Developing Key Indicators of Green Growth

Greening the economy has been widely discussed as a new strategy for simultaneously reducing environmental pressures, promoting economic growth and enhancing social well†being. Indicators are one tool that can be used to describe the development of green growth. This paper presents and evaluates the process of attempting to build a set of policy†relevant key indicators of green growth for Finland. The challenges of developing a cross†scale indicator set integrating different sectors and levels of society are identified and discussed. It is argued that both the experts preparing the indicators and the potential users will benefit from a collaborative process that aims not only to build a shared awareness of the key issues of green growth but also to foster a realistic understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the indicator approach. Key challenges include data availability, right balance between different indicator selection criteria, systemic understanding of the relationships between indicators, and the variable usage contexts of the indicators. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment