Landscape‐relevant indicators for pressures on the Environment

Abstract

The operationalization of ‘sustainable development ‘ requires indicators which can serve as information tools for the appraisal of the environmental consequences of socio‐economic development. These indicators of sustainable development should cover three main areas: (1) pressures which the socio‐economic system exerts on the environment; (2) the state of the environment; and (3) socio‐economic responses, i.e. activities to alleviate environmental problems. In this article we discuss indicators for sustainable development based on two approaches for the description of the interaction between socio‐economic systems and their natural environment: (1) socio‐economic metabolism, i.e. the mode in which societies organize their exchange of matter and energy with their natural environment; and (2) the colonization of nature, defined as the conundrum of strategies employed to transform parts of the environment in order to render them more useful for societal needs. We focus on pressure‐indicators which should be relevant for the development of cultural landscapes. Such indicators have to focus on the sectors agriculture, forestry, construction, and tourism. Four empirical examples for indicators of sustainable development are presented for the case of Austria: nutrient balances, manure management, energy consumption of crop farming, and appropriation of net primary production. These and similar indicators can be the basis for the development of spatially disaggregated sectoral ecobalances which are necessary for an integrated economic and ecological assessment of the economic branches with the highest relevance for the sustainable development of cultural landscapes.