Science Policy: one concerns the development of urban
indicators in a set of Belgian cities, and the second aims to
develop indicators of sustainable development between Belgian
regions and foreign regions as part of a program of EUROREGIO. Also
at the federal level, other research programs were financed by the
Ministry of Environment. One of them, which took place last year,
was aimed at developing Institutional ISDs and provided an excellent
report on the conceptualisation of institutions, offering a frame
for the elaboration and testing of indicators. Other research
programs took place on environmental, social and economic
indicators. Their results were discussed in seminars and open
meetings during the year 1996. Groups involved in these research
programs are mainly Universities.
4. Achievements on indicators at the regional levels
Regarding Flemish Regional indicators, demographic and environmental
indicators are published annually in VRIND. The Flemish Government
created a database - Functional Regional Database, FRED - to cover all
types of policy relevant indicators. All Flemish agencies concerned with
environment and sustainable development policies are connected to this
database. The Walloon State of the Environment, published each second
year, has proved an excellent tool for decision-making to both the
public and private sectors in the Walloon Region. The Walloon Government
is also developing a central database of environmental data and
indicators. In the Brussels Region, the implementation of existing plans
includes the use of indicators to assess the performance of policies and
actions launched in those fields (waste management and promotion of the
biological inheritage - plans for the management of air quality and
noise data, are in development). About fifteen environmental and social
indicators included in a "dashboard" are published regularly
as well as Reports about the State of the Environment (1990,1994). Since
October 1996, an environmental statistical observatory has been created
to collect data and produce indicators. A report of the notion of
"indicators of sustainability", which has different
interpretations, has been published.
5. Participation of Major Groups
The testing process is thus launched in Belgium at the political and
administrative level for the environmental indicators of sustainable
development, but its further implementation and possibilities for
opening to major group participation will depend on the level of human
and financial resources allocated to it by all departments concerned
(not only Science and Environment).
Regarding the involvement of associations in the work on indicators,
two conventions between the Federal Environment Department and two NGOs
provided the necessary means to comment the Working List of indicators
and to inform, by this way, other NGOs and associations on the process
of building a core set of indicators of sustainable development. Their
main mission at present consists indeed in increasing the awareness of
other associations on the potential uses of indicators of sustainable
development.
6. Reporting to the CSD
According to a decision taken by the ICE working group, the Federal
Planning Bureau, which is also focal point for the testing of ISDs, has
completed the Format for Reporting on Progress of the National Testing
of Indicators of Sustainable Development, required by the CSD to assess
the implementation of the testing of indicators of sustainable
development.
For more information, please contact:
Ms. Nadine Gouzée
Coordinator of the Task Force "Sustainable Development"
Federal Planning Office
4749 Avenue de Arts
B-1000 Bruxelles, Belgium
Tel.no.: (32-2) 507-7311
Fax no.: (32-2) 507-7373
E-mail: ng@plan.be
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