Page 180 - Invited Paper Session (IPS) - Volume 2

IPS195 Albert B.
stand-alone data and showing their development over time and space. This
means either the current amount of ES services provided to human societies
or the available stock (and state) of ES-assets (or both).
Such a dissemination strategy could be extended by combining ES-figures
with other data and thereby presenting them in a context. An example is to
publish data on ES-services (or ES-assets) alongside with GDP development.
This would highlight whether economic progress has been achieved on the
account of the environment.
4.2 Integration of ES-data and well-being indicators
Various indicators and indicator sets have been developed during the last
decades, which differ in certain respects, but having the goal to measure
societal progress in a more comprehensive way. At least for indicator sets, like
the How’s life data set published by the OECD since 2011 (OECD, 2018) to add
an indicator on ecosystem services should be possible. But also for other
combined indicators, which are based on combining a certain number of
factors, like the Human Development Index (UNDP, 2018), the Index of
Sustainable Economic Welfare (Nordhaus, W.D., Tobin, J., 1972), or the
Genuine Saving Index of the Worldbank (Hamilton, K. et al. 2014), the question
could be raised, what is the difficulty to include ES-data as an additional (or
replacing) item?
8
5. Official Statistics on Ecosystems
The fundamental principles of official statistics, endorsed by the General
Assembly of the United Nations in March 2014, acknowledge the importance
of nature for societies by asking for data on the environmental situation,
alongside with figures on the economic, demographic and social situation. "To
this end, official statistics that meet the test of practical utility are to be
compiled and made available on an impartial basis by official statistical
agencies to honour citizens’ entitlement to public information." (UN, 2014,
principle 1). Obviously such a test may be based on different criteria. To assess
the practical utility in this paper the five criteria developed for statistical
products in the European Statistics Code of Practice are used deliberately
(Eurostat et al, 2017):
- Relevance
Relevance means to meet the needs of users. The main reason for this
seems that resources are needed for producing official statistics with high
quality. But since the users differ, possibly their needs do as well. In the case
of ecological data, the general public may be interested in obtaining one
or few key-figures on the environmental situation, whereas researchers

This also applies for indicators developed at national level (cf. Durand, M., 2015, annex 1): For
8
Germany for instance: W3-Indicators of the German Federal Parliament (Deutscher Bundestag,
2013), Prosperity Quintet (Denkwerkzukunft, 2014) or KfW-Sustainability Indicator (KfW, 2014)
167 | I S I W S C 2 0 1 9