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INFORMATION FOR DECISION MAKING

Joke Waller Hunter reported that Chapter 40 of Agenda 21 calls for the development of indicators for sustainable development. Several organizations and governments have been working on developing indicators for sustainable development, however, this work has not been coordinated. The Statistical Division of the United Nations (UNSTAT) and the DPCSD have developed a framework of indicators that could form the basis for a CSD programme of work to be considered at its third session. The framework is based on work done by UNSTAT, UNEP, the World Bank, OECD, the New Economics Foundation/WWF, other international organizations and national governments. The indicators that will be proposed intend to monitor progress at a national level towards sustainable development through the implementation of Agenda 21. The indicators will be presented in a Driving Force -State - Response framework. They will be grouped in categories covering economic, social, institutional and environmental issues. The goal is to have a full set of indicators for sustainable development for use by national governments by 1996 so that governments could make use of the indicators, if they wish to do so, in the voluntary information they submit to the CSD at its 1997 session. Belgium announced that it would hold a workshop on this issue in January 1995 (see Things To Look For).