Archive:On the right track – Sustainability and quality of life high on the agenda of Statistics Netherlands

Published in Sigma - The Bulletin of European Statistics, 2010/02

Gosse van der Veen, Head of Statistics Netherlands, said that sustainability and quality of life were already high on the agenda in his country, but became even more prominent after the Stiglitz Report was published in 2009.

In recent years, Statistics Netherlands has been actively engaged in efforts to measure sustainable development and the quality of life in the country. In fact, in the Netherlands, intensive work in this field was started years before the publication of the Stiglitz Report, as Gosse van der Veen, Director-General of Statistics Netherlands, told Sigma.

Could you give your view as to why the Stiglitz Report is important?

The Stiglitz Commission Report has gained a great deal of attention from economists, social scientists, policymakers and statisticians because of the potential impact on the measurement of (social) welfare, well-being and sustainable development. It is important because it demonstrates an impressive overview of the literature that has accumulated over the last few decades and even centuries. The strength of the Report is that, under the guidance of a number of very influential scientists, it is convincingly argued that these different disciplines are all related to the measurement of ‘progress’ in the broadest sense of the word.

For Statistics Netherlands, the following passage of the Stiglitz Report is very important: ‘The assessment of sustainability is complementary to the question of current well-being or economic performance and must be examined separately… Both pieces of information are critical and need to be displayed in distinct, clearly visible areas of the dashboard’. Statistics Netherlands also subscribes to these very fundamental principles. In the upcoming sustainability monitor, a separate dashboard for the quality of life and a separate dashboard for sustainable development will be provided. However, we have added a third dashboard, which covers the impact of the Netherlands on other countries. We feel that that was given too little attention in the Stiglitz Report.

Has Statistics Netherlands already launched any projects which could be considered as first steps in the implementation of the Stiglitz Report?

The most important task for Statistics Netherlands is to create dashboards to measure the ‘progress’ of the society. There will be three separate ones on the quality of life, intergenerational sustainability and the international dimension, which will be published in spring 2011. Pictured is a painting of Dutch painter August Macke, Promenade from 1913.

Statistics Netherlands started work on the sustainability monitor in the summer of 2007, well before the Stiglitz Report was published. However, the history of Statistics Netherlands in this field goes much further back. Notable contributions were the Green National Income by Roefie Hueting (in the 1970s) and the pioneering work on Environmental Accounting by Mark de Haan and Steven Keuning.

It is therefore fair to say that Statistics Netherlands has a long tradition in this field. Since a lot of our recent work on the Sustainability Monitor is also based on the same literature which the Stiglitz Report cites, it came as no surprise that the Report confirmed that we were ‘on the right track’. It would therefore not be entirely accurate to say that the work at Statistics Netherlands is a direct result of the Report. What is however incontrovertible is that our work obtained a considerable boost after the Report was published. Sustainability and quality of life were already high on the agenda, but became even more prominent after September 2009.

Already in 2008, Statistics Netherlands had started a programme for statistics on sustainable development. Currently, over 12 full-time equivalents (FTE) are assigned to the development of the Sustainability Monitor, as well as new statistics on environmental accounts, energy statistics, time use, human capital accounts and social capital, to name but a few. Fortunately, given the level of interest in the field, we have been able to start certain projects through government programmes and Eurostat grants (for which we are very grateful). All in all, this means that about a third of the 12 FTE are financed through external sources. To me, this is further proof of the importance that society places on this topic.

What are Statistics Netherlands’ key priorities in regard to the implementation of the Stiglitz Report recommendations? And what projects do you envisage in short and longer terms?

Statistics Netherlands subscribes to almost all of the recommendations of the Stiglitz Commission. In fact, many of the recommendations were already in place when the Report came out. In some cases, the Stiglitz Report convinced us to intensify or scale down certain areas of our statistical programme.

Clearly the most important task is to create dashboards to measure the ‘progress’ of societies. Through the Sustainability Monitor, we have now created three separate dashboards: quality of life, intergenerational sustainability and the international dimension. Our results will be published in March of 2011 (also in English).

Statistics Netherlands is also working on the statistical base to measure, amongst others, social capital and the ’international dimension’ of sustainable development. ‘The Stiglitz Report said very little about the international relationships between countries. Nevertheless, through trade and other interactions, (western) countries have great impact on the sustainability in other countries,’ Mr van der Veen said.

However, there is also a lot of work to do in terms of the underlying statistical base of our indicator system. We are developing in many different directions, but I would like to single out the following:

1) social capital. It is now generally accepted that social capital is a true capital stock. What is however undeniable is that it is very hard to measure. I am pleased to say that we are making good progress in the conceptual and practical implementation of social capital;

2) international dimension. The Stiglitz Report said very little about the international relationships between countries. Nevertheless, through trade and other interactions, (western) countries have great impact on the sustainability in other countries. We are developing statistics and methods to create indicators for this dimension. We are also working closely together with the World Input-Output Database (WIOD) project which bundles official statistics for economic, environmental and trade statistics for the world;

3) satellite accounting. The national accounts system is probably one of the most successful statistical systems to date. As the Stiglitz Commission rightly pointed out, the system is far broader than the calculation of GDP. There is also an extensive set of satellite accounts which provide an excellent basis for further measurement of progress. We already have an extensive system of environmental, labour, tourism and growth accounts, but are expanding them with time use, human capital and social capital. These satellite accounts have the benefit of producing indicators that are comparable to GDP, but can also serve as a data source for sustainability modelling (by the policy institutes);

4) long time series. Progress, and particularly sustainable development, are phenomena which manifest themselves over long time periods. Although business cycles influence both in the short term, true structural changes manifest themselves over the long term. It is therefore very important that we create long time series for a number of key indictors of progress.

These are goals which we wish to achieve by the end of 2011. However, there are also possibilities for some spin-offs of our work for the longer term. An example is the issue of inequality in societal developments, which is also an important component of the Stiglitz Report. A pilot project has already started for this issue. Another example is the use of our system for sustainability reporting by companies.

What are the challenges ahead as far as the implementation goes?

Statistics Netherlands considers two topics forthcoming from the recommendations as priority challenges:

1) we intend to work more on the visualisation of our work. The Dutch indicator set of quality of life and sustainable development included a great number of indicators. The large amount of information is needed to address this issue properly. However, special visualisation techniques are needed in order to summarise the main implications of our work in such a way that policymakers and society will be able to identify the main trends by looking at one, simple summary table;

2) in cooperation with other government agencies, we plan to develop a set of policy indicators. Monitoring (i.e. giving a summary of the ‘state of the nation’ in terms of its sustainability) is one thing, but giving policymakers an idea as to how certain negative trends can be overcome is an issue which needs to be tackled. This can only be done if Statistics Netherlands, policy institutes, as well as certain Ministries (Environmental Affairs, Economic Affairs, Finance and Foreign Affairs) work together.

To analyse sustainability, well-being and welfare, it is very important that results and indicators can be compared with those of other countries. Therefore, Mr van der Veen believes that a common dashboard should be developed. Another important issue is the harmonisation and collection of data.

Further Eurostat information

Publications

Database

Sustainable development indicators, see:

Indicators

Dedicated section

Other information

GDP and Beyond: Measuring progress in a changing world (Commission Communication COM final 433/2009)