Sustainable development

Heilmeier’s questions

1 - What are you trying to do?

Can I assess the level of sustainable development at the regional level?

Yes it is possible since, it is already approved through a very rich literature, on google scholar, there is 464 000 references between 2013 and 2017 about the evaluation of sustainable development at different territorial scales (nation, city region).

Are there unique or several assessment methods of sustainable development?

Certainly the triple bottom line approach of the sustainable development, economic, social and environmental, are the most famous on the literature on sustainability assessment ( Hermans, Knippenberg )[1]

However, we must distinguish between the assess methods and the approaches methods of sustainable development.

the evaluation of sustainable development is initially based on a pre-determined vision and objectives. these objectives determined the approach following during the evaluation process.
we can distinguish two separate but complementary approaches.        
- an approach based on the degree of durability: namely a strong durability (ecological current) or a weak durability (neoclassical current) ( Dietz, al. 2005 )  [2].        
- an approach based on the participation of the actors: Bottom-up represents the political decision-makers, and top-down which represents the scientists and researchers ( Evan, al. 2005 ) [3].

Also, there are several methods to evaluate sustainable development based on the use of the indicators. ( Bellagio STAMP, ODCE method…).

With reference to ( Böhringer, Böhringer )[4], they listed  eleven most famous indicators of assessment sustainable development ( LPI, EF, CDI, ESI, EPI, EVI, ISEW/GPI , EDP, HDI, GSI, WI ).

This battery of indicators can be divided into two, simple indicators or composite indicators.

• Simple indicator: is a quantitative or qualitative variable calculated from statistic data, to provide a unilateral interpretation of only one dimension of sustainable development.
• Composite indicator : Composite indicators are calculated by combining well-chosen subindicators into a single index, The composite indicator should ideally measure multi-dimensional concepts which cannot be captured by a single indicator, e.g ( competitiveness ,industrialization,  sustainability, single market integration, knowledge-based society, etc. [5]

• The composite indicator:

• Can be used to summarize complex or multi-dimensional issues in view of supporting decision-makers
• Provide the big picture
• reduce the size of a list of indicators or to include more information within the existing size limit.

Why i will choose the region as an evaluation scale?

• The region is a territorial entity intermediary between the state and the city, it has the advantage to take benefit from its political and financial autonomy. It is a structure that fit to citizen requirement. It has specific structures and tools to project and implement economic, social and environmental development policies within a framework of good governance.
• Several studies about the sustainability have taken the region as a framework for study ( Graymore, al. 2009 )[6] ( Atanga, al. 2013 ) [7] ( Levitskaya, al. 2017 )[8] ( Smetana, al. 2016 )[9] ( Nasselli 2016 ) [10] . The region is the most appropriate scale for making policies about sustainable development, moreover, measuring the economics, socials and environment impact of these policies. It’s the scale where ecological functioning and human activities are most intensely interact ( Graymore 2008 )[11].
• At the region scale, the community is more easily mobilized for collective action, the dialogue between government and citizen is fluid to establish and consequently it makes it possible to promote the participatory approach.
• The availability and the accessibility of data and statistics.

Which approach is chosen to conduct the evaluation process?

the participatory approach is a tool of local governance introduced in the field of public policy management during the 1970s. It aims to involve a very large number of actors (decision-makers, society, experts) in the setting of objectives development and evaluation of public policies.
this approach has been incorporated into the field of sustainable development during the local agendas 21 initiated by the World Bank in the early 2000s.        
since then it has become an incontrovertible approach to the various sustainable development projects.
The experts (scientists) (top down) participate in the setting of the objectives of sustainable development of a territory according to an initial vision elaborated by the political decision-makers (bottom-up), the approach consists also in setting up development plans, monitoring and evaluation tools by the two parties.        
despite a rich literature on the different experiences with the implementation of the participatory approach, there is no consensus on the ideal way of introducing it. ( Wilson, al. 2007 )[12]

 In the field of the constructing of the sustainable development indicators, the participatory approach consist is that the experts and decision-makers participate jointly in the selection of the indicators, in order to avoid the problem of the availability of information and the acceptance of the results by the decision-makers.( Fraser, al. 2006 )[3]

The composite indicator can guide accurately the regional policy-makers or show the impact of past policy measures. ( Decamps, al 2010 )[13]

There are a dozen composite indicators for the measurement of sustainable development, the most widely used are:[14]

- The HDI (human development indicator): is the composite indicator that has had the most success since its creation in 1990 by the World Bank. Composed by three equal sub-indicators and aggregated through an arithmetic means, the HDI has had a great influence on the social side of sustainable development.

- Ecological footprint: (Wackernagel and Rees, 1997) is environmental indicator, is based on the quantitative land and water requirements to sustain a (national) living standard in assuming certain efficiency improvements.

- The GS (genuine saving): is economic indicator, Pearce and Atkinson (1993) put forward an index which is based on the Hicksian income concept.  Hamilton using the Hartwick rule, which defines the level of re-investment from which the capital stock will never decline.

Moreover, our study will be focus on one activity sector, this will allow us to have relevance information, more detail and attract directly the stakeholders.

The sectors will be chosen according to a number of criteria which can be summarized as follows:

- The availability of information: a preliminary survey to diagnose the regional information system will be started in November in order to know who produces the economic, social and environmental information an as well as its available.  This survey will be an opportunity to explain our project to different actors and try to integrate them into our participatory approach.

- The weight of the sector in the production of wealth at the regional level
-  The degree of pressure on the environment

Which is the final goal of the thesis?

• My goal is to build a regional sustainable development indicators covering a specific sector of activity

2 - How is it done today and what are the limits of current practice?

The evaluation of sustainable development through indicators, in a general way, is frequent in the scientific literature.

 A preliminary literature research using SCOPUS (multidisciplinary bibliographical database) about indicators of sustainable development, pointed out more than 4628 articles in scientific journals between 2009 and 2016 in several related disciplines, including 2405 articles in environmental sciences.

It has been noticed that the scientific community interest increased, if we consider the number of related paper in 2009 (313) and 2016 (870).

When the sector of activity is added as a criterion of research, the number of articles during the same period decreases to 355 articles with only 2 articles have been listed which covers Africa and no study concerning Morocco.

Taking the case of Morocco, the government has already established a list of sustainable development indicators in 2014 at the national level and has developed a national strategy for sustainable development in 2016.

The evaluation of public policies is generally done by the government in a unilateral sense direction (lack of the participatory approach) as a tool of monitoring.

At the regional level, no attempt has been established to evaluate the level of regional development, and even more as an assessment by sector of activity.

Finally, researches about methodology of construction the composite indicator is scarce, but we should note the work done by the OECD “manual on the construction of the composite indicator”, and the European Commission “tools for the construction of composite indicators” which is a good theoretical basis.

- The limits of these approaches:

There is no consensus or the one best way about how the participatory approach should be apply[12] but there is a common sense shared by all the research, namely to involve the actors from the setting of the objectives to the final evaluation.