Keeping Track of Sustainable Development

Abstract: We are deploying much innovation and entrepreneurship in search of sustainable development. However, it will only be future generations who realise whether or not our development was sustainable. There is a proliferation of measures and indicators aimed at planning sustainable development and tracking progress. We are less clear about how to use these in practice to build public policy. We also need to hold conversations about how we make commercial, social and personal decisions, informed by these measures and indicators. In this paper we look at the challenges faced in designing and using sustainable development indicators. We look for lessons from the field of poverty reduction and social protection across Europe, where the effort in compiling indicators has not been rewarded with progress towards meeting poverty and social exclusion goals.