Gosselin, Pierre and Diane Belanger, Jean-Francois Bibeault, Alain Webster. 1993. "Indicators for a Sustainable Society." Canadian Journal of Public Health 84 (3): 197-200.

Summary: The authors identify twenty core indicators which address four aspects of a sustainable society: environment, economy, health and equity. The indicators are designed to measure and report participating communities' progress toward a sustainable society.

Objective: "conduct a study to assess the development of indicators for a sustainable society, to be released in four quarterly communications, covering the fields of health, environment, economy and equity" (p. 197).

Methods: The authors reviewed the literature and formulated a list of 340 indicators. They reduced this list to 39 indicators based on seven criteria: scientific basis, frequency, data availability, geography, administrative feasibility, symbolic (media) value and synthetic value. The list of 39 was further reduced to 20 core indicators based on four criteria: score on previous criteria, internal coherence, external coherence and maximum reduction of the number of indicators.

Results: The 20 indicators (see Table 1, p. 199) include 1) environment: greenhouse gases emissions, gas emissions leading to ozone layer depletion; 2) equity: public aid for development and debt, scholarization and illiteracy rate for children and adults; 3) economy: GNP per capita (adjusted for buying power), employment-to-population ratio; and 4) health: obesity (adults) and malnutrition (children) proportions, caloric intake, and proportions from vegetal and animal sources.

Discussion: The authors acknowledge several weaknesses in the list, but maintain that their indicators do provide a start for monitoring sustainability in Canadian societies.

Keywords: sustainable society, sustainability indicators