Suchergebnisse

This chapter explores current and forthcoming sustainable development challenges. By comparing the EU Sustainable Development Strategy (European Council, 2006), its related monitoring reports and the "Facing the future: time for the EU to meet global challenges" report (Boden et al., 2010), we can conclude that many future-oriented issues that have been identified thus far cover topics that are well reflected in sustainability indicator systems. Such comparisons can help policy making in terms of developing a better understanding of unsustainable trends and the respective needs for correction or prevention. Our findings also suggest that data collection could be enhanced to better monitor emerging issues that are currently not well covered by indicator systems. Today's sustainability indicator systems offer information on past and present states but provide limited support for understanding future developments. Combining sustainability monitoring with forward looking activities (FLA) could therefore enhance policy support in developing more adaptive and anticipatory approaches to better orient societal change towards sustainable development.