How environmentally focused is the German sustainability strategy? A critical discussion of the indicators used to measure sustainable development in Germany

Falko Leukhardt () and Simon Allen ()
Additional contact information
Simon Allen: http://www.geos.ed.ac.uk/homes/sallen

Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, 2013, vol. 15, issue 1, 149-166

Abstract: There are hardly any critical discussions of sustainable development indicator sets designed for use at the national level. This article aims at rectifying this omission in critical academic research by contributing to the discourse on environmental sustainability with an assessment of the indicator set used for the measurement of sustainable development in Germany. It will evaluate to what extent the sustainable development concept is reflected in the structure of the strategy and analyse in how far fundamental environmental issues are covered by the indicator set. The discussion will show that the environmental dimension of the sustainability concept is not sufficiently integrated in the German National Sustainable Development Strategy. Although the strategy’s indicator set contains a range of environmental indicators, gaps in the German indicator set become apparent when contrasted with important issues of sustainability. It will be concluded that the environmental dimension of the sustainable development concept is not the recurrent theme in either the strategy or the indicator set. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2013

Keywords: Measurement of sustainable development; Sustainability indicators; National sustainable development strategy Germany (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10668-012-9380-6 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:endesu:v:15:y:2013:i:1:p:149-166

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10668

DOI: 10.1007/s10668-012-9380-6

Access Statistics for this article

Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development is currently edited by Luc Hens

More articles in Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().