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National Activities: Austria

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Interim Report on Testing UN-CSD Indicators of Sustainable Development in Austria

1. Reasons why Austria has decided to participate in the pilot phase of testing:

Considerable statistical data on social, environmental and economic issues have been collected in Austria, some of them already over a long period of time. They are published in various reports but until now a coherent reporting covering all aspects of sustainability is missing in Austria. We also have gained experience on indicators by participating in the related efforts of OECD, EUROSTAT or the European Environmental Agency.

Austria is convinced that ISDs will help to make reports for different fora related to sustainable development more substantial and even better understandable.

Austria wants to test whether the indicators are usable and easily understandable yet by providing a basis for a meaningful assessment of progress towards sustainable development reflecting the interlinkages between different aspects of sustainable development. We expect that testing ISDs will be a good opportunity to collect experiences about interlinkages between different sectors. So it could help proof assumptions about correlations between different quantities or find connections.

It seems a very important aspect that the used ISDs are suitable to watch trends and perhaps to be a base for prognosis.

Besides Austria wants to test whether the system of ISDs is appropriate to adjust political goals and targets from it especially because a change from sectorial view to a broader, more general approach seems to be very important.

The list of ISDs should be tested also with respect to its suitability to show the reasons for national problems and to report on national and global development to the public.

Besides we will test the cost-effectiveness of the indicators.

2. The way how Austria wants to do the testing:

The Austrian Central Statistical Office and the Federal Environmental Agency administer most of the necessary data. Therefore Unit 7 of the Ministry of the Environment, Youth and Family Affairs' executive department will co-ordinate the testing with substantial support of these institutions. Unit 7 will also be responsible for the intergovernmental co-ordination of the work on testing ISDs in the Austrian CSD-Committee.

As a matter of course experiences gained by already existing works from OECD, EEA and other organisations will be incorporated in the testing work as far as possible.

When looking through the working list of ISDs it is obvious even now that the degree of specification will be different between various chapters and indicators. Due to the specific circumstances of Austria's localisation, landscape, and so forth, the grade of relevance and importance for national reporting on sustainable development is specific for some issues.

The issues transport, energy and tourism are of highest priority in view of Austria. As they do not relate to special chapters we will test with care whether they can be covered sufficiently with the indicators in the working list. If necessary from our point of view we will propose contributions to existing chapters.

The Austrian Central Statistical Office proposed a system of environmental indicators giving data from 1970 to 1995 which shows some of the Austrian priorities and specifics. (This list is available as a hard copy on request from the Austrian Focal Point.

For further information please contact Austria's focal point:

For further information please contact Austria's focal point:

Ms. Ingeborg Fiala
Ministry of the Environment, Youth and Family Affairs/Executive Department/Unit 7
Stubenbastei 5, A-1010 Wien, Austria
Tel.: (43-1) 51522-2545/ (43-1) 51522-2549
Fax: (43-1) 51522-7548
E-mail: ingeborg.fiala@bmu.gv.at

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