ENVIRONMENTAL AUDITING Indicators for Transboundary River Management

The aim of this paper is to analyze the potential of indicators for integrated river basin management and to develop a set of indicators for the management of trans- boundary river basins. An indicator, comprising a variable or some aggregation of variables, describes a system or process such that it has significance beyond the face value of its com- ponents. Integrated river basin management takes into ac- count policies and measures for the multifunctional use of riv- ers on a catchment scale and associated institutional changes. Indicators are useful instruments for this process for two reasons. Firstly, they meet the information need of policy- and decision-makers. Secondly, indicators can be used to structure the definition and description of information needs and collection of information between the different interna- tional, institutional, and sectoral management levels. The de- velopment of indicators involves a number of steps: definition of aim, construction of conceptual model, selection of vari- ables, comparison with selection criteria, database assess- ment, and indicator selection. In this paper these steps are discussed and specified for integrated river basin manage- ment. This results in a set of indicators describing the pres- sure to the river, the state of the river ecosystem, the impact to goods and services provided by the river, and the societal response. The proposed set of indicators measured at a river basin scale provides integrated information on the use and supply of goods and services, underlying cause- effect rela- tionships and possible trade-offs and their spatial distribution (e.g., upstream versus downstream). Furthermore, we pro- pose a division of tasks and responsibilities for river basin management with regard to the development of indicators, data collection, and their application in decision-making.