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Sustainable development indicators in your pocket 2009

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STATISTICAL RELEASE

Ref: 176/09
Date: 30 July 2009

A free booklet published by Defra today provides a statistical overview of the country's progress in tackling key economic, social and environmental issues, by bringing together an extensive range of indicators that can literally fit in your pocket. They cover a wide range of topics of everyday concern such as health, housing, jobs, crime, education, and our environment, all of which may affect whether we can live more sustainably in the future.

The indicators and booklet are also published on the UK Government sustainable development website at:
www.defra.gov.uk/sustainable/government

Sustainable development indicators in your pocket 2009 is a compendium publication, which has drawn on indicators and other National Statistics from across Government. Most of the indicators are based on already published statistics, and almost all have been updated since the 2008 edition.

The aim of this booklet is to make indicators easily accessible to a wide audience and to enable everyone to judge where change, for better or worse, is occurring and where the challenges are. It should be a useful reference to experts but also to others less familiar with the concept of sustainable development or indicators.  Around 60,000 copies of the booklet are distributed annually and they are particularly popular with schools and colleges.

This edition includes as new information:

  • An update to the life satisfaction wellbeing measure, showing how people rate their lives. The average overall life satisfaction for England in Spring 2009 was 7.4 out of 10, close to values of 7.5 and 7.3 in 2008 and 2007 respectively.
    [pages 124 to 125 of publication]
  • An extension of the wellbeing measures to now include bullying as a part of child wellbeing
    [pages 135 to 141].
  • An indicator on environmental equality is updated using previously unpublished data and shows that a higher proportion of people in the most deprived areas in England may live in areas with multiple environmental conditions that are relatively worse than people living in less deprived areas
    [page 103].

Key results

The 68 indicators comprise 126 measures and using these it is possible to get an overview of change compared with earlier years, based on  the number of measures showing improvement, little change or deterioration.  However it is essential to look at the individual indicators too as this does not take account of the relative importance of particular indicators.

All indicators1

Pie chart shows all indicators indicators

Compared with the position in 2003, 43 measures show improvement, 9 showed deterioration and 39 showed little or no change.

A wide range of measures show improvement including:

  • renewable electricity
  • carbon dioxide emissions from domestic energy use
  • water resource use
  • chemical water quality
  • waste and land recycling
  • farming management
  • crime and fear of crime
  • mortality rates
  • infant mortality differences
  • people killed or seriously injured in road accidents
  • housing conditions, fuel poverty and rough sleepers

The nine measures showing deterioration since 2003 are specifically:

  • aviation emissions of greenhouse gases
  • shipping emissions for greenhouse gases
  • fossil fuels used for electricity generation
  • energy supply (consumption exceeding UK production)
  • farmland bird populations
  • community participation
  • range of life expectancy between local authorities
  • ozone pollution in urban areas
  • households living in fuel poverty

UK Framework Indicators

Twenty of the 68 indicators are also ‘UK Framework indicators’ covering key impacts and outcomes that reflect the priorities shared by the UK Government and the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
[page 17 of publication]

These include:

Greenhouse gas emissions: emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, were about 10 per cent lower than in 1990. Emissions decreased by about 2 per cent between 2007 and 2008.
[page 24 of publication]

Bird populations: Farmland bird populations fell by 42 per cent between 1970 and 1993, remained fairly stable until 2005 and then declined in the past two years. Woodland bird populations in 2007 were about 20 per cent lower than the peak of the early 1970s and about 17 per cent lower than 1990. The UK’s breeding seabird populations increased between 1970 and 1987 by 37 per cent but have fallen again since 1999.
[page 47 of publication]

River water quality: between 1990 and 2007 the percentage of rivers of good biological quality in England rose from 55 to 72 per cent and in 2006, 54 per cent of rivers in Northern Ireland and 87 per cent of rivers in Wales were of good biological quality. In 2007, 76 per cent of English rivers were of good chemical quality (up from 55 per cent in 1990), this figure was 74 per cent in Northern Ireland. In all years since 1993 over 90 per cent of rivers in Wales have been of good chemical quality. In Scotland, the percentage of rivers of good quality has remained stable at around 87 per cent between 2000 and 2007, based on a combined chemical, biological and aesthetic assessment.
[pages 61 to 62 of publication]

Crime:  In England and Wales, from the British Crime Survey (BCS), vehicle thefts fell by 61 per cent, burglary fell by 46 per cent between 1991 and 2008-9 and violent crime by 17 per cent.
[page 70 of publication]

Health inequality:  In 1991-3 the difference in average life expectancy for men between local authority areas in the UK with the highest and lowest average life expectancy was 9.7 years. This widened to 12.6 years in 2004-6. For women the difference was 7.5 years in 1991-3 and widened to 10.2 years in 2004-6.
[page 84 of publication]

Theme summaries

The 68 indicators can provide an overview of change for four themes as set out in the UK Government’s Sustainable Development Strategy, Securing the Future (though there is some overlap in the messages where some indicators support more than one of the themes). The four themes are:

  • Sustainable consumption and production
  • Climate change and energy
  • Natural resource protection and environmental enhancement
  • Creating sustainable communities
Sustainable consumption and production

Pie chart shows sustainable consumption and production indicators

Fifteen measures show improvement compared with 2003. Those showing improvement include emissions of nitrogen oxide and particulates from road transport, carbon dioxide emissions from domestic energy use, water resources, waste and land recycling.

Measures showing deterioration since 2003 are greenhouse gases from aviation and shipping as well as farmland bird populations.

Climate change and energy

Indicators1 for climate change and energy mainly cover greenhouse gas emissions, electricity generation and energy supply

Pie chart shows climate change and energy indicators

Four measures show improvement since 2003, four show deterioration and six show little or no change.

Those showing improvement since 2003 are renewable electricity, sulphur dioxide emissions from electricity generation, carbon dioxide emissions from domestic and manufacturing energy use.

Those showing deterioration are aviation and shipping emissions of greenhouse gases, energy supply and fossil fuels used in electricity generation.

Natural resource protection and enhancing the environment

Indicators1 for natural resource protection mainly cover wildlife and biodiversity, farming, land use, fish stocks, air pollution and rivers.

Pie chart shows natural resource protection and enhancing the environment indicators

Nine measures show improvement since 2003, one shows deterioration and nine show little or no change.

Those showing improvement since 2003 include chemical river water quality, farming management, and emissions from agricultural fertilizer and aomminia, land recycling and dwelling density.

Farmland and woodland bird populations have shown a decline since 2003, whilst woodland, seabird and wintering wetland bird populations have seen little or no change.

International indicators

Indicators1 for creating sustainable communities mainly cover poverty, health, crime, access, mobility, and local and domestic environments.

Pie chart shows international indicators

Twenty-three measures show improvement since 2003, four show deterioration and twenty show little or no change.

Those showing improvement include poverty and housing conditions, local environment quality, crime and fear of crime, mortality rates, and road accidents.

Those showing deterioration are the difference in life expectancy between local authority areas, community participation, ozone pollution in urban areas and households experiencing fuel poverty.

International indicators

Some international data have been compiled to enable some comparisons to be made between the UK and other countries. International data are available for 32 of the 68 national indicators.  The indicators are presented on the UK Government sustainable development website (see notes.)

International data are presented for the UK and twelve other countries: France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Canada, Japan, Australia and the United States of America. However owing to data availability not all countries are included in every international measure. The choice of countries was partly driven by data availability but also assumptions about comparative levels of development.

Notes to editors

  1. The publication is a Defra National Statistics compendium publication, which has drawn on indicators and other National Statistics from across Government.  Free copies of Sustainable development indicators in your pocket 2009 are available from Defra Publications, Admail 6000, London, SW1A 2XX (tel: 08459 556000, e-mail: defra@cambertown.com), quote product codes PB13265 (A6 size) or PB13265A (A4 size). The publication and associated data will be also presented on the sustainable development website: www.defra.gov.uk/sustainable/government
  2. New figures on life satisfaction come from the Defra Survey of Public Attitudes and Behaviours to the Environment and are based on a weighted sample of 2,009 people in England surveyed in Spring 2009.  These results were commissioned by Defra and have not been previously published.
  3. Figures on child wellbeing come from the Office for Standards in Education (OfSted) “Tell Us” survey published in October 2008.
  4. Figures for “embedded” carbon emissions come from research commissioned by Defra, which was published on 2 July 2008.
  5. The indicator on crime is fully based on results from the British Crime Survey, rather than partially on recorded crime as in editions prior to 2008.
  6. For the indicator pie-chart summaries a number of indicators support more than one theme so there is some overlap in the messages the summaries convey. Indicator measures do not contribute to the summaries if (a) they are used in another indicator and are already counted within the same summary; (b) their trends are strongly influenced by or directly reflect other measures within the same summary; or (c) they are for contextual purposes. The compilation of the pie chart summaries differs slightly compared with previous years in that if an indicator has data within five years of the stated baseline then it is included in the summary.
  7. In previous editions, the baselines for comparison were 1990 and 1999.  The later baseline has been brought forward to 2003, to continue to provide a short-term assessment of change.  This affects the traffic light summaries in the pie chart analysis.  An annex provides a summary of the assessments since 1999.
  8. The measures of wellbeing presented in the publication include:
  • Selected existing sustainable development indicators
  • Some related measures to support existing sustainable development indicators
  • Updated survey results on life satisfaction.
  • Measures of participation in sport and culture, access to green space
  • A measure of positive mental wellbeing based on a Scottish health survey.

It has not been possible to update all of these measures since the last edition.

  1. The international data presented are not National Statistics, but have been provided for illustrative purposes, and as an attempt to show the UK’s progress in an international context.  Defra statisticians are not responsible for the reliability or comparability of the international data used. The number of measures for which it was possible to make assessments for the UK and the 12 other selected countries consistently is very small compared with the number of measures in the national set of indicators.  The international summaries presented are therefore very limited and should be treated with caution.  They should not be regarded as representative of the UK’s or any other country’s progress towards sustainable development.

 National Statistics publication

National Statistics are produced to high professional standards set out in the National Statistics Code of Practice. They undergo regular quality assurance reviews to ensure that they meet customer needs. They are produced free from any political interference.

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Page published: 30 July 2009