Developing indicators of sustainability: US experience

Sustainability indicators integrate environmental, social, and economic factors such that the complex cause-and-effect relationships between these multiple factors can be more readily investigated. The whole systems approach of sustainable development differs from traditional environmentalism by its inclusion of economic and social factors. The selection of sustainability indicators will therefore inevitably be a human value-driven process. Environmental health will nonetheless be paramount Empirical studies in the USA have found that states with lower pollution levels and more environmental regulation have healthier economies and fewer disparities in income between economic classes (Templet, 1995). In construction, indicators of sustainable construction are a necessary parallel to the macro-national and regional-scale indicators measuring society's movement toward or away from some approximation to sustainable development.