Sustainable Development Indicators Based on National Accounts

National statistical institutes have recently presented a set of indicators for sustainable development. The indicators present different topics and the simultaneous achievement of different goals. That is, economic, social and environmental goals. Statistics Denmark also presented a series of indicators for sustainable development in 2003. However, policy analysis of sustainable development requires instruments for further analysis of the underlying mechanisms and the reasons for change. The present indicator set cannot be used for such a purpose. The primary reason for this is that the indicators are often based on data originating from different statistical frameworks. That is why a new indicator set should be derived from a statistical framework where individual indicators are embedded into an underlying database from which they can be derived by aggregation. The System of Economic and Social Accounting Matrices and Extensions (SESAME) which is a detailed statistical information system is such a system. SESAME combines the System of National Accounts (SNA) with National Accounting Matrices Including Environmental Accounts (NAMEA) and Social Accounting Matrices (SAM), and in this way integrates economic, social and environmental statistics. The most important message in this paper is that the underlying data for the individual indicators should be part of a comprehensive framework that integrates all relevant topics. In this way, it will be possible to analyse the interdependence between different topics and the simultaneous achievement of different goals. 1 The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Statistics Denmark.