Agenda 21
Thematic areas and indicators
- Results of the bulletin of 2008 (in Spanish)
- Actions of the bulletin of 2008 (in Spanish)
- Methodologies (in Spanish)
Indicators are today an important tool for measuring cities’ sustainability conditions. They are thus a very useful instrument for strategic planning, both for the formulation and for the assessment of environmental, social and economic policies.
It is clear that preparing an appropriate system of indicators accurately informing about the state of the matter and the factors and causes that condition this is a highly complex business. If it is indeed already complicated having a set of indicators to sectorially analyse environmental, social and economic aspects, this is much more accentuated when it is a question of representing the interdependence between the urban system and the natural and social resources, inferring sustainability from these.
The complexity is heightened in many cases by the lack of data, by the need to use indicators which are at the same time for representing the situation of a particular territory and for establishing comparisons with other cities, and for many other reasons, which end up entailing the need to constantly update and improve the indicators to be used.
In Vitoria-Gasteiz the system used has gradually changed and been perfected over time. The use of the initial list of indicators for 6 consecutive years enabled an analysis to be made in 2004 about the appropriateness of each individual indicator and thematic group of indicators and about the sufficiency or representativeness of the whole system as a tool for measurement and follow-up in Vitoria-Gasteiz. The analysis made displayed the need to proceed to its redefinition.
When designing the New system of indicators it was considered useful to input common criteria comparable to those of other widely used and accepted systems. The set of European common indicators, a result of the project in which Vitoria-Gasteiz took part along with other Spanish and European cities, is one of the references used; its main characteristic is that the indicators are “of an integrated nature”, attempting to reflect the interactions of environmental, economic and social aspects.
The integration of Vitoria-Gasteiz in Udalsarea 21 (Basque Network of Municipalities for Sustainability) has also meant accepting the system of indicators proposed for assessing sustainability in Basque municipalities and its adaptation to the particular characteristics and problems of Vitoria-Gasteiz and its own system of indicators.
Hence, from the initial list of 21 indicators, approved in 1998, attempting to reflect almost exclusively the environmental dimension of sustainability, it went in 2004 to a list of 35, with the intention not only of going deeper into the knowledge of the environmental reality of the municipality of Vitoria-Gasteiz but also of tackling new dimensions in sustainability by integrating environmental, social and, to a lesser extent, economic variables.
Links
- Initial list of 21 indicators (in Spanish, PDF, 26 Kb)
- New system of indicators (in Spanish, PDF, 29 Kb)
- Basque Network of Municipalities for Sustainability (Udalsarea 21)