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Since the late 1980s “sustainability” and the related term “sustainable development” have grown from relative obscurity to popular ways of expressing the interconnection of environmental, economic, and social goals. Indeed, these ideas have been key parts of international, national, regional, and local governmental policies; business plans; mission statements of nongovernmental organizations including religious groups; and the ideals of average citizens. While there are many definitions of sustainability and sustainable development, let us look to the most common for now, “meet[ing] the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (World Commission on Environment and Development 1987: 8). Imagine that citizens of a nation have this vision of sustainable development as one of their primary goals. To move towards it they begin making laws: to combat environmental degradation they mandate composting and recycling and regulate air pollutants and nuclear waste. Since they maintain that sustainability requires economic stability they devise incentives for green businesses. They also believe that a safe environment and strong economy will not mean much to humans if they do not have a high quality of life so they encourage health care, meaningful work, and the enrichment and preservation of cultural traditions for all people through a variety of policies and programs. But as is typically the case, policy initiatives alone will not be satisfying to the people; they will also want to know whether their new initiatives actually aid movement toward sustainability. Are the air and water cleaner than they once were? Is the economy able to thrive within environmental restrictions? Are all people able to live healthy and fulfilling lives? Will all people, segments of the economy, or ecosystems benefit from the new policies? If not, what factors determine uneven distribution of benefits and burdens? To answer these questions, they will turn to indicators and indexes, tools, usually quantitative, used to monitor progress toward a goal.
Yet as Chapter 5 will show, sustainability indexes only align with several of the most central ethical claims of the sustainability movement, including that of justice between and among generations, in the most cursory way. This mismatch matters because indexes drive social behavior: what they monitor often becomes the aim of future policy and action. Thus, the policy-makers, businesses, nongovernmental organizations, and citizens are unlikely to undertake activities that faithfully exemplify their vision of sustainability, let alone make progress toward it, if they use such indexes. Motivated by the need to alleviate such symptoms of disconnection to foster movement toward sustainability, this book develops a rigorous dialog between index theory and the environmental ethics of diverse ethical worldviews and demonstrates how such a method can improve current and future indexes.
1.1 Indexes and ethics
Indexes and indicators link an ideal vision of a system with a means of measuring progress toward it, often through mathematical functions which summarize complex information about the system. Indexes are comprised of many discrete bits of data, or indicators. Some indexes also employ multiple subindexes which focus on different components of the system, each of which may be comprised of many indicators. One common index is the grade point average found on a student’s report card at the end of a semester. Rather than listing grades for many homework assignments, quizzes, papers, and exams (individual indicators), the report card summarizes the student’s achievement for the semester through the grades earned in individual classes (subindexes) and with the student’s semester grade point average (an index). Similarly, if one wonders how well a nation, city, or company is progressing toward sustainability, it would be cumbersome and confusing to list the results of every water quality sample, name every acre of land turned into a park, record every company’s quarterly earnings, and track every health statistic of its people. Rather, one would desire an overall assessment of the nation’s progress toward sustainability, maybe comprised of a few subindexes that track key aspects of sustainability such as its environmental, economic, and social dimensions. Indeed, since the late 1980s, thousands of sustainability indicators and indexes have been developed for nations, states, cities, companies, nongovernmental organizations, schools, and individual households (International Institute for Sustainable Development 2012, Krank and Wallbaum 2011: 1385, Spellerberg et al. 2012).
While indicators of one sort or another have existed for millennia (e.g. Nile height measurements were used as indicators of that year’s agricultural success in ancient Egypt), their use has increased dramatically in recent decades. This prioritization of assessment is illustrated in American educational reforms such as the No Child Left Behind Act with its emphasis on standardized testing, in the international and national use of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the Human Development Index (HDI) as measurements of a country’s economy and quality of life respectively, in calls for assessment of the outcomes of science research by granting agencies, and in a host of environmental assessments.
Multiple trends contribute to the increases in index popularity. As people recognize the complex dynamic nature of the interaction between humans and the rest of ecosystems, they desire methods of understanding and summarizing these relationships. New data collection methods, aggregation techniques, and storage capacities fueled by the computer industry have made it possible to construct much more complex indexes. The modern emphasis on reductionism has led people to believe that monitoring small pieces of larger systems can yield valuable information about the whole. Simultaneously, quantitative results are typically deemed more valuable, trustworthy, or real than qualitative sources. Thus, society expects and often requires quantitative indicators to demonstrate that there is a problem or whether progress has been made toward a solution regarding ecosystems, economies, individual health, or societal functioning. Democracies also play a role in the process insofar as taxpayers and voters want to know the efficacy of programs touted by politicians and supported by their tax dollars. This desire for knowledge has spread beyond the political sphere as consumers desire information about the environmental or labor practices of a company or the energy efficiency of its products (e.g. Energy Star labels). Shareholders also desire indicators of company performance, and increasingly, sustainability.
Indeed, indexes and indicators are not merely data organizers. If used, they drive feedback loops of social learning, decision-making, and action. For example, when indexes indicate that existing actions, whether study habits or environmental policies, support one’s goals, people generally continue or increase such activities. Alternatively, if students’ grades indicate that they did not master the material, they may analyze what they did well and use new study strategies in the future. Similarly, if indicators reveal that pollution levels in a local lake are staying constant or rising over time, a community may enact new pollution regulations or ensure that existing laws are enforced. In all of these cases, people act to raise the index or indicator score in order to move toward their goals, whether of education or sustainability.
Indexes and indicators can, however, drive a community away from its goals if the goals and indexes are not well aligned. For instance, picture a community that values critical thinking and analytical writing but only grades students on definitions and basic facts because such exams are easier to grade. If grades are emphasized in such a community, students and teachers will probably begin focusing their time on memorization drills and test taking strategies rather than on critical thinking and writing skills. Similarly, GDP is often used as a measure of a country’s economic strength, and in part because its results are so widely available, is frequently taken as a sign of the overall well-being of a nation. Yet, since GDP is tied to formal markets, it does not track many critical factors for a country’s well-being including natural resources or human health. Consequently, GDP may rise if a nation’s ecosystem is destroyed for a narrowly measured short-term financial gain or if people fall ill and receive costly medical treatment rather than cheaper preventative care. If GDP is taken as the measure of a country’s well-being, preserving natural resources or encouraging preventative health care will not be prioritized even though doing so may facilitate well-being as envisioned by the nation’s citizens. In these cases, indexes can drive community actions away from reaching their goals even as index results may fool their users into thinking they are progressing toward their goals.
Thus, if anyone, whether a scientist, policy-maker, index developer, business leader, nonprofit organizer, ethicist, or average citizen wishes to promote sustainability paying attention to indexes and indicators is a strategic move. By doing so, they can help ensure that indexes drive public policy, corporate strategies, and the actions of nongovernmental organizations in desirable ways, in this case toward sustainability.
To ensure that indexes, whether grades or sustainability indexes, support their user’s goals, multiple levels of evaluation and adaptation are needed. First, as an index is proposed and developed, attention should be paid to what it indicates about the state of the system in question, how it will push the actions or policies of the country, and whether it actually aligns with the goals of the community in question. Evaluation along all of these lines should continue during and after its implementation. Continual, or at least periodic, assessment of indexes and their impact is particularly critical when monitoring complex dynamic systems. For instance, attempts to monitor sustainability face the possibility that knowledge of and ideals for ecosystems, economic systems, society, and their interaction will change over time even if physical conditions remain the same. Of course it is likely that physical conditions of ecosystems and societies will also change, so indexes must be able to be adapted to new physical and cultural situations if they are to encourage progress toward the goals of a community, business, or nation.
This book illustrates such evaluation by analyzing whether and to what degree existing sustainability indexes align with the goals of their users and then suggesting ways to resolve any misalignment. In general, I observe that there is often a division between the goals of sustainability and the tools used to measure progress toward it. Consider, for instance, the WCED definition quoted above, which is often used to inform definitions of sustainability: “meet[ing] the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (World Commission on Environment and Development 1987: 8). In the elaboration of this definition in the rest of the Brundtland Report, it is clear that the writers of the report prioritized a form of justice as they prioritized equitable access to basic goods and services necessary for life among people alive today and between this and future generations. This ethical commitment is echoed throughout the sustainability movement. Yet, as Chapter 5 demonstrates, indexes only align with central ethical claims of the sustainability movement, such as those regarding justice, in a cursory manner. Indeed, index developers often presume that moving a society, country, or the planet as a whole toward sustainability will necessarily ensure that all of its individuals also move toward this goal, what I call trickle-down justice. In other words, if people decrease pollution, increase recycling, increase the use of renewable energy, and so on then such efforts will help everyone today and in the future, because “all are connected.” With this presumption, ethical claims of equity or justice may seem to be background assumptions of any index and thus do not need to be explicitly included as indicators in an index. The vast literature on environmental injustice, however, calls this line of thinking into question as it observes that subcommunities around the world, whether racially, ethnically, or economically separated from “average” people may have much worse environmental and social situations. These results cannot merely be explained by market forces as people of color are dis-proportionally affected at rates higher than one would expect when controlling for income or economic class (Agyeman et al. 2003, Bullard 1993). Indeed, environmental justice research suggests that sustainability initiatives do not ensure that the lot of all people will be improved unless specifically monitored and acted toward. Consequently, existing sustainability indexes will not intentionally drive their users toward justice, and therefore sustainability, as their users desire.
The misalignment between indexes and justice is an example of the much larger and widespread emphasis on the technical aspects of sustainability, what can be sustained in a given set of circumstances, to the degree that normative visions of sustainability, what people want to sustain, are overlooked. While the focus on technical assessments occurs through the sustainability movement, it is particularly acute in the development and use of indexes, as demonstrated in Chapter 2. When sustainability indexes or indicators do align with principles of sustainability ethics, as when they favor efficient and frugal use of natural resources, it is due to the implicit role of ethics in sustainability. Such alignment cannot be guaranteed with current theories of index development that rarely, let alone sufficiently, consider or advocate for the role of ethics in index development.
Indeed, there is a general lack of attention to the role for ethics in index development by index developers and ethicists on their own and in collaboration. When the two groups have interacted, the results have been insufficient to address the pertinent questions or significantly influence the field of index development. Admittedly, some index developers do recognize that normative priorities play a role in index development (Bleicher and Gross 2010: 603, Burger et al. 2010, Olalla-Tárraga 2006, Walter and Stuetzel 2009) and a few even recognize the need to consider diverse ethical perspectives to ensure that the indexes are ethically sound before they are adopted and more difficult to revise (Dahl 1997: 82), but this work has not yet been done. The few ethically minded scholars who have worked in the area have produced good work, but it is often cursory, abstract, and/or in need of updating given recent developments in the field (Daly et al. 1989, Norton 2005, Peet and Bossel 2000). For example, Herman Daly and John B. Cobb Jr’s 1989 For the Common Good was a groundbreaking expansion of economic indexes to include social and environmental aspects of sustainability for a host of technical and philosophical reasons (Daly et al. 1989). Yet since then research regarding social and ethical aspects of sustainability has advanced significantly, particularly regarding justice. Additionally, Daly and Cobb’s reliance on their own ethical position insufficiently addresses the challenges of ethical diversity in cross-cultural sustainability efforts. The most recent step toward representing the ethical in indicators or indexes is the movement to include diverse stakeholder participation in indicator formation, which presumes that involving diverse participants will enable their values to be included in the index (Elling 2008, Fraser et al. 2006, Lopez-Ridaura et al. 2002, Norton 2005). Bryan G. Norton’s work is the most prominent in this genre. He develops a theory of collaborative, pragmatic decision-making that focuses index developers on particular situations rather than on ultimate ideals to avoid bogging conversations down in endless discussions of metaphysical ideals (Norton 2005). His approach, however, may not pay enough attention to the religious and philosophical foundations of particular groups’ ethical commitments for their own satisfaction. Furthermore, his emphasis on theory and his commitment to users developing their own indexes means that he does not analyze specific indexes. Yet, examples of the ethical strengths and weaknesses of particular indexes are critical for improving existing indexes and illustrating the process and benefits of including ethics in index development, especially for people who are not trained ethicists or are ethicists unfamiliar with indexes.
Collaboration between index developers and ethicists is rare for at least four groups of reasons. First, there is a widespread assumption in modern Western society that technical and ethical assessments are, and should be, completely separable. Under the most naive versions of this view, scientific observations and experiments determine the way the world works and the best way it can function (proponents of this view do not recognize that “best” is a normative claim). A slightly more realistic view holds that scientific observations and experiments determine what is. Then communities, guided by ethical and cultural values can decide which of the possible alternatives they desire and ask the scientists (natural or social) how to get to that goal. In neither of these views is it necessary for natural and social scientists to consider community values when assessing the state of the world or compiling it into indexes because that data is “objective.” According to these views, sustainability studies and indexes primarily do and should regard what can be technically sustained in an ecosystem – how many animals can be killed for food, how many crops grown, or how much waste assimilated while sustaining the ecosystem.
Yet a significant body of literature in the philosophy and sociology of science maintains (and supports with case studies) that facts and values are not completely distinct entities. Rather, one’s own ethical values; the values, assumptions, terminology, and methods of one’s epistemic community; and physical conditions shape one’s scientific and technical assessments of the world. At least three broad types of interaction between facts and values exist: 1) in the identification of and the selection of problems for study, 2) as culture and terminology shape the way phenomena are understood, and 3) as norms influence thresholds of acceptable risk or change. These assertions do not mean that knowledge is only a social construction, for the world can also push back on our theories, but pure observation alone does not determine technical assessments and data. In relationship to sustainability this means that our values shape our understanding of the world and our assessments of what we want to sustain, for whom and for how long. Thus, calls to focus sustainability analysis and indexes on pure facts will fail because they will be impossible to construct without some interaction with values.
The historical and contemporary use of the term sustainability supports these broad theories of the interaction between facts and values. While this history will be discussed at length in Chapter 2, a brief example here will clarify this point. Recall the Brundtland definition of sustainable development discussed above. Note that its focus on justice is a normative, or ethical, claim for sustainability. Indeed, it is one of the most common ethical commitments in the sustainability literature. The writers of the Brundtland Report could have argued that sustainability involves preserving a good human life in symbiosis with the nonhuman ecosystem as it was at some point in the past and that the human population should be limited to 1/2 or 1/3 or 1/10 of the present population in order to make that happen. Such a decision, given the growing human population and our capacity to modify our environment, would probably make it technically easier to move toward sustainability. But that was not ethically acceptable to the authors of the Brundtland Report and the thousands of individuals and organizations who are influenced by this definition. Similar emphases on intra and intergenerational justice and a number of other norms including responsibility, careful use of resources, attention to the specific situation, adaptability, and farsightedness can be found throug...
